Coral Restoration · Antigua & Barbuda

AnuBlue Reports Record Year of Coral Restoration in Antigua, With More Than 5,800 Corals Planted

The Antiguan nonprofit, formerly the Elkhorn Marine Conservancy, says 84% of the corals planted at its restoration sites survived, and that five of the 15 species it grows are critically endangered.

By SEVENSEAS Media | Coral Restoration

AnuBlue, a coral restoration nonprofit based in Antigua, says it has just had its biggest year since it was set up in 2021, planting more than 5,800 nursery-grown corals onto reefs around the island. The organisation puts the area covered at about 2.3 acres, roughly 0.93 hectares, which it compares to nearly two American football fields. It also reports that 84% of the corals planted at its restoration sites have survived.

The figures come from a press release AnuBlue sent to media on 25 September. The release does not define the twelve-month period it is counting, or say how long after planting the survival figure was measured. Both details matter when comparing restoration results, including against the programme’s own earlier figures.

Four nurseries, five reef sites

AnuBlue was established in 2021 as the Elkhorn Marine Conservancy and describes itself as running the country’s largest active coral restoration programme. Its four nurseries and five restoration sites are split between two reef areas. One is Cades Reef off the southwest coast, which lies within the Cades Bay Marine Reserve. The other is the North East Marine Management Area, or NEMMA, a stretch of coast, mangrove and offshore islands on Antigua’s windward side that was declared a marine reserve under the Fisheries Act in December 2005 and is the country’s largest.

A map supplied by AnuBlue places nurseries at Jumby Bay, York Island and Ten Pound Bay off the north and east coasts and a fourth on Cades Reef. The restoration sites are at Bird Island, Spithead and Ten Pound Bay in the northeast, and at two points on Cades Reef, the outer reef and a site marked Cades Sculptures.

The photographs AnuBlue released show two kinds of nursery. On the trees, fragments hang on lines from horizontal arms fixed to a central pole. On the ropes, corals are attached along a vertical line and grow outward around it.

From a target of 2,000 to 5,800 in a year

In July 2021, with the first planting two weeks away, the marine scientist Molly Wilson, then consulting for the conservancy, told the Antigua Observer the team hoped to have up to 2,000 corals ready to outplant in the first year, mostly elkhorn, for damaged reef near Green Island and York Island. A programme update the conservancy issued in June 2023, published by ECO Magazine, reported 4,610 corals planted around those two islands since the first nursery-reared corals were ready in July 2022, and 80.5% survival one month after planting.

On AnuBlue’s own numbers, then, a single year has now passed the programme’s earlier running total. The survival figures cannot be compared so easily: the 2023 figure was taken one month after planting, and the new release does not say when its 84% was measured. The area figures are also hard to line up. That update equated 4,610 corals with 0.53 acres of restored reef, while the new release equates 5,800 with 2.3 acres, about three and a half times as much reef per coral. The release does not explain the difference.

Choosing the parent corals

AnuBlue argues that the count is only part of the picture. Its nurseries are stocked with fragments taken from parent colonies that are already showing they can cope with warmer water and disease. On the reef, different genetic individuals of the same species are planted close together, which the organisation says gives them more chances to reproduce naturally and builds larger, more genetically varied populations. The 2023 update said the conservancy had by then outplanted fragments from 42 genetically distinct corals.

The programme grows 15 reef-building species, five of them critically endangered, according to the release, which does not name them. The photographs AnuBlue supplied show elkhorn and staghorn coral, both listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. When the IUCN updated its coral assessments in December 2022, 26 Atlantic corals were in that category, and Beth Polidoro, the Red List coordinator for its coral specialist group, said almost half of Atlantic corals were at elevated risk of extinction.

Who does the work

AnuBlue describes its team as a mix of marine scientists, fishers, divers and volunteers. Its recruitment notices give a sense of the routine: regular cleaning and repair of nursery structures, building and stocking new ones, planting corals onto degraded reef, and logging every collected, nursery and outplanted coral with GPS coordinates and photographs.

The project has drawn attention from travel media. In 2025 Wanderlust put Antigua and Barbuda on its Travel Green List for the first time, and the country’s tourism authority said the listing recognised the conservancy’s reef restoration work.

AnuBlue says it will keep planting, monitoring and researching on reefs around Antigua. The next test for this year’s corals is how they come through future bleaching seasons, and whether colonies planted beside genetically distinct neighbours go on to spawn.

More on the programme is at anublue.org.

SEVENSEAS Media · Conservation Journalism for the Ocean