On or about February 1st, 2006 a boat ran aground at the entrance to Lyford Cay Harbour. In the immediate grounded area, the coral reef is totally lost according to local monitoring and rehabilitation efforts. Secondary damage as the bow section broke off and gouged a channel approximately 400 feet long left many rescue able corals.
The Reef Ball Foundation was asked for advise on restoring the Reef and also for a quote on an initial survey, preservation of the site coral genetics, and stabilization of the salvageable adult coral heads and for a 2nd Phase of Coral Reef Restoration.
Project Goals
1) Preserve Genetics of Dying Corals. Establish 3 protected coral nurseries with fragments from each salvageable adult colony that was damaged to preserve the coral genetics that are at risk or already lost for future restoration efforts. Photo document the nursery and site so that lost adult colonies can be cross-referenced with the nursery fragments.
2) Stabilize High Value Salvageable Adult Colonies. Our methods vary according to species. Hydrostatic cement is often the most useful method for this stage, but it is labor intensive. The Reef Ball Foundation’s Coral Team is efficient at focusing only on the corals with a high probability of survival and species that are difficult to propagation (massive brain corals, etc.) This allows more resources to be used in restoration of the original genetics.
3) Monitoring. We need to document which adult corals survived transplanting and the grounding and which ones died and be able to cross reference that to the coral nursery @ 90 days post stabilization. This is the basis for deciding which fragments in the nurseries to select for propagation and planting.
4) Reef Base Substrate Restoration. The lost volume (and complexity) of the reef needs to be reconstructed. The Reef Ball Foundation efficiently accomplishes this with the construction and deployment of Reef Balls. These Reef Balls will be pre-cast with our coral adapter plug system that allows for efficient and secure attachment of the rescued coral fragments to the Reef Balls. The Reef Balls can be supplied quickly from emergency stockpiles in Florida or they can be built on site in the Bahamas. Until we do a site assessment, it is difficult to estimate the number and size(s) of Reef Balls required but for an average ship grounding of this size we believe the number is probably between 40-200 Reef Balls, the Pallet Ball sized Reef Balls are the most likely size candidates from our experience in monitoring near Lyford Cay in the past. Likely, special Reef Ball styles (like the layer cake styles) will be needed to replace the complexity of the reef.
5) Coral Fragment Planting. Once the base of the reef is restored, it is a simple matter of planting the coral fragments from the original rescue to finish the restoration. The Coral Team is highly trained and efficient at this often planting over 500 corals a day once the site is set up for operations.
