Coral Vita

At Coral Vita’s facility in Freeport, Bahamas, they are currently restoring reefs that have died off due to a multitude of factors, including thermal stress, bleaching, and disease, by utilizing their land-based techniques and ocean-based restoration solutions. The reefs in their work areas have critical significance as fisheries habitat, tourism value, and biodiversity refuges, and act as a protective layer against storms and hurricanes. They collect a subset of resilient corals from the wild reefs, transport them to their facility for propagation via a method called micro-fragmentation, grow them in large numbers at their land-based facility, and then return them to the reefs they originated from by securing them to the seafloor using novel and established techniques.

The Coral Vita team are constantly assessing the annual data log and progression of temperatures throughout the season to guide the development of their outplant windows and processes. A working example is from the 2023 data record in which they were able to correlate the time corals were out planted vs the rate of temperature change to alter when and where they plant corals back on the reef for maximal success. Using the buoy data, they determined that they needed to change their cutoff date to June 1 or when ocean temperatures reach 27°C for the cessation of planting operations to ensure the corals have enough time to take hold and grow before the onset of higher temperatures and the associated bleaching phenomenon. 

This project is of the utmost importance due to the incredible loss of coral coverage in the past 20 years, which has had a significant impact on local marine biodiversity, health, and the blue economy. This is compounded by the record high ocean temperatures in the summer of 2023, where many areas have seen a 50-99% loss of critically endangered coral species like Acropora Palmata and Acropora Cervicornis, which are only found in the Western Atlantic and Caribbean. Despite the catastrophic losses seen in Coral Vita's region in the Bahamas, with seemingly complete mortality of certain species on the reefs where they work, they are observing higher survivorship rates among the tens of thousands of corals they outplant. This gives them hope that with further efforts and an increase in scale, they can turn the tide against the loss of these critical species and habitats.

Another project that Coral Vita is using the Aqualink partnership for is in their planning for field operations. Almost all of their scientific and restoration field work requires them to operate by boat to reach thier project sites, and they conduct the majority of their field operations while SCUBA diving. From the process of identifying potentially resilient broodstock (the corals they select to propagate) and selecting the sites for restoration to conduct before and after surveys to monitor the impact and success of their restoration efforts and the physical planting of the corals back on the reef, their efforts are completely at the mercy of the oceanic wind and wave conditions. For the safety of their dive teams and the corals themselves, it is imperative they have the most accurate picture possible of the conditions at sea to guide their efforts to minimize risk and maximize success.

- "We use the historical data feature in parity with forecast reports to watch for patterns that further refine our fieldwork operations model and allows us to expect and plan for conditions in advance. Predictive models and oceanic conditions forecasts are notoriously difficult to attain a high degree of confidence and accuracy, especially the further in the future we are attempting to plan our operations. We are able to take the historical wind and wave data records and compare them over time with the observed conditions, this allows us to predict with higher confidence the likely conditions we can expect based on current wind wave forecasts for operational planning", Joe Oliver says.

They take a combination of historical data and current predictions to refine Coral Vita’s planning process and schedule operation more appropriately. This allows them to be more rigorous with their dive planning and scheduling along with providing a baseline for training their Freeport staff how to utilize this information in advance of field operations. 

- "Without such accurate local data, we would often be guessing whether or not dive operations were possible and would lose a significant amount of time having to venture out only to call off operations or to shift plans and functional missions", Joe Oliver explains. 

The best working example of utilizing Aqualink for planning field operations is when it is time for coral spawning season. Corals spawn in very restrictive timeframes, typically only a few hours during a few nights in July, August, and September. These windows are pretty well defined, but almost all occur at night when it is impossible to assess ocean conditions visually. Without accurate real-time data, Coral Vita's team would be flying blind trying to conduct dive operations at night when the risk factors are multiplied. Having access to high-quality ocean conditions allows them to operate at night and utilize one of the most robust natural coral restoration strategies by capturing wild coral spawn and augmenting the success of these processes.