Coral reefs around the world are in crisis. Under pressure from climate change, overfishing, trawling, pollution and introduced species, coral colonies and fish communities are steadily deteriorating. One way to address this is through reef restoration. Of course, some scientists argue that reef restoration is a band-aid for the enormous problems that reefs face and that’s true, but currently all our restoration is. We destroyed it and we need to attempt to restore it, remembering that prevention would have been better than intervention.
At its simplest, reef restoration involves the addition of coral or habitat to a reef. It’s generally undertaken on existing coral reefs, but can also be done on rocky reefs or bare sand.
There are a lot of coral restoration projects happening across the world including the Great Barrier Reef.
Important note: if we hit 1.5C degrees of warming, scientists predict 70 – 90% of our reefs will disappear. At 2C that prediction is 99%. It’s therefore absolutely imperative we stop further global heating. If we don’t, all these efforts will be largely in vein.
