New larval seedbox know-how to drive coral restoration on the Great Barrier Reef

12 November 2025
News Release

Millions of coral larvae on the Great Barrier Reef have an elevated likelihood of replenishing degraded reefs due to the ‘larval seedbox’ – a coral restoration know-how developed by CSIRO, Australia’s nationwide science company, with Southern Cross University.

Results from the primary trial of larval seedboxes have discovered coral settlement to be as much as 56 occasions larger throughout hundreds of sq. metres of reef.

The trial was performed at Lizard Island in 2024 and exhibits sturdy promise to be used of seedboxes in scaling up coral restoration.

As the annual mass coral spawning occasion takes place throughout the Great Barrier Reef in November, a second trial is underway within the Whitsundays, a invaluable setting to check how nicely the method works in a spread of situations.

Larval seedboxes act to delay the dispersal of concentrated larvae in degraded areas of reef focused for restoration.

Dr Christopher Doropoulos, Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO, stated the larval seedbox is a straightforward, environment friendly and cost-effective device to assist improve coral larval survival, delay their dispersal, and discover optimum habitat for settlement.

“The seedboxes work as a delivery system, allowing coral larvae more time to disperse and settle on the Great Barrier Reef, where they can establish themselves and grow into juvenile corals,” stated Dr Doropoulos.

“We tradition coral larvae following coral spawning, an annual mass reproductive occasion the place many various kinds of corals launch bundles of eggs and sperm into the water to fertilize externally.

“This allows us to gather 10s of thousands and thousands of coral larvae from mass cultures to fill the larval seedboxes.

“The larval seedboxes are deployed onto the reef, from which the larvae exit when ready and drift with the currents to cover areas of more than two hectares of reef. This approach delivers a high density of larvae over much larger areas than previously demonstrated, boosting coral restoration potential at scale.”

Professor Peter Harrison from Southern Cross University stated this analysis will present a invaluable alternative to check the effectiveness of the method in quite a lot of reef situations.

“We’re deploying the seedboxes in the Whitsundays to target areas of reef that have been previously impacted by extreme weather events and coral bleaching from warming seas,” stated Professor Harrison.

“We’re anticipating the discharge of as much as 20 million larvae at a number of places and the crew will proceed to watch the longer-term effectiveness of the larval seedbox supply over 9 to 12 months.

“This will help us understand how far some of the coral larvae disperse after release, and how effective the approach is in different reef environments.”

Following the evaluation interval, researchers will be capable to decide the feasibility of the larval seedbox as a device for coral restoration at bigger scales throughout completely different environmental situations.

Anna Marsden, Managing Director on the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, stated seedboxes have the potential to turn out to be the a part of the following era of options for reef restoration.

“This work is building new ways to help coral ecosystems adapt in a changing climate. This trial is possible thanks to support from Qantas, which is helping turn ideas into impact.”

This analysis is a collaboration between CSIRO and Southern Cross University, supported by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, in partnership with the Australian Institute of Marine Science and native stakeholders.

The paper on the success of the primary trial at Lizard Island will probably be revealed in Ecological Applications.