Goal: Demonstrate how to prepare and ship live wild coral frags to URI

I shipped ~48 Montipora capitata clippings from HIMB to URI in June 2022. This is the process for preparing them for shipment and then shipping them.

Equipment and materials

• Small to medium cooler
  • I used a 25qt cooler
• Hand towels
• Paper towels
• Hand warmer
• Duct tape
• Tags to label coral

Protocol

1. Collect the coral that you want to ship. Remember to document exactly where and how the coral was collected.
2. Put the corals in a flow-through seawater tank. Check an hour post collection to see how they’re doing. Record all details of the aquarium system
3. Use zipties and waterproof paper to make tags and attach them to the corals.
4. Let the corals stay in these tanks for at least 24 hours to let them acclimatize.
5. Take half of the handtowels having been submerged in seawater and put them at the bottom of the cooler, making sure its covering all surface of the bottom.
6. Dunk 2 paper towels in seawater and wring them until they are still soaking wet, which is not a lot. Take an individual coral (with its tag), wrap it in the paper towel, and put it in the cooler.
7. Do this for all corals, placing the paper towels gently on top of each other.
8. Once all corals are in, cover them with another layer of damp handtowels
9. Activate a handwarmer and tape it to the inside of the cooler lid. this will keep the corals warm as they travel
10. Use duct tape to tape the cooler shut securely. tape a piece of paper that says this end up for proper orientation throughout the trip
11. Ship! This post gives info on how to ship for the Putnam lab.