King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has launched a large-scale coral restoration facility on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, designed to produce up to 360,000 corals annually.

The KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative (KCRI) land-based nursery and research campus is now growing corals at scale. The plan is to support more than two million corals across 100 hectares of reef at Shushah Island by 2030, and to establish a resilient reef ecosystem by 2040, reported SPA.

This opening of the world’s largest coral restoration facility, announced at COP31 in Antalya, arrives at a moment of acute urgency for the world’s reefs. 

The fourth global coral bleaching event, confirmed by NOAA as the most severe in recorded history, affected more than 84% of the world’s reef area between 2023 and 2025.

According to KAUST, the Red Sea is the right place to start as its corals live in some of the warmest, saltiest waters on Earth, and they hold lessons about resilience that reefs everywhere will need. 

KCRI combines the Red Sea’s unique corals with the University’s world-class marine science to learn how corals can be grown at scale and conditioned to withstand warmer water before they return to the reef. 

The initiative also draws on the expertise of the Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform (CORDAP), which works internationally to accelerate scientific and technological solutions for coral reef conservation and restoration, it stated.

“KCRI brings four components together in a single restoration system. These are a large-scale land-based coral nursery, sea-based nurseries, more than 50 research programs spanning coral probiotics, heat-resilient corals, robotics and AI-driven modelling and eCoral, an AI-driven digital twin of the reefscape that guides where and how every coral is planted and monitored,” said senior university officials.

Saudi scientists, divers and aquarists are playing an important role in KCRI’s restoration efforts, developing specialist expertise in coral cultivation, marine science and reef restoration, they stated. 

Beyond its restoration activities, KCRI represents a long-term investment in Saudi Arabia’s marine science capabilities, they added.