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28 Mar 2022, 05:37

Growing reefs: Number of corals near China's Wuzhizhou Island doubles in five years

A research team replanted more than 30,000 corals of 11 species
Diving tourists on Wuzhizhou Island, Sanya Wuzhizhou Island Tourist Area
Diving tourists on Wuzhizhou Island, Sanya
© Wuzhizhou Island Tourist Area

SANYA /China/, March 28. /TASS/. Five years into Hainan’s coral reef restoration project off the coast of Wuzhizhou Island near the city of Sanya (Hainan Province, South China) the local coral reef doubles in size, the Hainan Daily reported.

Wuzhizhou is a 1.48 square kilometer island located in Haitang Bay, 2.7 kilometers off the coast of Hainan. According to the newspaper, factors such as rising seawater temperatures, fishing and coastal construction have severely damaged the coral reef ecosystem, causing its area to shrink.

In 2016, Hainan Wuzhizhou Tourism Development, together with the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, began work to restore calcareous geological structures in the island's waters, according to the publication. Reef-forming stony corals were replanted and special nurseries were built.

Over five years, a team of researchers has replanted more than 30,000 corals of 11 different species, the newspaper says. The survival rate was 65%. Currently, the maximum diameter of polyps replanted more than three years ago reaches 50 cm, with the average size being 23 cm. As the publication emphasizes, the percentage of coral coverage in this area has doubled compared to 2016 and reached 37%.

The paper notes that coral restoration echoes in the richness of marine life near Wuzhizhou and contributes to the development of tourism. The island authorities began to offer a new type of tour offering visitors to take part in replanting corals.

According to the Hainan Daily, the Sanya government has implemented 19 ecological and marine restoration and protection projects since 2013. Thanks to the measures taken, 7.7 km of coastline and 51.5 thousand square meters of water area were improved, tens of thousands of corals were transplanted.

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