July was another month for the books. Our restoration team spent a lot of time underwater making sure our garden in Tiaia was recovering well after the recent transplantation of almost 8,000 corals from this nursery. They assessed the state of the corals left on the ropes after being trimmed for transplant, and added some new fragments collected from the lagoon. As you can see below, the corals are adapting extremely well, showing a high survival rate, which is great news as now we will be able to keep planting corals from this nursery. You can even adopt a coral from this nursery to help us plant more.
We kept innovating this past month, coming up with a rad method to monitor our impact in collaboration with the University of California Los Angeles – enter environmental DNA. The university students taught us how to sample eDNA to get a snapshot of the biodiversity within our transplantation sites before and after our restoration efforts. To do so, they collected 12 water samples and added them to IV bags to filter the water and salt to retain the organic materials. Now, we are awaiting the results as the students analyze those samplings back in California to tell us which creatures – from fish to inverts to sharks and even humans – that have been present in our restoration sites!
Lastly, July was packed with fun visits from old friends and ambassadors, such as Ivana Burbage, one of our first photographers, along with TikToker Olivia Ponton, who helped us create content to raise awareness about coral reefs and do an account takeover. Be sure to have a look at our TikTok, as we will be posting more and more unedited snippets of our daily lives at Coral Gardeners to bring you along the journey to save the reef.
In case you missed it, we finally launched our collaborative collection of GOT BAGs, a full year in the making. We couldn’t be happier with these bags that not only help clean the ocean from plastic pollution, but also restore coral reefs all in one. Make sure to have a look.
