Dr Marine Gouezo^1,2, Mr Jack Beardsley², Dr Clothilde Langlais², Dr Christopher Doropoulos², Dr John Andewartha²

¹Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia, ²CSIRO,  Australia

The Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP) focuses on the natural restoration of damaged and degraded reefs across the Great Barrier Reef. Within RRAP, the Moving Corals project promotes coral restoration using larval seeding to speed the return of coral cover, diversity and complexity to damaged reefs. Coral larvae are 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. Here we present the development and applications of a high-resolution hydrodynamic model for Lizard Island (QLD) to support coral larval restoration operations. This model has been coupled with particle tracking using CSIRO’s CONNIE platform to strategically plan A) the capture of viable coral gametes/embryos from fertile reefs during mass spawning events and B) the delivery of competent coral larvae in targeted reef areas for restoration. We review the model design and workflow used to achieve 50 m spatial resolution in our target areas, provide comparisons between model velocities and in-situ flow meters/surface drogues and review the challenges of accurate hydrodynamic modelling in a reef environment. Ideas for further model calibration and future plans for the Moving Corals project are also discussed.

Biography:

Jack Beardsley works for the CSIRO Coastal Environmental Modelling Team in Hobart, Tasmania, with a focus on data visualisation, ocean acoustics and operational deployment of ocean modelling systems. He also manages and undertakes the field operations for IMOS’s satellite altimeter calibration and validation sub-facility.