Beyond Reef Restoration: Next-Generation Techniques for Coral Gardening, Landscaping, and Outreach

Abstract

Anthropogenic disturbances have led to the degradation of coral reef systems globally, calling for proactive and progressive local strategies to manage individual ecosystems. Although restoration strategies such as assisted evolution have recently been proposed to enhance the performance of coral reef populations in response to current and future stressors, scalability of these concepts and implementation in habitat or ecosystemwide management remains a major limitation for logistical and financial reasons. We propose to implement these restoration efforts into an ecotourism approach that embeds land-based coral gardening efforts as architectural landscape elements to enhance and beautify coastal development sites, providing additional value and rationale for ecotourism stakeholders to invest. Our approach extends and complements existing concepts integrating coral reef restoration in ecotourism projects by creating a participatory platform that can be experienced by the public, while effectively integrating numerous restoration techniques, and providing opportunities for long-term restoration and monitoring studies. In this context, we discuss options for pre-selection of corals and systematic, large-scale monitoring of coral genotype performance targeting higher resilience to future stressors. To reduce operating costs during out-planting, we suggest to create coral seeding hubs, clusters of closely transplanted conspecifics, to quickly and efficiently restore/enhance active reproduction. We discuss our land-based coral gardening approach in the context of positive impacts beyond reef restoration. By restoring and strengthening resilience of local populations, we believe this strategy will contribute to a net positive conservation impact, create a culture on restoration and enhance and secure blue economical investments that rely on healthy marine systems.

Conservation actions and ecological context: optimizing coral reef local management in the Dominican Republic

“…Hence, this puts into context that any appropriately managed network of MPAs, with interventions enabled by strong scientific and private partnerships, can improve the efficacy of interventions and provide ecosystem and socio-economic benefits for areas of high tourism development such as the southeastern Dominican Republic ( Calle-Triviño et al, 2020 ; Bayraktarov et al, 2020 ). For example, in the study area, the responsible tourism movement “Wave of Change” of the Iberostar group created its land-based facility to contribute as a platform for research and environmental education ( Schmidt-Roach et al, 2020 ).…”

Investing in Blue Natural Capital to Secure a Future for the Red Sea Ecosystems

“…Additionally, restoration of coral reefs is complex and has so far been difficult to achieve on a large scale (Blignaut et al, 2014). Thus, there is a market interest in developing new technology and methods of scaling coral reef restoration (Baums et al, 2019;Schmidt-Roach et al, 2020). The degraded reefs of the southern Red Sea allow for the testing and optimizing of restoration tools such as in situ coral propagation (Schopmeyer et al, 2017), larval re-seeding (Chamberland et al, 2017), and recruitment (Liversage and Chapman, 2018) and coral transplantation (Horoszowski-Fridman and Rinkevich, 2016).…”

“…Importantly, growth of the tourism sector into a major economic player can lead to new management programs built around stewardship as well as new research partnerships 1,2 . Therefore, economic and environmental instruments associated with novel ecotourism concepts are an important and profitable investment opportunity that can diversify the local economies (Schmidt-Roach et al, 2020). Furthermore, ecotourism concepts can be directly linked to environmental education enhancement as these attractions allow the general public to experience, appreciate, and value natural marine habitats.…”

Saving the planet with appropriate biotechnology: 2. Cultivate shellfish to remediate the atmosphere

“…In the meantime, restoration projects could help maintain species survival and ecosystem services, ultimately providing humanity with the breathing space to stabilize the climate …". Duarte et al (2020) conclude that "… Rebuilding marine life represents a doable Grand Challenge for humanity, an ethical obligation and a smart economic objective to achieve a sustainable future …". The political limitations of conventional ecosystem governance are discussed by Morrison et al (2020), who conclude that securing a future for marine ecosystems (in their case, coral reefs) "… under climate change is a political challenge as much as an ecological or social one …".…”

“…More recently, Schmidt-Roach et al (2020) have reviewed proposals to restore coral reef populations and point out that the scale of the work required to implement these concepts in habitats on an ecosystem-wide management remains a major limitation for logistical and, more importantly, financial reasons. Their solution is to suggest implementation by including landbased coral gardening into architectural elements to enhance and beautify coastal development sites.…”