Coral Resilience Lab

11/04/2025

Last month we participated in X-STEM, a single-day STEM event with over 470 students at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center. Students dove into a range of interactive workshops showcasing the many STEM fields available here in Hawaiʻi, from engineering design and shipbuilding, to demonstrations in welding and more. This event offered students a firsthand look at the skills driving our local workforce and encouraged them to get involved!

We spoke with students about coral biology, coral bleaching, current research projects, and restoration efforts. Our hope is that students have a better understanding of the immense value of coral reef ecosystems and just how many career pathways are available for those who want to mālama kai.

10/20/2025

Big News for Maui’s Reefs!

The Marine Institute at the Maui Ocean Center (MOCMI) has been awarded a NOAA Ruth D. Gates Coral Restoration Innovation Grant to advance climate-wise coral restoration on Maui.

Through this three-year project—Climate Wise Restoration Through Community Collaboration—we’ll expand our partnership with the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology’s Coral Resilience Lab. Together, we will identify, outplant, and monitor thermally tolerant corals at Olowalu, the “Mother Reef” of Maui Nui, an area deeply affected by the 2023 wildfires.

MOCMI established and maintains the only ex-situ coral nursery on Maui, a critical facility for restoring nearshore reefs and increasing restoration capacity across Hawaiʻi. Volunteer community members participate in coral husbandry, coral outplanting, and hands-on events like Hana Pukoʻa, which bring together residents, students, and visitors to engage directly in coral restoration.

Communities, school groups, businesses, and NGOs across Maui are eager to collaborate and take action to protect the reefs we all depend on. Together, we’re building the foundation for a more resilient ocean and a meaningfully connected community.

Mahalo to NOAA, our partners, and the entire Maui community for supporting this vital work.

Stay tuned for updates on this exciting project!
*All work is conducted under DLNR DAR Special Activities Permits.

10/06/2025

Fish make the best housekeepers for our corals!

Chaetodon auriga (threadfin butterfly fish), Acanthurus triostegus (convict tang), and Thalassoma duperrey (saddle wrasse) are some of the species that we have in our tanks, which are seen coming up to the camera. Introducing herbivores into our tanks helps to better mimic the natural environment and aids in the removal of algae buildup that can outcompete with our coral.

The coral in the video is Porites lobata (lobe coral). The fish are feeding on fish food pellets and nori strips.

09/23/2025

Get ready to enter the Matrix 😎💊 the larval matrix, that is!

An experiment spanning over the past three summers, egg and s***m isolated from known Montipora capitata parents are crossed with other individuals, creating 28 families of juvenile corals. Each family shares the same parents, which means these are made up of many, many full siblings, just like people!

These were raised and settled to study the inheritance of traits and will be used in future experiments once the corals have grown bigger, with the ultimate goal being to define the maximum thermal tolerance of optimized individual crosses.

Crosses were done by capturing gamete bundles (each containing abundant s***m and 20–30 eggs) from the colonies, and then combining eggs and s***m from different colonies once the bundles broke apart.

Fertilized eggs were raised in conical tanks and the larvae were allowed to settle onto plugs.

09/08/2025

Could sugar be the key to resilience? 🍬

CRL Postdoc Giada Tortorelli is diving into the sugar "coating" of coral symbionts. These sugars (called glycans) work like a lock-and-key system, helping the right algae pair with the right coral.

Her research explores whether this sugary code, or the glycome, is inherited and how coral genetics might shape it.

This important molecular study could reveal new clues about how corals adapt to a changing ocean, and may help us better protect reef ecosystems in the future.

Dr. Tortorelli studies M. capitata corals, whose eggs are already packed with symbionts. During spawning, bundles from parent corals with known thermal tolerance were collected in their own tube from each coral. Once the bundles are broken, the tube is “rinsed” of the s***m to collect clean eggs for her experiment.

