THE CORAL NURTURE PROGRAM

The Coral Nurture Program was established in 2018 as a new approach in the Great Barrier Reef to link citizen science, local knowledge, coral restoration and tourism operators. Teaming up with University of Technology, Sydney, Red Cat Adventures was chosen as high standard tourism operator to be involved with developing the Coral Nurture Program in the Whitsundays. Since the development in 2018, the Cairns and Port Douglas Coral Nurture Program team and tourism operators has assisted with studies in coral attachment biology, coral recruitment, heat stress tolerance, microbiomes and out planting, nursery based coral propagation, outplant success rate and scale and the reefs ecological responses.

 

In August 2022, with the help from Red Cat Adventures 9 nurseries were deployed in Blue Pearl Bay, Black Island and Luncheon Bay. Since then we have had 4 outplanting events and with help from other tourism operators, we have outplanted 6,034 corals and the survival rate is currently being calculated.