Samenvatting

The coral reefs around the world have been under very big pressure. In some places up to 95% coral coverage is already gone. For this big decrease there are many different causes, ranging from natural disasters to predation and sickness. Even humans have a big influence on the coral reefs. To protect the reefs around the island of Bonaire the Coral Restoration Foundation Bonaire has started to create replantation techniques. In this way the goal is to restore the reefs around Bonaire to how they were before the massive decrease. The main way of accomplishing this is by growing corals in nurseries.
This research focusses on the growing process in the nursery. In order to manage to the growth of corals in the nursery, a measuring method must be used. In this research 2 methods for measuring the growth of Acropora palmate (Elkhorn coral) were compared by means of a multi-criteria analysis. These methods were the linear extension and the 3d-reconstruction.
The research question of this research was: When comparing 3d-reconstruction to linear extension, which is the most reliable and practical to use in coral nurseries for measuring the growth of
Acropora palmata?
To compare the 2 methods, the following criteria were used: time consumption, reliability, precision and type of results. The corals were measured with both methods.
For the time consumption, the linear extension was the best method. For the reliability, both methods were equal. For the precision, the linear extension was the best method. For the type of results, the 3d-reconstruction was the best method. All together with the weighting that was used in the MCA, the 3d-reconstruction method scored a little higher and was therefore in this research the best method.
However, both methods are useable for measuring coral growth and the use of either method should be evaluated for every research, as both methods have very clear strengths and weaknesses, that have been shown in this MCA.