Putting Leadership First: Capitec Foundation’s Decade of ImpactʻĀkoʻakoʻa is a recently launched program aiming to restore a 193-kilometer stretch of coral reef along the west coast of Hawai‘i Island — one of the first to attempt restoration at a large scale.
A decade ago, the world experienced its third global coral bleaching event — and the vibrant, colorful corals along the western coast of Hawai‘i’s big island began to fade. Rising sea temperatures drove these famed corals to “bleach,” a process that strips them of color following the expulsion of a nutrient-producing algae called zooxanthellae. Without this vital algae, corals essentially starve.
Asner stayed true to his intention. In 2018, he and his team began using the Global Airborne Observatory, an airborne laboratory that Asner help equip with advanced mapping technologies such as lasers and infrared imaging technologies to survey coral colonies in the Caribbean and Hawai‘i to assess their health and understand what led to their demise.
While many of these projects have successfully restored coral colonies, most have only done so on a small scale. According to a 2019 study in, the majority of research-based coral restoration projects only take place over a year or two, and only restore a small area — the median size was found to be about 108 square meters , an area less than half the size of a tennis court. On top of that, the median cost was about $400,000 per hectare , according to the study.
When researchers surveyed 14,000 coral colonies across the South Kohala and North Kona regions of West Hawai‘i, they found that 38-92% of the reefs had been partially or fully bleached. Image courtesy of Greg Asner. Thermal resistance isn’t the only trait the team is searching for. Grace Klinges, a molecular and microbial ecologist working with the ʻĀkoʻakoʻa project, said they may also look for corals that are fast growers, or corals that can deal more easily with pollution.
“We’re going to inject hundreds of millions of these tic-tac-size larvae into the water at night when corals spawn so that we’re not going against Mother Nature,” Asner said. “We’re just turbocharging Mother Nature.