Taryn Foster believes Australia’s dying coral reefs can still be saved if efforts to save them can be accelerated. For years, biologists like her have helped coral reefs struggle with rising temperatures and ocean acidity. They crossed species to build heat resistance. They experimented with probiotics as a defense against deadly diseases.
But transplanting thousands of these healthy, upgraded corals onto a damaged reef won’t be enough to save the entire ecosystem, Foster says. We need it.” Sounds like the job of some robot.
In healthy seas, individual corals, called polyps, extract calcium carbonate from seawater to build their skeleton. They then fuse with corals of the same genetic make-up to form huge colonies, or coral reefs. But as the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the water becomes more acidic, making it harder for polyps to build skeletons and protect them from dissolution. And with global ocean temperatures rising, corals are struggling to survive.
For example, coral growth on the Great Barrier Reef has slowed in recent decades. One reason for this is that the tiny algae that live and provide nutrients within the coral tissue are expelled from the coral during heatwaves, causing coral bleaching. Bleached corals are not dead, but they are at risk of starvation and disease, and reef loss is devastating to the thousands of fish, crabs and other marine animals that depend on reefs for shelter and food. has a positive impact.
Growing replacement corals in nurseries and manually transplanting them onto existing reefs is labor intensive, costly and time consuming. Corals are naturally slow-growing, and depending on the species, it takes him three to ten years to build an adult-sized skeleton. At her company, Coral Maker, Foster seeks to accelerate this process. Prior to her research on coral reefs and climate change, Foster worked in the family stone business. Today, she uses her family’s dry casting machine to create limestone shapes that resemble the natural skeleton of corals. The plan is to provide a good base for young corals to grow faster.
The first prototype of the Coral Maker skeleton is dome-shaped and has six plugs into which living coral fragments can be placed. The skeletal design is inspired by nature. Many species, such as brain corals, grow in domes, while branching and plate corals grow upward from a solid base. But dome-shaped skeletons also present challenges, says Foster. “They aren’t as easy to manufacture as those with flat surfaces, they’re not as easy to palletize, they’re not as easy to glue things on.” For just a few dollars he is able to produce up to 10,000 pieces a day. This process can then be replicated in other factories.
