Coral Reef Interventions and Coral Restoration. An Illustrated Guide to the Design, Scaling, and Implementation of Coral Bleaching Mitigation Solutions

Authors

David Gulko Head of Research and Development, CORAlliance, USA. David Gulko currently serves as the Head of Research and Development for the Swiss-based company CORAlliance, which focuses on scaling interventions to restore coral reefs, seagrass meadows and mangroves world-wide. He was previously hired as the NEOM Nature Reserve Senior Manager for Habitat Conservation & Restoration, with a focus on coral reefs, seagrasses and mangroves. While with NEOM in Saudi Arabia, he helped design their innovative and comprehensive Coral Action Plan to incorporate coral restoration, reef maintenance, and active coral bleaching interventions into the design and implementation of their developing, large, marine protected area encompassing both the Northern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba portions of Saudi Arabia. He has over 27 years of experience managing coral reef ecosystems for the government of Hawaii where he created and served as Director of the Hawaii Coral Restoration Nursery for 10 years, developing techniques to fast-grow massive corals in one year to sizes of greater than 1 m and branching corals in one year to 1 m tall. He developed one of the world's first Coral Biobanks to hold and restore over 60 species of rare, uncommon, and/or endemic Hawaiian corals and conducted the first successful re-introduction anywhere of an extirpated coral species. He was the senior coral biologist for the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, responsible for coral reefs and marine natural resource damage assessments (NRDA). He served as the Lead Investigator for several of the largest coral reef vessel grounding investigations in U.S. history, where the investigative and valuative techniques he developed were often used to elicit large settlements from the Responsible Party. He served a number of years on the International Coral Restoration Consortium (CRC) Leadership Committee where he assisted with the development of standards and protocols for a wide range of coral restoration activities, including land-based nurseries, monitoring, outplanting, and structural engineering of large-scale restoration projects. He also served for a decade as the Lead on the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) Committee on Investigation & Enforcement, developing underwater forensic techniques used worldwide to investigate marine environmental crimes and impact incidents.