Coral restoration using larval seeding aims to speed the return of coral cover, diversity and complexity to damaged reefs. It does this by increasing the number of coral larvae available for settlement and growth into new corals, particularly where reefs have low larval supply (e.g. following largescale bleaching that can kill many breeding corals).
The RRAP Moving Corals R&D Subprogram aims to develop the means to cost-effectively produce billions of genetically-diverse coral larvae with enhanced environmental tolerance for large-scale restoration. Larvae will be harvested from wild coral-spawn slicks, cultured in floating nurseries, and transferred for settlement to reef areas to catalyse coral restoration, adaptation and reef recovery.
that efficiently capture wild coral-spawn slicks in common reef- and weather-dependent scenarios
to enhance their survival and growth
that provide scalable targeted transfer of larvae onto reefs through direct application or via settlement on devices
of naturally more thermally-tolerant larvae to facilitate reef recovery following coral bleaching.
Moving Corals will expand current smaller-scale methods of spawn and slick capture and larval rearing to develop and test large-scale routine production and transfer of hundreds of millions to billions of larvae at sea. The aim is to achieve targeted delivery and settlement to reefs with low coral cover over multi-kilometre scales.
In Years One to Three we aim to enhance the effectiveness of coral larvae collection, cultivation and deployment. Each year we will develop a different aspect of collection and transfer, experimental treatments of larvae and deployment and monitoring techniques.
Variations will be tested in the field at spawning, and refinements applied following field trials in the subsequent years.
Seeding larvae onto degraded reef areas Photo: SCU
Six-week old coral juvenile after larval seeding onto reef Photo: Peter Harrison
Year Four aims to test effectiveness of assisted larval transfer, using the fully-refined techniques to complete a transfer of larvae from warmer northern reefs to cooler southern reefs and transfer and deploy settled coral juveniles to target reefs for restoration and recovery.
During development, the scaling, mechanisation and automation will progressively increase, so that methods for deployment of billions of larvae for large-scale restoration are ready from Year Five onwards.
These outcomes will enable key knowledge transfer to enable future implementation of routine, reef-scale larval restoration over multiple high-value ‘source’ reefs in different regions by stakeholders.
Concentrating coral larvae in a culture net for release onto sections of damaged reef. Photo: SCU
This project will expand current smaller-scale spawn and slick capture and larval rearing methods to develop and test larger-scale routine production and transfer of larvae for restoration of high-value reefs.
Doropoulos, C., & Roff, G. (2022). Coloring coral larvae allows tracking of local dispersal and settlement. PLOS Biology, 20(12), e3001907. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001907
Doropoulos, C., & Vanderklift, M. A. (2022). Harvesting coral spawn slicks for reef restoration. In S. M. Hamylton, P. Hutchings, & O. Hoegh-Guldberg (Eds.), Coral reefs of Australia: Perspectives from beyond the water’s edge (pp. 273–279). CSIRO Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1071/9781486315499
Gouezo, M., Doropoulos, C., Slawinski, D., Cummings, B., & Harrison, P. (2023). Underwater macrophotogrammetry to monitor in situ benthic communities at submillimetre scale. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 14(9), 2494–2509. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14175
Langley, C., Harrison, P. L., & Doropoulos, C. (2024). Optimizing initial stocking densities of wild coral spawn slicks for mass production of larvae and settled corals for restoration. Restoration Ecology, 32(7), e14239. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.14239
Waters, C., Harrison, P. L., Gouezo, M., Severati, A., & Doropoulos, C. (2025). Early-stage coral survivorship using wild larval assemblages on coral seeding devices for reef restoration. Restoration Ecology, 33(3), e14387. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.14387
Gouezo, M., Langlais, C., Beardsley, J., Roff, G., Harrison, P. L., Thomson, D. P., & Doropoulos, C. (2025). Going with the flow: Leveraging reef-scale hydrodynamics for upscaling larval-based restoration. Ecological Applications, 35(3), e70020. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70020
Harrison, P. L. (2024). Sexual reproduction of reef corals and application to coral restoration. In Oceanographic processes of coral reefs (2nd ed., pp. 19). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003320425-32
Doropoulos, C., Roff, G., Carlin, G., Gouezo, M., Dela Cruz, D., Chai, A., Hardiman, L., Hasson, L., Thomson, D. P., & Harrison, P. L. (2025). Larval seedboxes: A modular and effective tool for scaling coral reef restoration. Ecological Applications, 35(7), e70140. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70140
Mason, R. A. B., Langlais, C., Uribe-Palomino, J., Tonks, M. L., et al. (2025). Reef-scale variation in larval supply and settlement: Validating Lagrangian dispersal predictions with observations of coral larvae. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 326, 109506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2025.109506
Gouezo, M., Roff, G., Carlin, G., Doropoulos, C., Dela Cruz, D., Chai, A., Hardiman, L., Hasson, L., Thomson, D. P., & Harrison, P. L. (2025). Coral larval enhancement with and without nets yields similar recruitment during slack-current releases. Restoration Ecology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.70219
Langley, C., Doropoulos, C., dela Cruz, D., & Harrison, P. L. (2025). Effects of shading aquaculture pools on coral larvae health and production. Aquaculture, 609, 742953. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2025.742953
Langley C, Doropoulos C, dela Cruz D, Harrison PL (2025) Scaling up coral spawn collection: Impacts of method and timing on Acropora valida larval quality. PLoS One 20(9): e0331461. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331461
Christina Langley
SCU
