Coral Gardening in Fiji Highlighted in BBC Series

Over the summer the BBC released an incredible series called 'Fragile Paradise' about the South Pacific. If you missed it, check out this clip which highlights the coral restoration efforts of the Corals For Conservation program which began in Fiji in 1999. The growth on the hard corals is stunning and you should start drooling by the 2 minute mark. 'As part of the coral program, we trim bits and pieces off of rare, and where possible temperature tolerant corals, and then grow them to several hundred times the original fragment size to create “mother corals”.'

'Two-year-old mother corals are then trimmed to produce coral seed fragments that the communities grow in the coral farms and restoration sites. All of the coral farms thus produce only second and third generation corals, completely avoiding the negative impact of wild harvesting of corals.'

For more on the efforts of the Corals for Conservation program, visit their Web site:
Corals For Conservation

BBC Series Info:
BBC - BBC Two Programmes - South Pacific, Series 1, Fragile Paradise

 

saw this vid the other day
cool stuff!

 

wow, thats really awesome!

 

Wish my acros would grow that much in 6 months. Just shows how far we have to go to actually mimic nature.

 

Frag racks in the ocean? I'm feeling slightly jealous here.

Seriously though that's some amazing work they are doing to help save the reefs. This looks like a more viable option than propagating in aquariums and moving back to the oceans.

 

that would be a amazing job