We Rebuild

Over the years ADE has steadily increased its production of the proprietary coral planting plugs we have developed. We are currently capable of producing 2,500 plugs per day. Our goal is to scale this up to about 4,000 per day to meet the challenge of this project.

Specially made coral plugs

Once secured in the special made plugs, the newly planted corals are carefully covered with wet paper to protect them from the hot sun and keep them moist while they are transferred out to the ocean farm sites. They are placed on specifically designed racks for a grow-out period of 2-5 months until they are ready to be planted back on the reef. Once the corals have reached sufficient growth on the racks, our trained farm managers transport them to nearby reefs and plant them in areas that have been impacted negatively by environmental pressures. The specialized plugs allow the corals to be placed in tight crevices and holes that naturally occur.

Coral being covered with wet newspaper for protection.
The trays are placed in boats and transferred out to the grow-out racks.
Walt and Deborah Smith placing corals on grow-out racks for the ADE Project.
Larger stony “reef-building”corals ready to be planted onto the reef.
More stony “reef-building” corals awaiting transplant onto the reef.
Bright pink Seriatopora hystrix awaiting transplant.
Some of our racks are used solely to grow larger “brood stock” for future cloning