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Biotech Science

A Solution for Coral Reefs in Peril 174

Posted by Hemos from the trying-to-correct-our-own-mistakes dept.
Alien54 writes "At the recent Coral Reef Symposium in Bali, Indonesia, scientists concluded that most of the world's ocean reefs have been killed or severely damaged with the remainder in certain jeopardy. Disastrous reverses in reef health threaten marine biodiversity, tourism, fisheries and shore protection worldwide. Reefs die for many reasons: rising water temperatures, sewage flows, eutrophication, disease, and negligence. A reef ecosystem that took hundreds of years to grow can be destroyed in a single afternoon by dredging, dynamite or cyanide fishing. But there is a solution. In pilot installations in Mexico, Panama, Indonesia, Maldives, Thailand, and Papua New Guinea, artificial reefs have been built where corals grow rapidly even in stressed environments. Applying a low voltage electrical current (completely safe for swimmers and marine life) to a submerged conductive structure causes dissolved mineral crystals in seawater to preciptate and adhere to that structure. Surviving coral fragments are mechanically attached, and end up doing very well indeed. During the 1998 warming, fewer than 5% of the natural reef corals survived. But on the artificial reefs, 80% of corals not only survived, they flourished. Corals from these reefs are now recolonizing the surrounding natural habitats."
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A Solution for Coral Reefs in Peril More

A Solution for Coral Reefs in Peril

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  • Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oneiron ( 716313 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:06AM (#10043399)
    This is the kind of technology our species needs to invest more time into. Bringing this planet back to life. Not that we should abandon our adventures into more efficient living for ourselves, but we owe it to our planet to keep it alive if we have the ability to do so.

    In the distant future, when we venture beyond this rock, do we really want to leave behind a giant ball of toxic tar orbiting the sun? It seems like we're on the verge of doing just that...if we even make it that far.

    • Re:Nice! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We don't have to keep the planet alive. The planet will keep itself alive. If we cause too many problems, we will die off, not the planet.


      I can't believe how arrogant some people are. Your post has to be one of the stupidest things I've read here in a while.

      • Ok, fine, I'll bite. You have all the answers, it seems. You're quite wrong in assuming that I am arrogant. Unlike you, I do not claim to know anything for certain. Conversely, you seem quite certain that this plant will go on living with or without human influence. Who's the arrogant one? Aside from your arrogance, you completely missed the point of my post. We, as humans, are a part of this planet. Not only are we a part of it, but we are the pinnacle of intelligence and ingenuity that the planet'

    • Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by danharan ( 714822 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:45AM (#10043805) Journal
      Nitpick...

      There doesn't need to be an opposition between doing what's good for humans and doing work like this.

      Corals are good carbon sinks. They are essential as breakwaters- pretty essential if you live by the coast line. As fish nurseries, wherever they are being rebuilt harvests could increase. Corals could also be a good source of income for many coastal people through tourism and sustainable harvesting - and we benefit from their beauty both directly and in our aquariums.

      This is a lot like just about every environmental issue I've looked at: the benefits to humans of acting in a responsible way are so enormous that it is absurd to oppose the care of our environment and the care of our habitat. We owe it to *ourselves* to take care of our habitat- our planet will do just fine, even after we're gone.

    • Re:Nice! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LinuxTard ( 738795 )
      I may just be a tad cynical in my old age, but I don't see the corporations of America revitalizing the planet until there is a clear profit in doing so. Even the general "slap on the wrist" fines that offenders receive for polluting hardly stem the tide when costs for ridding themselves of waste properly are "too high".

      OK, off of my soapbox, bank to the cynicism.

      If there was a new planet to colonize -and- it had natural resources to exploit I could see the corps pulling up stakes on Earth and running ro
      • Um, won't governments be doing this?

      • Re:Nice! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sjames ( 1099 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @10:42AM (#10045424) Homepage Journal

        Even the general "slap on the wrist" fines that offenders receive for polluting hardly stem the tide when costs for ridding themselves of waste properly are "too high".

