The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 ma old.

For most of its life, the reef was the world’s largest living structure, and the only one visible from space. It was 2200km long, with 2900 individual reefs and 1050 islands. In total area, it was larger than the United Kingdom, and it contained more biodiversity than all of Europe combined. It harbored 1625 species of fish, 3000 species of mollusk, 450 species of coral, 220 species of birds, and 30 species of whales and dolphins. Among its many other achievements, the reef was home to one of the world’s largest populations of dugong and the largest breeding ground of green turtles.

2022-08-21: Various coral startups are tackling this problem. I haven’t been able to find a number in centimeters / year for this claim to make it comparable.

Unlike traditional projects, Coral Vita grows their corals on land, and they do this for a few key reasons. Land-based coral farming basically allows us to grow more diverse and resilient corals more affordably and at scale. So corals have a natural ability to adapt to changing conditions, but things are deteriorating in the ocean so quickly— largely due to climate change— that they can’t keep up. So what we’re doing is acclimating the corals. By raising and lowering the temperature of the water, the corals undergo stress. We basically take them to the gym. And in turn harden, which boosts their ability to survive the planet’s warming oceans. Corals also have an ability to make babies, it’s known as coral spawning. So when it comes time for coral spawning, we can then put those already more resilient corals together so that their babies are also gonna be more resilient. This process is called ‘assisted evolution.’ They can also dramatically speed up a coral’s growth rate. The method we rely on to accelerate coral growth rates is known as ‘microfragmenting,’ which is an open-source method that basically allows us to grow corals 50x faster.

2022-10-07: Another huge claim on coral growth. Has anyone combined these techniques?

In nature, coral grows 0.5cm per year through the accretion of minerals dissolved in seawater, which form a thick layer of substrate. But on electrically charged reefs, the electric current takes on some of the heavy lifting needed to deposit essential calcium carbonate on the reef. The coating could thicken at a rate of 5cm per year — 10x faster than coral grows naturally — for as long as a current was flowing through it.

2023-04-07: There’s also Stony coral tissue loss disease to deal with

A bacterial probiotic treatment effectively stopped or slowed SCTLD in 66% of tested infected coral fragments. It also prevented the infection from spreading in all transmission experiments.

• Uncategorized