Despite having to close temporarily due to the coronavirus pandemic, Cairns-based diving outfit Passions of Paradise couldn’t stop thinking about their local reef even though they had no customers. So they did what they do best: helped look after Mother Nature. They teamed up with some reef scientists and got stuck into work on a new coral reef nursery. By Jeremy Torr.

Cairns, QLD. August 2020. When Passions of Paradise (PoP) dive operator was forced to stop operations on the Great Barrier Reef. Instead of taking a deckchair and a bottle of beer to the beach, they partnered with another local operator called Wavelength, to help out scientists from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) who were piloting a new coral nursery project.

As the company’s dive catamaran, Passions III, was sitting idle in the marina, the company’s CEO Scott Garden, decided to offer it (together with crew) as transport and base for the UTS Coral Nurture Program at local Hastings Reef.

“We started by assisting Prof. David Suggett’s team from UTS; he is conducting reef resilience research at one of our 26 reef sites,” he said.

Garden explained they were already working regularly on the site recording data, and looking at the potential for a coral nursery, with PoP sustainability expert Russell Hosp at the site most weeks alongside the company’s inhouse marine biologist Kirsty Whitman and Lorna Howlett – the project coordinator, and a PhD student at UTS.

“This Coral Nurture Program (we are running) aims to give operators yet another stewardship activity they can do at their reef sites, in addition to Crown-of-Thorns starfish eradication and the Eye on Reef monitoring program,” said Howlett.

The company originally joined the Coral Nurturing Program project in May 2019, which grew out of a feasibility study by Dave Suggett and Emma Camp of UTS.

“This is the first time on the reef that researchers and tourism operators have worked side by side,” said Garden. “We have installed six (coral growing) frames at Hastings reef which can be used as a nursery to grow more corals.”

The new nursery is the first time that a new coral clip technique has been used to attach corals, and this demands that the team look for and collect coral fragments that have naturally broken off, not cut. These are then eventually attached back onto the reef using a coral clip. “Once the divers find a coral fragment they attach it to the nursery to grow and as it grows (it gives) a continual source of new corals,” added Howlett.

“We can only use fragments … found at the site, so we installed six (support) frames at the site which can be used as a nursery to grow more corals,” she said. Once the coral fragments are happily established on the nursery frame, they can be harvested for further fragments which can then in turn be attached back onto the main reef. This means the mass of coral there is actually increasing, rather than stable – or worse, decreasing.

The university is due to complete its 12-month research project shortly, but it is anticipated that PoP, Wavelength and other local operators will continue to feed and propagate the nurseries and reseed more healthy corals, even though the tourist divers are trickling back and the companies are beginning to see business restarting.

“When tours fully resume passengers will be able to snorkel over a site which boasts healthy marine life and corals near the nursery,” said Garden. “We are committed to preserving the World Heritage Area. It sustains our locally-owned business, and is also carbon neutral.”

So far, the combined efforts of PoP and UTS have already seen some 1000 pieces of new young coral already planted on Hastings Reef, making it even more attractive to tourist visitors as well as keeping one of nature’s most magnificent reefs blooming and healthy.

Not bad for a lockdown project.