Shifting reef restoration focus from coral survivorship to biodiversity using Reef Carpets.

To enhance the practice of farmed-coral transplantation, we conducted a trial of an approach called "Reef Carpets" (RC), which draws inspiration from the commercial turf-grass sod in land-based lawn gardening. Three 8.4m RCs were established on a sandy seabed, containing preselected combinations of branching corals (Acropora cf.

Coral larvae for restoration and research: a large-scale method for rearing larvae, inducing settlement, and establishing symbiosis.

Here we describe an efficient and effective technique for rearing sexually-derived coral propagules from spawning through larval settlement and symbiont uptake with minimal impact on natural coral populations. We sought to maximize larval survival while minimizing expense and daily husbandry maintenance by experimentally determining optimized conditions and protocols for gamete fertilization, larval cultivation, induction of larval settlement by crustose coralline algae, and inoculation of newly settled juveniles with their dinoflagellate symbiont . Larval rearing densities at or below 0.