The National Sea Simulator is home to a number of exciting research projects during the 2018 Great Barrier Reef spawning season (end of October to early December).

Our focus on this pivotal moment is to best understand how science can improve the health the Reef, and other reefs around the world.

More about reef spawning in the National Sea Simulator

• Understanding crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks
• Test settlement dynamics across restoration devices
• Sponge spawning and larval responses to sediment
• Settling a diversity of coral species
• Gene editing to understand heat tolerance in corals
• Evolution in the 21st century: Can coral reef organisms adapt to climate change?
• Dredging and coral reproduction
• Does climate change affect the sensitivity of coral recruits to sediment stress and associated light limitation?
• Coral reproduction and oil spills
• Coral hybrids
• Can assisted gene flow help enhance the thermal tolerance of corals?
• Accelerated laboratory evolution of heat tolerance in algal symbionts of corals