Developing and scaling settlement, deployment and monitoring of wild cultured larvae for reef restoration

The recruitment and subsequent recovery of coral populations following large-scale and repeated climate-induced disturbances is being compromised by a combination of declining larval supply and early-post settlement survival bottlenecks. As widespread coral mortality threatens recruitment on reefs through declining propagule supply and habitat fragmentation, active intervention methods are being developed and tested to restore coral assemblages. In particular, larval-based coral restoration methods are undergoing significant research and development in preparation for their application at multi-hectare scales, considering the magnitude of environmental impacts. Whilst the collection and culture of coral larvae in situ has been refined and can now be replicated at scale, the transfer of competent larvae and their deployment onto damaged reefs without constraining them under nets that limits the spatial scale of operations, remains a significant challenge. This research in this thesis aimed to address current bottlenecks within the transfer and deployment of mixed larval assemblages from high density in situ cultures to their deployment onto degraded reefscapes.