Abstract
When ecologist Carly Randall first dove into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef in 2017, she was bracing herself for the worst. During the prior year or so, the reef had been ravaged by back-to-back heat waves and an invasion of crown-of-thorns starfish. When corals get too hot, they release the algae that live in their cells and provide them with nutrients, turning the corals white and sometimes causing them to starve. And crown-of-thorns starfish, which look like hostile creatures from a B movie, feast on reef-building corals, leaving behind skeletons. But rather than a disintegrating ecosystem reminiscent of a horror flick, Randall saw a reef full of vibrant corals, teeming with fish and other aquatic life. “What did they even hire me to do restoration for? This reef looks amazing,” she remembers wondering. Randall had just moved from the US to the Australian Institute of Marine Science to
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