Pilot Deployments Program
The Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program’s focus is on addressing the scientific and engineering bottlenecks and knowledge gaps that limit the size and scale of reef restoration efforts. Advances during our first R&D phase give us renewed hope that we will achieve our mission.
Large field trials – or pilot deployments – are an integral next step in translating this R&D into operationalisation. They create knowledge and develop supply chains that can only be derived from larger deployments and enable practical engagement with Traditional Owners and the breadth of stakeholders and industries required to establish operational programs.
Deploying larval collection pools off Agincourt Reef. Photo: GBRF
Pilot Deployments
The Pilot Deployments Program (PDP) of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP) is focused on moving interventions from a low to high readiness level, where interventions are ready to be applied ‘in-situ’ in reef environments. Interventions are matured to piloting phase, by considering a range of criteria which include feasibility, efficacy, cost, scalability, safety and acceptability.
Some of the first RRAP interventions to be progressed into the Pilot Deployments Program are those that focus on coral ‘seeding’ or methods to deliver coral larvae and young into the Reef in large numbers. These include techniques developed under RRAP’s Moving Corals and Coral Aquaculture and Deployment Subprograms.
Scope and Expected outcomes
- Progressively increase the scale of delivering or deploying interventions onto the Reef across five years commencing in 2025-2026.
- Create a set of coral propagation hubs in three locations on the Great Barrier Reef. These hubs will seek to serve as an ongoing resilient source of coral larvae with slightly enhanced thermally tolerant traits.
- Establish effective and efficient practitioner supply chains that can deliver large numbers of young corals to the Hub reef locations.
Traditional Owners, tourism operators and researchers work together to set up floating pools to collect coral spawn, as part of Boats4Corals, a Reef Islands Initiative Project, Photo: Jodi Salmond, Reef Check Australia
Real-world validated case studies
The Pilot Deployments Program will help us to understand how we, and participating organisations, can operationalise RRAP interventions, from planning to production, deployment or delivery onto the Reef, and monitoring. By integrating an intervention’s underpinning ecological and technical elements with governance and regulation considerations, and active community engagement, we can begin to build a robust and credible model for future large-scale implementation.
Characterising ecological benefits
The Pilot Deployments Program will help our R&D teams to directly assess how interventions can accelerate recovery and enhance coral resilience to heat and bleaching stress. Through the delivery of millions more corals year on year, with a dedicated monitoring program, we will have a magnitude increase in ecological data beyond current R&D efforts. This will help characterise the resilience benefits of enhanced coral seeding methods.
Co-Design and Capability
The Program will create a new platform beyond R&D for open and constructive engagement and co-design with Traditional Owners and communities as to how and where interventions can best be deployed. Through its on-Reef trials and activities the PDP will also provide a unique opportunity to build regional and local delivery capacity within Traditional Owner groups and local industries (such as tourism, fishing, aquaculture), creating the foundations for the future upscaling of interventions.
Program Leader:
Team:
Jordan Ivey
Indigenous Futures Project Leader
AIMS
Dr Pirjo Haikola
Project Officer, Research Planning
AIMS
Dr Claire Prichard
Project Support Officer
AIMS
Ruby O'Neill
Project Officer, Contracts
AIMS
FAQs and Resources:
Q: How do we decide where to deploy PDP coral seeding interventions?
The Pilot Deployments Program will operate in three regions of the Reef, the North, Central and South. Within those regions a cluster will be selected, then reefs and ultimately, interventions deployed at several specific sites on that reef. Clusters, reefs and sites will be decided through a consultation process with Great Barrier Reef Marine Park regulators, Traditional Owners and local communities. Importantly, the locations will also be determined with the support of RRAP modelling and ecological data to ensure that we would be collecting broodstock with higher environmental tolerances and deploying in habitats where there is a reasonable chance that corals will grow and survive. Each year, collection and redeployment locations will be reviewed through the same processes.
For Coral Aquaculture and Deployment methods, adult corals from a particular area of reef (site) are collected to spawn in land-based aquaculture facilities. These corals are known as broodstock. Once spawned, their eggs are fertilised, and the resulting larvae settled onto seeding devices. After a few weeks the juveniles, along with their parent coral, are returned to the same exact reef the broodstock were originally collected from.
Similarly, during larval slick collection methods, spawn is collected from a cluster of local reefs (several sites), and once incubated in the floating pools, the larvae are returned to the same or a nearby reef within that cluster.
Q: Why is the PDP focused on coral seeding methods?
In 2018, the Australian Government provided $6M for an expert consortium to assess 160 novel, scalable technologies to help the Great Barrier Reef adapt to climate change. Known as the RRAP Concept Feasibility Study, this initiative identified types of interventions to explore in a subsequent R&D program. While the study concluded there is no “silver bullet solution” a shortlist of interventions was identified based on their deployability, their cost, and the likelihood that they could be operational soon.
