Workshop Report: Guidelines and Recommendations for Coral Reef Restoration in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

Miller, Steven; McFall, Gregory; Hulbert, Alan

The National Undersea Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington was funded by NOAA's Sanctuaries and Reserves Division to conduct a workshop to develop an independent assessment of coral reef restoration capabilities and methodologies, particularly related to restoring coral reefs damaged by large vessel groundings in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Based on existing knowledge, the workshop participants concluded that there is much that they could recommend to accelerate the recovery of reefs damaged by ship groundings. A consensus definition developed by the group defined coral reef restoration as a proactive program designed to speed recovery of a damaged reef to an endpoint that has aesthetic value and is functional as a coral reef system. Results of the workshop clearly indicate that NOAA should hire additional staff and develop a quick-response capability to meet the needs of injury assessment, mitigation and restoration. Structural damage to reef framework was distinguished from damage caused to living resources, and structural repair to minimize or eliminate the potential for secondary damage must be completed before other restoration activity begins. However, action to restore or mitigate damage to the reef framework must be sufficiently evaluated and supervised to insure that the work does not itself cause significant additional damage, during or after repairs. Regarding restoration of living resources, stresses (natural or anthropogenic) to reefs in the Keys are not considered sufficiently threatening to contraindicate substantial restoration efforts. Immediate replacement and recovery of dislodged or threatened corals and toppled reef fragments that survive grounding events should be accomplished. If time constraints prevent this, survivors should be recovered and set aside in coral gardens or safe areas until they can be reattached. This is particularly important because large slow growing corals that might act as donor populations for transplants are rare in the Keys, if they exist at all. Restoration efforts must include long-term monitoring components that incorporate (but are not limited to) studies at the community level, the use of indicator species, coral recruitment patterns, sclerochronology and related measurements, metabolic measurements, zooxanthellae loss/stress, reproductive biology and physical oceanographic measurements. Restoration projects that do not include a monitoring component miss a valuable opportunity to advance knowledge about how coral reefs function. This is particularly relevant in Florida because several different physiographic regimes affect the reef tract (reefs in the Keys span two degrees of latitude and are at their extreme northern limit of distribution) and results obtained at one site may not be applicable elsewhere. The best way to ensure that restoration projects of highest scientific merit and relevancy to management goals are supported is to solicit proposals in open competition that are then peer-reviewed by an independent panel of experts. Each grounding site will require a specific restoration plan, and the goal of the restoration effort should be defined for each site prior to the start of the restoration activity. Recommendations for restoring specific grounding sites in the Keys include the following: l) A detailed quantitative re-evaluation of natural recovery at the Wellwood site. Also, the status of coral transplants attached after the grounding should be assessed to determine whether or not those transplants accelerated natural recruitment processes or provided sufficient habitat complexity to enhance other aspects of community recovery; 2) The use of artificial structures (that mimic coral formations) at the Wellwood grounding site is an obvious course of action, especially since the bottom is stable and secondary damage is no longer a threat; 3) The nineyear- old Wellwood site is also extremely valuable as a contr