“A newly established land-based coral breeding laboratory on Praslin Island, Seychelles, has recorded its first successful coral spawning event – marking a significant step forward for reef restoration in the western Indian Ocean. 

The facility is the result of a new collaboration between Canon EMEA, Coral Spawning International (CSI), and Nature Seychelles (NS), and forms part of Nature Seychelles’ Assisted Recovery of Corals (ARC) programme.

Operational since November, the laboratory has already produced approximately 800,000 coral embryos from 14 parent colonies of Acropora tenuis cf. macrostoma. Early results indicate that around 65,000 juvenile corals have successfully settled, an outcome that researchers have said highlights the potential to enhance both genetic diversity and thermal resilience in Seychelles reef systems.

Unlike traditional coral gardening approaches, which rely on fragmentation and result in genetically identical colonies, the ARC lab focuses on controlled sexual reproduction. This method allows for the creation of genetically diverse coral offspring – an increasingly important factor as reefs face mounting pressure from climate-driven bleaching events.”

From Oceanographic Magazine.