Coral restoration for climate change adaptation

In 2014-2015, Hawai‘i experienced its first back-to-back mass-bleaching events, and experienced its second major bleaching event in 2019. In this sense if we are going to restore the reef, the corals will need to be bleaching resistant to survive the periodic marine heatwaves that have become more frequent and intense. Therefore, we need methods which ensure that bleaching resistance becomes part of the wider solution. It has been suggested that corals from shallow/nearshore reefs with wide temperature fluctuations resist stress better than corals from less extreme reef zones. In this manner, coral reef restoration projects have advanced in recent decades, and heat resistance is being incorporated into some of these efforts.