        That's because we don't set the fines according to sane economic principles. We set them as a slap on the wrist, forgetting that in esscence, a corporation is a sociopath, so that we cannot appeal effectively to 'the right thing'. The fine is seen as nothing more than the low bidder on the disposal problem. Just bpart of the cost of doing business.

        The correct formula for the fine is Cr/p+Cc where Cr is the cost of proper disposal, p is the probability of being caught, and Cc is the ACTUAL cost of cleanup AND proper disposal. No exceptions even if we have to liquidate the company to do it. That way, doing the wrong thing will always average out to being at least twice as expensive as doing it right. Doing it right becomes the low bidder.

        Before the far right inevitably objects that liquidating the company is bad for the economy, think of the big boost it will be for the cleanup and disposal industries.

    • The problem is that this is an entirely artificial save. It doesn't structurally change the fact that we're fucking up the environment. We're still doing all the bad things as said in the blurb...once we turn the power off, the reefs will still die.
    • ... what are the side effects of this scheme?

      I don't mean this as a snide or snarky remark, I mean it seriously. One of the environmental factors stressing corals is the acidity of the water, which makes carbonate less stable (tends to convert it to bicarbonate). The more CO2 you add to the oceans, the more the CO3-- to HCO3- balance is tipped toward HCO3- as carbonic acid (H2CO3) reduces alkalinity.

      What does this have to do with electrolytic promotion of coral growth? Just that the chemistry has to balan

  • Cyanide Fishing ?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:07AM (#10043407)
    I guess I'll switch my usual Filet-O-Fish for a Big Mac.

    • Re:Cyanide Fishing ?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:14AM (#10043485) Homepage Journal
      iirc they use them to get fish for to sell as pets(the fish will go out for a while or get dizzy).

      the fish need to be sold fast though, as catching them in this way isn't that healthy.

      it's a stupid way to fish for the extremely shortsighted or careless(or for people who don't know that they're just destroying their own long term livelihood doing it).

      i think tnt fishing is used more with fish you want to catch for eating(easier anyways).
    • And then you come down with madcow disease!

    • Re:Cyanide Fishing ?? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Aardpig ( 622459 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:30AM (#10043637)

      I guess I'll switch my usual Filet-O-Fish for a Big Mac.

      Indeed. A few years back, I was working with an NGO out in Ghana, West Africa. One day, seeing all of the piles of dried fish for sale in the market, I asked one of my local friends how they caught so many fish. He replied "Oh, its simple. They pour DDT into a lake, all of the fish float to the surface".

      I was shocked; I asked him whether they knew that DDT was nasty stuff, and in particular a cumulative poison. He said "Yes", but pointed out that the economics of the situation, versus the fact that the poison wasn't concentrated enough in any given fish to kill someone outright, meant that DDT fishing was still commonly practiced.

      • Okay, I am now convinced that there must be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, 'cos it's all migrated off *this* planet!
      • Actually, DDT isn't poisonous to humans (one of the reasons it was so widely used in the past in the US and other countries) but it is poisonous to a lot of other species. The reason it is banned in the US is the catastrophic effect it was having on the bald eagle (the National Bird). The UN still condones its usage in other parts of the world because it is cheap for 3rd world countries buy, and unfortunately the gains (growing foods in poor countries) outway the negatives (killing of species due to egg she

    • Re:Cyanide Fishing ?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by BluesConvert ( 807639 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @01:33PM (#10047670) Homepage
      The use of "cyanide fishing" is limited to collection of reef specimens for sale in the aquarium trade.

      Essentially, the collector carries what amounts to a small "box" of cyanide. Upon encountering a particularly attractive or desirable fish, he "pops" the box open, releasing a puff of cyanide around the fish. This stuns (to say the least) the fish, making it easy to capture.

