The first Hawai‘i workshop for coral restoration & nurseries

Abstract Coral nurseries and active restoration efforts are becoming widespread throughout the world as coral reef ecosystems collapse from local and global threats. This workshop brought ~ 45 local and national participants together at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in July 2017 to form a working group and discuss past, present, and future coral restoration efforts in Hawai'i. Although restoration efforts in Hawai‘i are in the formative stages, there are currently several large projects including: (1) an ex-situ (land based) Coral Restoration Nursery facility recently constructed by the State of Hawai‘i Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR); (2) in-situ restoration activities by NOAA, and HIMB; (3) cultivation and transplantation work by the Maui Ocean Center (MOC), and; (4) ongoing experimental work at UH Mānoa. This workshop focused on Hawai‘i specific challenges, and developing new capacity and tools such as coral nurseries, transplantation methods, micro-fragmentation, assisted evolution, cryopreservation, conservation genetics, genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. The goal of the workshop was to provide an overview of current efforts and highlight the array of tools available to provide a foundation to fuel future coordination and collaboration efforts.