Two of the three main categories of technology selected for investment are the seeding of aquaculture-propagated corals with improved thermal tolerance (aquaculture) and spawning slick collection and larval reseeding.
Both these technologies can be used for both treatment and prevention; the aim is to target key sites for reef repair and recovery after environmental stresses and enhance local coral in a way that enables reefs to resist future stresses. Increased resistance to heat stress is critical to the ongoing resilience of the Great Barrier Reef.
After four years of research and development through the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, and several years of previous research through earlier funding, both techniques have now progressed to a stage were the equipment needed has been designed and engineered, is manufacturable, and ecological data and modelling exists to support decision making, like coral species and site selection.
As other intervention types progress to from R&D to a higher ‘readiness stage’ they will also be fed into the Pilot Deployments Program.
Q: How to you deliver corals to the reef after they’ve been incubating in the pools?
Once coral spawn has been collected, fertilised, and the resulting larvae are ready to settle, teams will prepare to deploy them back onto the reef.
There are a few different ways to do this. Cloud release involves opening the bottom of the plankton net in the pool and releasing the larvae on masse over an area of reef. Pipes connected to the pools can also be used to direct the larvae from the pools onto a more specific area of a reef.
In 2024 and 2025, teams will also be investigating whether placing devices, similar in design to those used in Coral Aquaculture and Deployment, inside the pools results in larvae settlement. Teams will then deliver the devices themselves onto the particular sites, allowing us to have more deployment control and directly track and monitor growth and survival of corals from a particular pool.
Q: How long do the devices stay on the Reef?
The devices used in both Coral Aquaculture and Deployment and larval collection and seeding techniques are designed to embed permanently into the reef substrate with corals eventually overgrowing them.
The seeding devices are alumina ceramic, selected for its physical and chemical properties (hardness, specific gravity and low reactivity). It is also non-toxic and therefore safe for corals.
The seeding devices have also been designed to allow deployments to occur from the surface, and to increase the survivability of deployed young corals.
Q: Is there any possibility for unintended consequences with this work on the Reef ecosystem? Are there any risks of genetic bottlenecks?
The nature and scale of the pilot deployments are expected to make site scale impacts, but not be sufficient to make significant local or regional changes to coral gene flow and ecology.
The RRAP and PDP governance structure ensures that interventions will only be considered ‘deployment ready’ if or when they are deemed scientifically proven, ecologically effective, technically feasible, economically viable and socially acceptable. We consider all options that meet the criteria of providing a net benefit for the Reef at acceptable levels of risk, scale and cost.
The Intervention Risk Review Group (IRRG), an independent, interdisciplinary expert group, has also been established to consider risks and provide guidance and advice on risk assessment and management. The Group is led by Independent Chair Sue Barrell AO (Order of Australia) FTSE (Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering), and members are subject matter experts operating nationally and internationally, outside of RRAP and PDP.
RRAP interventions are additionally guided by a genetic management plan that covers both species and genotypic diversity.
Q: What happens if there’s a coral bleaching event?
The Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program and the Pilot Deployments Program are not designed as an operational response to acute bleaching events. Rather, focus is on developing feasible, efficient long-term measures to protect the Reef from the ongoing and chronic impacts of climate change.
In-water pilot trials from 2025, like the Pilot Deployment Program will provide critical information as to the feasibility and efficacy of newly developed interventions, with the aim of implementing these coral resilience improvement solutions over the next decade. Trailing at scale will also provide us with opportunities to learn more about coral response, and thereby develop the best solutions to help them resist the ongoing impacts of climate change.
Q: How do you monitor coral survival after they’ve been put onto the Reef?
Devices with coral spat on them will be monitored at deployment, 6 months post-deployment, and then at subsequent year intervals.
We’ll be measuring how well the devices are retained on the Reef, as well as coral survival, growth and comparisons in coral cover and reef health between deployment sites and nearby ‘control’ sites.
Once the corals reach reproductive age, we’ll also measure their fecundity – or reproductive potential, which will help us understand how well our deployed corals can repopulate their reef clusters.
We’ll monitor corals using visual assessments and technology developed during RRAP’s R&D phase, like macrophotogrammetry.
Q: Who will be responsible for tracking data and monitoring progress?
The Director of the Pilot Deployments Program (Australian Institute of Marine Science) and the Executive Director of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (Great Barrier Reef Foundation) are responsible for overall program progress and tracking of impact. Both the RRAP and AIMS’ boards also have oversight of the overall strategy and direction of the Program.
The PDP is led by a team from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and are responsible for managing project sites, data management, monitoring the execution of contracts and tracking progress against the Program plan.
Monitoring will initially be delivered by RRAP Ecological Intelligence teams and increasingly through third party providers which will be embedded in a capacity building environment. The PDP team will embed decision support tools within local sites, alongside the capacity to upload/share data.