      MAC (The Marine Aquarium Council) and others estimate that roughly 50% of the fish caught in this manner do not survive the process, and are dead by the time they're removed from the water, or do not survive the shipment to the local fish store. Of those that do "survive" to be sold to reef keepers, some estimates suggest that fully 80% of them die within 1 year in captivity.

      None of this even touches on the obvious damage done by "poofing" a few square meters of reef with a big cyanide cloud. While estimates of the damage done vary greatly, it's pretty certain that there aren't a whole lot of reef critters out there that enjoy the experience.

      Most of us who keep reef tanks built and grown by our own blood, sweat, and tears abhor the practice, and purchase captive raised animals ONLY, specifically to try to reduce the profit involved in such collection practices.

      In short, Save a reef...Grow your own.
    • Do you really think that's fish your eating at McDonalds?

  • Reef bacteria changing (Score:5, Informative)

    by PIPBoy3000 ( 619296 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:07AM (#10043414)
    Actually, there was a recent article [biomedcentral.com] that discussed the fact that the symbiotic bacteria that made up corals was changing. So, though there's widespread bleaching of corals, it doesn't necessarily mean doom. The newer symbionts are much better adapted to warmer temperatures, so they should do better with the overall warming of the oceans.

    What's probably happening with this artificial corals is that they're being colonized by the "clade D" symbionts right off the bat, which makes it look like they're thriving.

    That's not to say that corals don't face other issues - pollution and disease most notably - but the situation may not be as dire as suspected.
    • symbiotic bacteria that made up corals

      Actually, it's symbiotic algae that many corals absolutely need.

      I'm a bit sceptical that corals can easily change their symbiotic algae prior to dieing off. These are relationships that have been established over the eons.
    • Of course, any time you see an article that begins along the lines of "scientists have concluded" or "scientists agree" you can pretty much bet that it's a reprinted press release of some group, there's an agenda attached, and your bullshit detector should go into high gear. That's not to say that there's a nonzero probability of truth, just that you should be extremely cautious.

      There aren't many "conclusions" in science - even in the areas that lend themselves to the most concrete of measurements (such
    • I read the article (New Scientist? Science News?), and didn't think that it was quite as positive as you seem to think.

      As I understood it, certain kinds of coral were found to be able to switch algae. At some non-trivial cost.

      It did seem to indicate that the varieties that could make the switch would eventually do better in the warmer environment, though. As to the bleached corals, what it said was that we shouldn't automatically assume that they were all dead, since *some* of them might well be able t

  • Coral Can Adapt (Score:5, Informative)

    by minerat ( 678240 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:08AM (#10043417)
    That's pretty cool and might work in some places where the coral hasn't already adapted (admittedly a LOT of places). Coral has been adapting on its own to warming conditions though. Along the Panama coast, warm water caused extensive bleaching in corals that had formed a symbiotic relationship with one type of Symbiodinium algae, known as clade C. But corals that joined forces with another algae type, clade D, that can tolerate higher temperatures, did not become bleached. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 96275
    • Perhaps, but how fast can corals adapt by forming these new symbiotic relationships? The empirical evidence seems to suggest that these adaptations are still pretty rare... We may not have enough time for these adaptations to take place.

      Many corals have symbiotic algea that live in their soft tissues that provide food to the coral (this is why they require bright light). Corals are already colonial organisms (each polyp is a different animal) so this makes for a fairly complex system.

      The other question

  • Natural? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Davak ( 526912 )
    Wire laced with electrical current to simulate a reef? What's so natural about that? Maybe the reefs are supposed to die down to 5% every once in a while.

    Remember the problems we have from preventing forest fires?

    Davak

    • Maybe (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CiXeL ( 56313 )
      the slowing of reef growth has something to do with earth's waning magnetic field and this occurs naturally right before a pole flip?

