Andrea Mustain
Source: Our Amazing Planet
March 6, 2012

"In April 2006, a 750-foot-long (228 meters) tanker ran aground on the Tallaboa reef, smashing about 2 acres of coral.

Such collisions wreak havoc on reefs' delicate topography. "After it's run over by a tanker, it [a coral reef] looks like a parking lot," said Sean Griffin, a habitat restoration specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and I.M. Systems Group, an environmental consulting firm.

Immediately after the tanker accident, divers salvaged pieces of the smashed coral and started up the nursery with just 100 small fragments of coral. Griffin, head of the coral nursery, said the team discovered through experimentation that line nurseries - which vaguely resemble coral vineyards - were the most successful. The nursery now keeps a population of 1,500 individual corals."

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