[Image: Nursery Table]

A nursery platform, or table, is a secure substrate that serves as an interim location for corals to acclimate and grow in the field. Not all projects require a nursery table.

Please download the notes on ⬇️ Developing a Nursery Platform for more information.

These activities can be completed with the help of community volunteers.

⬇️ Download the checklist here.

Biopsy preparation entails collecting a small sample of live tissue, or biopsy, from each COO and mounting it onto a labeled aragonite plug, which is then transported to stress testing tanks – either at a facility or a portable Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS).

⬇️ Download the full protocol here.

To identify which collected COO were more thermally resilient, the Coral Resilience Lab (CRL) at HIMB created a stress-testing system designed to mimic the natural environment, test individuals from more than one species simultaneously, and produce results quickly.

The CRL design uses heating and cooling reservoir tanks, solenoids, and computer programming to mimic daily temperature cycles with a gradual overall temperature increase (bleaching) and decrease (recovery). Researchers run this bleaching/recovery profile until roughly half of the biopsies from all coral species bleach or die (about three weeks), at which point they plot results on a “bleaching curve” to distinguish more resilient corals (those that did not bleach or took longer to bleach) from less resilient corals (those that bleached or died).

⬇️ Download the full protocol here.

↗️ Reference Caruso et al., 2021 for more background on these techniques.

Fragmentation is a natural method of asexual coral reproduction wherein a coral colony is broken up into smaller (about “double thumb-sized”) pieces. This method is different from micro-fragmentation, which requires slicing coral into very small pieces, growing it across an artificial hard surface, and outplanting it along with the artificial substrate. In coral restoration, fragmentation has been shown to enhance growth rates. Some projects outplant the fragments at random to increase dispersion of resilient individuals across a location. Another option is to outplant fragments from the same colony close together to encourage fusion of the clones. This technique creates a larger colony faster than would otherwise be possible.

⬇️ Download the full protocol here.

In the outplanting phase, resilient coral fragments, still mounted on aragonite plugs, are transported to a chosen outplanting site and transferred from storage racks onto suitable substrates.

⬇️ Download the materials list and full protocol here.

Coral colors measured against a color reference card can be used to assess COO and outplant status.

[Image: Koʻa card]

Visit the ↗️ Coral Reef Ecology Lab for more information and training on the Hawaiian Koʻa Card.

Photogrammetry creates digital archives of the reef status and captures higher quality information – such as community composition, reef and coral geometric complexity, outplant mortality, growth, and survivorship – than traditional survey methods. Software such as Agisoft Metashape Professional Edition and AddTools for Metashape plugin can help with processing photogrammetry data and used to measure growth, survivorship, and success of outplants over time.

⬇️ Download the full protocol here.

↗️ Learn more about Metashape.

Sample datasheet structure for the biopsy and fragmenting steps can be found below.

Biopsying Corals of Opportunity

[Image: Biopsy Datasheets]

a) Datasheet example for station 1: tagging, species and photo identification, and color health score using the Koʻa card

b) Datasheet example for station 2: tracking COO biopsies (2 biopsies in this case) prior to the stress test

Fragmenting Resilient Corals

[Image: Fragmenting Datasheets]

a) Datasheet for station 1: COO tag identification, colony size before fragmentation, species identification, color health score using the ko‘a card, and total number of fragments processed from each COO

b) Datasheet for station 2: tracking the amount of fragments, fragment size, and rack number from each COO processed