      Maybe the reason tank raised corals grow so well in home aquariums but dont propagate as easily in the wild is because with all those corals in proximity to each other in such a small water space they exchange the symbiotic bacteria quicker that allows them to tolerate more difficult conditions. i see some of my corals releasing them every night as brown stringy waste but to

      • I have looked at the maps of the weakening magnetic field of the earth and there is a pretty good relationship between the decrease in electrical currents associated with this and the coral declines... I suspect we are onto something here. I also know that the orientation for fields like this affect massively the ability to form calcium based crystals. ??? Maybe?

    • Re:Natural? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by FlipmodePlaya ( 719010 )
      I often here praising the 'natural'. People who think 'natural' pills are better than ones not marketed as such, for example. People who think it's crucial that we preserve nature are the worst, though. They talk about how we need to 'give back to our planet' by protecting species and leaving nature's wonders untouched... I don't understand, are we not natural? Something a tree or a lion does is natural, but our actions are not? If the Lion were to kill an endangered species of Elephant (or whatever),
      • I'm not trying to flame such people, as I honestly feel I don't understand them

        There's nothing to understand. They're religious nutbags like any other, with some vague 'Mother Earth' or 'Gaia' as their god.

        What really amuses the hell out of me are the ones who think that we should not only freeze-frame the entire planet in stasis as it exists right now, but also give up technology altogether and go back to "the good ol' days", when humans died at the age of 35 and starved one out of every three years.

        W
    • Exactly. In United States history, I would say there has been more effort put into managing fires [fs.fed.us] than actual prevention. How do you reduce widespread fires? Education of humans only goes so far, since nature likes to toss around lightning strikes. That means to stop fires you have to reduce the number of trees.

      Of course, some reports [nationalgeographic.com] say increased logging causes fires, but you have to read why. In rainforest areas, haphazard logging can dry out the vegetation, which makes them more susceptible to wid
    • They don't just die down everyone once in awhile, they're wiped out completely. After a few million years another coral-like life form evolves and new reefs pop up.

      Corals have a history of going extinct and then evolving again.

      But within the lifetime of any single coral species, they also have sudden and dramatic diebacks whenever conditions change (sometimes just slightly).

      Max
  • I thought the solution was in peril. Damn those sneaky barnacles!

  • This is great and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by keiferb ( 267153 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:11AM (#10043446) Homepage
    What happens when our entire ecosystem becomes "artificial"? The coral can't survive unless we're zapping the rocks they adhere to. I shudder to think how we're going to keep the elephants around...

    --

    • Re:This is great and all, but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:23AM (#10043573)
      The coral can't survive unless we're zapping the rocks they adhere to.

      The impression I got from the novel exercise known as "reading the article" was that the electric current was used to accelerate the growth of the coral, not to keep it alive once it had grown. I dunno, maybe my reading comprehension is way off or something...
    • This is what I suspect will eventually happen over the next few thousand years. There will be three kinds of "areas" on Earth: City/Urban (populated areas where people live), Farmland (where the food is grown) and managed parks.

      The key word there was "managed." Hopefully we won't have to go to such extremes, as you've suggested; but, I suspect active management will be required worldwide.

    • The electricity accelerates the process. But the fact is you can just drop concrete tubes in appropriate places and coral will grow on them, unaided. It's being done right now in many countries, the U.S. being one of them.

      Max

  • Who was it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by SightlessMind ( 806966 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:11AM (#10043448)
    Reefs die for many reasons: rising water temperatures, sewage flows, eutrophication, disease, and negligence.

    OK, Billy. Explain to me again what you were doing last week when you should have been feeding the reef!!!

  • I wonder if any of the advertising agencies... (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_REAL_DZA ( 731082 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:11AM (#10043456)
    ...will get the idea to lay such cables in patterns designed to "grow" a company's logo? Imagine the irony of a series of coral reefs that spells out
    E X X O N
    Of course, Life magazine might get a circulation boost out of it.

  • Just like.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mishmash ( 585101 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:11AM (#10043457) Homepage
    Isn't this just like sinking a ship [bbc.co.uk] to make a new reef, just that here instead of using an explosion [bbc.co.uk] to kick off decomposition, they're doing it electrically?? And with the sunken ships there's an "instant structure"....

