RELOCATION OF CORALS LOCATED IN LIMIT OF DEVELOPMENT PLAN OF SHAHID BEHESHTI PORT

To save the unique coral colonies located between northern and southern docks of development plan of Shahid Beheshti port (Chabahar), numbers of 28,000 coral colonies were transported tocoast of Hotel Lipar, an area at a distance of 3.5 Km from Shahid Beheshti dock with 45 days(over the course of 4 month) field operation by skillful divers. The field operation was carried out in 4 phases as follow: substrate preparation in reattachment area, coral detachment, coraltransportation and coral reattachment. The reattachment area was concrete blocks arrenged as 37artificial patchs with 5×10 m2 dimension. After finishing of field operation, health condition ofcorals was monitored continually and their growth stages investigated. According to ourobservation, all coral colonies were health and the receive sites were full of fish species and other sea organisms. To best of our knowledge, our project is first coral relocation program in Middle East in terms of volume of relocated corals and using of new techniques

Keywords:

Coral , Coral detachment , Coral transportation , Coral reattachment , Chabahar , Shahid Beheshti Port