Southern Cross University's Peter Harrison headed up the study, which took place off of Australia's east coast.

I'm really excited.

We've just been over to the site in Heron Island Lagoon, where we put larvae onto certain parts of the reef in 2016, and we've found a lot of very large corals that have grown from those larvae.

So this proves that the level restoration technique works.

Justus, we predicted on we could grow very large corals from tiny microscopic larvae within just a few years.

The tactic was first used in 2016 were more than 60 corals and now on the way to being the first to be re established on the reef through coral IVF, the new corals varied in diameter, ranging from around an inch to the size of a dinner plate.

Tests showed them to be healthy that despite a severe bleaching event that hit Heron Island in March, bleaching occurs when hot or water destroys the algae, which corals feed on, causing them to turn white A recent study from James Cook University found that the reef had lost more than half of its coral in the past three decades on raised concern that it's less able to recover from mass bleaching events.