A team of Great Adventures marine biologists joined the global Coralpalooza™ event celebrating World Oceans Day by outplanting hundreds of coral fragments at a Green Island dive site. 

Coralpalooza™ is the biggest international day of collaborative action for coral reefs and building resilience to climate change.  

For the first time, Australia has participated in the event, partnered by The Great Barrier Reef Foundation and Coral Nurture Program with the aim to assist recovery and research at high-value reef locations. Over 45 divers from tourism operators on the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, Port Douglas and the Whitsundays participated to plant more than 6,700 coral fragments on the day.

Phil Coulthard Great Adventures Reef Biosearch Manager said, “It was a very satisfying day to take part in something so important with a global impact. As Coral Nurture Program partners, we planted around 330 coral fragments at our Green Island “New York” dive site.

“On a healthy reef, it’s normal to have some broken coral so these “fragments of opportunity” were first collected and then attached to coral colonies using an innovative CoralClip® that allows them to be planted quickly and with good survival rates.”

This work is part of CNP’s aim to plant more than 100,000 corals by 2024 and work with local Reef communities to develop the tools to help coral reefs adapt to climate change.

Long-term monitoring is critical to the success and researchers will continue to monitor the sites to better understand the impact coral planting has on reefs and their marine life. This will help determine where and how to target efforts to assist recovery at high-value reef locations in the future.

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Coral Nurture Program is a unique partnership between tour operators and researchers from the University of Technology Sydney to develop novel stewardship based management of high value Great Barrier Reef locations, with the goal to transform both ecological and social resilience to environmental change. At its core, this program is about collecting, propagating, growing and planting coral to replenish reef sites and enhance resilience. www.coralnurtureprogram.org

Coralpalooza™ began in 2014 by the Coral Restoration Foundation in Miami Florida when they enlisted recreational divers for a day of large-scale coral restoration in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Coralpalooza™  2023 took place in 12 countries and in Australia for the first time, creating collective planting activity across the world's largest reef restoration organisations to raise awareness around stakeholder led restoration, as part of World Oceans Day.  https://www.coralrestoration.org/coralpalooza-2023

Great Barrier Reef Foundation funding acknowledgement: Involvement in Coralpalooza™ 2023 was made possible by the generous support of donors and fundraisers and thanks to the dedicated support of thousands of school children around Australia who have participated in colour runs to raise money for our Reef through Australian School and Club Fundraising (ASCF)