08/28/2025

The back-to-back bleaching events in 2014-2015 caused severe and widespread coral bleaching across Hawai‘i. But what about the corals that didn’t bleach? 🧐

Focusing on one dominant species in Kāne‘ohe Bay, M. capitata, these thermally tolerant colonies were tagged in the field and used in research to understand the mechanisms behind coral bleaching.

In 2018, researchers produced offspring from these parent colonies, creating our first generation (F1) stock.

This summer, we continued working with these same corals to produce thermally tolerant offspring for experiments and restoration.

📸: Kristen Brown

08/19/2025

Scoop, there it is! 🍚

We've refined techniques to collect gametes from Montipora capitata (Rice Coral) for many years in the lab. These gametes float to the surface, creating a surface slick, which makes methods of collecting from corals in the field, or Wild Type (WT), pretty simple.

Our team scoops bundles from the surface slick over reef patches in Kāne‘ohe Bay using storage bins with the bottom replaced by a fine sieve mesh on long handles. Whatever is collected in the bins gets washed into smaller tubes to be transported to the lab for fertilization.

We use these WT for controls in our thermal stress experiments but also to increase general lab stock.

08/12/2025

Look at that spat! 🔍

We kicked off this summer with our favorite event in the lab– spawnathon! Since May, our team has been working to collect gametes from two coral species, Montipora capitata (Rice Coral) and Porites lobata (Lobe Coral), each with distinct reproductive strategies and research goals.

Because these corals reproduce differently, our collection methods vary.

M. capitata is a hermaphroditic broadcast spawner, meaning corals release their gametes in tightly wrapped, positively buoyant, pinhead-sized egg and s***m bundles. Spawning occurs on or near the night of the new moon between May and September.

P. lobata, on the other hand, is a gonochoric broadcast spawner, meaning colonies are either male or female and release almost neutrally buoyant eggs or s***m into the water column. Mass spawning occurs around the full moon between May and September, with peak spawning in June and July.

All of this and more can be found in our “Best Practices for Coral Reproduction in Hawai‘i”. This free digital guide is available at coralresiliencelab.com under the “Best Practices” tab. It includes breeding techniques for five Hawaiian coral species: Montipora capitata, Pocillopora acuta, Porites compressa, Porites lobata, and Lobactis scutaria.

Stay tuned as we dive into some of the specific projects we’re working on this spawning season!

08/08/2025

Lobactis scutaria, the mushroom coral, is a non-colonial hard coral that, unlike its reef-building counterparts, does not attach itself to the reef. Instead, these single-polyp corals have the ability to move around the seabed.

CRL Research Assistant, Emily Park, is using mushroom corals to answer the question, how does size limit a mushroom coral’s ability to right itself?

She has documented the mushroom coral turning itself over using pulsed inflation. Similar to the movements of a jellyfish, the coral inflates and deflates its tissue in rhythmic bursts to propel itself in the desired direction. The whole process takes about 6 hours.

The coral shown here is at the final stages of being flipped. You can see the coral spitting water out of its mouth to finish toppling over.

Emily is hoping to further investigate tradeoffs and thermal stress effects on the mechanism.

06/09/2025

Happy World Oceans Day!

Here in Hawai‘i, the Coral Resilience Lab is dedicated to understanding and protecting the ocean’s most vital ecosystems—coral reefs.

Through groundbreaking research on thermal tolerance, selective breeding, and molecular mechanisms behind bleaching, we are working to give corals a fighting chance in a warming world. We aim to help build a more resilient future for coral ecosystems and the communities that rely on them.

Let’s keep happy coral polyps like these thriving for years to come!

📷 Photo taken by Dan Morrison

05/31/2025

Big congrats to postdoc Giada Tortorelli and team on their latest publication: “Heat-induced stress modulates cell surface glycans and membrane lipids of coral symbionts.”

The latest study unveils the impact of host genetics and symbiont type on coral stress responses, emphasizing significant metabolic and molecular adaptations to temperature and oxidative stress that could bolster resilience to climate change.

Abstract. The susceptibility of corals to environmental stress is determined by complex interactions between host genetic variation and the Symbiodiniaceae