The Palumbi Lab has over a decade of experience testing reef-building coral responses to experimental coral bleaching stress. Instead of waiting for the next natural bleaching event to happen - which takes immense planning, effort, and personnel - we have developed a rapid way to heat stress corals and identify who the winners and losers of climate change will be. However, this work does not need to stay within academic institutions, excluding end-users, so we have developed streamlined, accessible testing systems that anyone can use. We offer workshops to train local organizations on how to select, sample, and test corals from healthy reefs and incorporate results into conservation plans and/or restoration activities. We also focus on multiple coral species, knowing that a healthy reef is a diverse reef!

By working with each local organization, our place-based restoration framework caters to each community's restoration goals. We serve as remote mentors, aiming to create a space for interaction through victories, challenges, and lessons learned to adjust and adapt restoration activities to achieve successful reef restoration. Teams will quickly implement their restoration project, outplanting and monitoring multiple heat-tolerant coral species and individuals to increase climate-resilient reefs adjacent to their community.