Hawaii nursery experiments with local coral to speed up the healing of reefs

On Oahu’s Sand Island a small team of coral specialists and technicians has been working for years to restore the slow-growing coral reefs in Hawaii that are being subjected to increasingly frequent bleaching events.

The corals in the state, like many around the world, are threatened by climate change-driven bleaching, in which food-providing algae that live in their tissues abandon them once ocean temperatures become too warm, potentially killing the corals.

The work of the Division of Aquatic Resources’ Anuenue Coral Restoration Nursery, which began in 2016, highlights the particular needs of Hawaii’s corals, which are among the slowest-growing in the world.

Video by Stanley Lee