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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the richest and most complex natural ecosystems on earth, and it’s home to over 600 species of coral – marine animals that are most closely related to jellyfish.

But the coral is under threat, with climate change, ocean acidification and marine heatwaves endangering the reef and the many iconic animals that depend on it. CrowdScience listener Felix, aged 9, wants to know what we’re doing to protect it, and presenters Caroline Steel and Marnie Chesterton are on the case.

In this special edition of CrowdScience, we follow scientists from Australia’s National Sea Simulator as they attempt to restore the reef with baby corals that they’ve nurtured in experimental tanks at their facility on the country’s northeast coast.

The experiment began in December as the researchers recreated the annual mass coral spawning event in controlled conditions, manipulating temperature, pH, light, and nutrients to breed heat-tolerant corals that might have a better chance of surviving into the future. And now, it’s time to deploy these super-babies on damaged sections of reef.

After loading up a lorry full of corals and waving it goodbye, Caroline and Marnie drive north for a rendezvous at dawn, as the corals are loaded onto a boat in Cairns. They travel across the coral sea with marine biologists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and are on hand as the corals are introduced to their new home in the ocean.

But is the scale of the problem too big? Can we restore a whole reef, or do we need to look at other solutions?