Large fragments were collected from large, healthy A. palmata colonies at the site, removing no more than 10% from a given colony, which were then fragmented in situ in fragments of approximately 5 cm2. Fragments were arranged in arrays of four* and attached to the reef using CoralClips. Spacing between fragments ranged from 2 mm – 60 mm.

Twenty-seven arrays were tagged for long-term monitoring. A scaled, top-down photograph was taken of each array at the time of outplant, and again 49 weeks later. Using Taglab, the live tissue of each fragment was traced to calculate the planar (top-down) area at each time point. The annotated images for each time point were then compared within Taglab to determine growth. Surface area change was calculated by summing the living surface area of the entire array at the initial time point and subtracting it from the sum of the surface area of the final time point. The change in surface area was then divided by the initial tissue present for each array to account for variability between the initial sizes at outplanting.