This can be done with teams performing separate tasks, or if you don’t have many, two can do it all. Have the plan for how you are recreating the reef, so which species you’ll need to find and keep a balance.

Send team A to find coral pieces that have been naturally broken off. These coral fragments would otherwise die in the sand, but once we pick them up we want to keep them alive. Just like scuba diving, where you can not ascend quickly, coral do not have lungs, so they must only ascend if needed, and then do so very slowly. Do not let corals touch different corals. Do not bring too many for processing, it’s only possible to do a limited quantity at a time depending on personnel to process the the fragments. If there are a lot at a site, they could do team/process A & B on one dive. If there is already a plan for B to be done, then the planned fragments could be placed in their planned location (i.e. weighted baskets) and then additional fragments could be placed back onto the reef. A specific species can grow back together with itself, so an easy method to teach is to place it back with itself, towards its center as to not break off more limbs or topple it. If it’s dead, it’ll be grown over quickly, and either should hopefully strengthen the coral. Never do this if the coral looks sick or diseased, only with normal healthy pieces.

Team B could be in the water towards the planned end of team A’s dive to take over the processing of the corals. They should come with bone cutters and small containers or zip loc style bags. The very ends of the the coral is already in growth mode and have shown to grow at a much faster rate than larger fragments. With this, the bone cutters should be used to cut off the ends leaving few polyps, usually the pieces are only 1 cm in height. When cutting, the bags should be open and the fragment will fall right into the bag or bucket. Make sure to only put one coral (many fragments i.e. 5, but from one coral species). Otherwise the corals will end up killing eachother in a very short amount of time.