40K Baby Corals Transplanted on Great Barrier Reef

0:00Scientists and reef industry partners just transplanted 40,000 baby corals onto the Great Barrier Reef. They grew these corals on land or scooped them from wild spawn slicks, then settled them onto ceramic seeding devices. It's a major step in testing large-scale restoration. This three-year polyprogram started last year, building on a collaboration from 2020 between the Australian Institute of Marine Science, CSRO, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, and Queensland universities. For the first time, they're tracking how these methods work across bigger areas. Tourism operators, traditional owners, and core growers are getting hands-on training to ramp up efforts. In spots like the Keppel Islands, Cairns, and Port Douglas, Rangers blend cultural knowledge with science to deploy the devices. Core wholesalers and Cairns nurtured heat-tolerant babies to pass on stronger genes, while fishing charters set up floating pools to collect and settle wild spawn.

1:00No one's saying this replaces nature, but it accelerates evolution with a solid kickstart. Teams are now monitoring survival over summer, and plotting next year's scale-up, aiming to build the logistics for real impact on the reef's future. That's the story for today, Sydney News Today, Driven by AI, I'm Cory with the Story.