With coral reefs exposed to increasingly frequent and severe disturbance there is a need to explore new ways of enhancing coral health and resilience. Ecosystem-based methods that take advantage of natural patterns and processes may prove particularly valuable, reducing the inputs required to establish recovery and promote resilience.
Coral reefs support complex relationships between corals and fishes with evidence suggesting fishes can support coral health via several pathways. However, additional work is required to determine if and how these relationships can be harnessed to improve coral reef resilience and recovery.
The Reef Song project, part the Australian Coral Reef Resilience Initiative (ACRRI), aims to address this issue. Reef Song brings together novel research from Australia’s east and west coasts to identify (a) how fishes influence corals, (b) how we can support fish communities to enhance any positive effects, and (c) how this knowledge can inform practical, scalable solutions to improve coral recovery and restoration efforts.
In this talk, I will outline the Reef Song project, provide an overview of key experiments and findings so far, and discuss the next steps. Finally, I will discuss links between Reef Song and other restoration and adaptation initiatives underway in Australia and elsewhere.