Corals for Climate: Restoring Resilient Reefs

In the Center for Marine Innovation (CIM), we are following a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to preserve marine life in the Punta Cana region. Recent work includes the monitoring of sea turtle nests, seagrasses, coral reefs, and the construction of a new CIM facility, which we like to call CIM 2.0.

With a group of volunteers and 13 years of monitoring beaches to identify sea turtle nests, we closed the nesting season of 2023 with the release of 386 hatchlings of hawksbill sea turtles. On September, 30 volunteers participated in the release of some of these hatchlings, which served as an educational activity for our community.

Our team was also trained in monitoring seagrasses as part of the Caribbean Carbon Accounting in Seagrass (CariCAS) project to identify the species present in the seagrasses. Sediment samples will be shipped to Florida International University (FIU) to analyze and generate a regional scientific paper. This will allow us to better understand the state of these seagrasses in our region and determine how much carbon is being sequestered within the sediment.

The new and improved Center for Marine Innovation (CIM 2.0) is under development with a grant from OceanKind. Plans and designs are in process to build a new laboratory with cutting-edge technology to restore corals and re-introduce key species such as Diadema sea urchins to the reefs. This building will encompass laboratories for corals and ornamental fish, as well as an outside nursery with a capacity to hold more than 23,000 corals. One of our biologists, M.Sc. Daniel Veras, oversees the life support systems in our actual laboratory and is designing the tanks that will hold all the important marine species. Sea Foundry, a private company, is working closely on this project including the design of robots that will be able to monitor coral health and growth in the lab using Artificial Intelligence. The CIM 2.0 will form a community of passionate marine biologists, engineers, aquarists, and computer scientists working together to reduce bottlenecks and create an innovation hub that serves as a center to train others and optimize coral restoration.  

Grupo Puntacana Foundation has dedicated this period to implementing new activities to upscale our restoration efforts, including expanding our outplanting micro-fragments efforts and monitoring coral spawning. The first massive outplant of micro-fragments took place with a total of 9 divers, 5 snorkelers and 3 boat captains. A citizen science event in which 1,570 micro-fragments of 8 different species were placed back to the reef (Image 1). Biodegradable plastic nets created by the company Sea Foundry were used for the first time in order to outplant with less plastic and in a more efficient manner.

Our restoration area is also being monitored with the use of 3D imagery in order to measure coral growth rates and restoration success over the years. Additionally, in June and August of 2023 the team monitored spawning of elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) corals. The team dove every night until midnight in order to detect spawning and collect gametes (Image 2). Local fishermen who have collaborated with FGPC for many years created meshes with umbrellas to collect coral spawns, making an innovative structure that can be bought and built locally (Image 3).

After monitoring, we collected gametes of elkhorn and staghorn coral and began assisted fertilization in the laboratory (Image 4). A positive observation was that our nurseries with staghorn corals are spawning, which increases the larval pool of the area. The night dives helped us achieve our goal of making a calendar for coral reproduction events that we can use as a guide next year and have more precise dates for collection. We are implementing sexual and asexual reproduction of coral species to have a greater genetic diversity for restoring Punta Cana’s reefs.