An Australian scientist is harnessing the power of robots to regrow our threatened reefs.
In the azure waters of the Abrolhos Islands, 400 kilometres north of Perth, marine biologist Dr Taryn Foster is cultivating coral.
“Reefs are in a lot of trouble because of climate change,” Foster said.
“We’ve already lost 50 per cent of corals worldwide and we’re set to lose 70 to 90 per cent under climate change.”
Foster’s family owns a masonry factory in Geraldton, Western Australia.
That’s how she came up with the idea to create a coral base from limestone.
“The limestone is really good because that’s what a coral’s natural skeleton is made of,” she said.
“The machines that we use can pump out 10,000 of these things a day quite easily.”
Fragments of coral harvested from the ocean are glued onto plugs, which are then inserted into the limestone base.
The whole skeleton is then planted in the ocean.
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“Essentially you’re bypassing several years of calcification to get to adult size by providing them with a premade skeleton,” Foster said.
But having humans do the job by hand is costly, so Foster’s company Coral Maker has teamed up with AI business Autodesk.
Their plan is for robots to do the repetitive tasks.
The Coral Maker team hopes to one day mass produce millions or tens of millions of corals every year.
Their aim is to restore threatened reefs right across the world. And it’s needed.
Rising ocean temperatures have left our reefs more vulnerable than ever.
Scientists are predicting coral bleaching in Australia this coming summer.
“There’s more than 800,000 species that are supported by coral reefs. We can’t just let that go,” Foster said.
“We have to try every single trick in the book.”
