Fiji's coral reefs are facing a critical juncture that requires urgent action due to ocean warming. Lagoon waters are now reaching potentially deadly temperatures every summer! The project targets the hottest reef areas- shallow reef flats, where lethal temperatures threaten the corals and where some corals are also exposed in air at low tide. These corals are rescued by moving then about a meter deeper and ~2 degrees cooler, securing them within elevated coral nurseries free of COTS predators.
For the third sequential year marine heat waves have reached Fijian waters and are causing great harm to ancestral reefs. Unrelenting heat without cooling currents or even hurricanes which bring up cooler water, means sustaining these fragile ecosystems both the aquatic creatures and indigenous communities depend upon is a race to outrun nature itself. Now it is possible to forge a synergistic alliance to aid the reef with both trained staff and local stewards to achieve community building.
Corals which use calcium carbonate to build reefs, storing carbon, also protect shores and build beaches. Vitally important corals are now dying from excessive ocean heat. Communities depend on reef fish which require healthy corals as habitat. The solution is to rescue heat-tolerant corals from areas of extreme heat stress where they are jeopardized and to move these corals to cooler reef areas, keeping them alive while helping the wider reef adapt and develop heat resilience over time.
Our Reefs of Hope coral reef adaptation strategy has been endorsed at very high levels: selected as an UN Ocean Decade Action in 2024, endorsed by the International Coral Reef Initiative in 2025, and nominated for an EarthShot Prize. Proof of concept has been demonstrated and these breakthrough methods now have the potential to spread and become adopted throughout the rest of Fiji, in the South Pacific region, and globally throughout tropical oceans.
