HAZEL OAKLEY

PhD Student

Research Title: Predicting Coral Reef Recovery Potential along Geomorphic and Hydrodynamic Gradients: A Carbonate Budget Approach in the Coral Triangle
Research Group: Tropical Environmental Change (TEC)
Thesis Advisor: Dr Gretchen Coffman
Co-advisors: Assoc Prof Huang Danwei & Prof Paul Kench

Coral rubble is often dismissed as sediment, yet it can support recruitment, biological binding and, under the right conditions, full reef recovery. This PhD research, based at Pulau PomPom in Sabah's Semporna Islands, investigates why identical restoration interventions across a single reef platform have produced starkly different outcomes—including one site that recovered naturally to a dense hard coral reef while others, metres away, remain degraded rubble beds.

Combining bathymetric mapping, hydrodynamic monitoring, benthic ecology surveys and carbonate budget analysis, the study tests whether depth, slope, aspect and wave exposure can predict which rubble beds are likely to recover. The aim is to move restoration practice away from costly structural interventions and towards identifying and protecting the natural conditions under which reefs rebuild themselves—a question of growing urgency as bleaching events in the Coral Triangle become near-annual.