  • That's all we need: Franken-Coral.

  • Underwater Habitat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:13AM (#10043474)
    When I was about 10 or 11 (1985), my mom bought me a book with a title something like "The Future for Kids" or some other cheesy thing. It had all sorts of cool things that we could look forward to in our future. One of them was the construction of underwater habitats using low-voltage grids to let the sea build the walls for you. I remember thinking how cool this was, and fantasizing about building my own habitat in the back yard (I lived on a bay).

    Anyway, that pretty much sums up my pointless story. But it is very cool to see this 20+ year old idea actually used for something beneficial.

    • Sounds like a good plan for an ultra-stealth underwater military base.
      • or you could build individual rooms for your house, then hoist them out with a crane and finish assembling them on land wherever you want them. I was just reading the other day about the global shortages of cement driving up the costs of concrete severely. This might be an alternative building technique. Maybe just grow individual blocks for that matter, in huge quantities.

    • Re:Underwater Habitat (Score:5, Informative)

      by glenmark ( 446320 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:36AM (#10043709) Homepage
      When I was about 10 or 11 (1985), my mom bought me a book with a title something like "The Future for Kids" or some other cheesy thing. It had all sorts of cool things that we could look forward to in our future. One of them was the construction of underwater habitats using low-voltage grids to let the sea build the walls for you. I remember thinking how cool this was, and fantasizing about building my own habitat in the back yard (I lived on a bay).
      One of the people behind this project, Wolf Hilbertz, is actually one of the pioneers of the "seacrete" idea for growing structures underwater using electrolosys-induced accretion.
  • but picture the next "Little Mermaid" movie ...some sequence involving the electric slide [uwm.edu]
  • This made me happy in an otherwise lousy day...

  • Reef Teach (Score:5, Informative)

    by rleyton ( 14248 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:22AM (#10043563) Homepage
    A bit of a plug this, from somebody who knew next to nothing about Coral biospheres until very recently. If, like me, you find yourself visiting Cairns, and planning on a visit to the Great Barrier Reef, you'd do very well to pay a visit to Reef Teach [reefteach.com.au] the night before.

    Superb, extremely interesting and enjoyable overview of coral reef biodiversity, and very good at providing an overview of the threats faced by the reef, both manmade and natural. Cheap too, and free biscuits :-)

    As their blurb states, "through understanding comes appreciation". Snorkling around the reef was one of the best parts of my recent world trip [leyton.org] - apart from the sunburn I picked up by being too quick into the water. It was a huge shame the tour boat didn't much of a job of advising people of the threat we pose to the environment when out on the reef. If you fancy yourself as a eco-friendly geek, like me, you certainly would do well to visit Reef Teach [reefteach.com.au].

  • Australia has an amazing reef (which i've seen as part of a tour many years ago and it was amazing), the Great Barrier Reef [wikipedia.org]. It's the worlds largest reef, and can even be seen from space.

    Unfortunately it is also under threat now due to pollution, although the Australian authorities are trying to preserve it.
  • The references page does not mention Coral Plantation, but that is the first thing that came to mind when I read how this works.

    Isn't this easy-to-assemble system now going to be used for Coral Plantations? I'm not sure what I think about that yet, but it's probably better than to have people kill coral reefs.

  • Plurals. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by irn_bru ( 209849 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:28AM (#10043615)
    The Plural of Coral is Coral. This might seem silly - I don't make the rules - but that's how it is.

    You have it wrong in the title and wrong in the last line or article.
    • Actually, 'coral' is similar to 'fish', in that the plural can be formed both ways, each with a specific meaning.

      If you are speaking about groups (or, in the case of coral, colonies) of the same species (or possibly a few contemporaneous species), the plural is 'fish' or 'coral' as you stated.

      If, however, you are referring to multiple species, the plural is 'fishes' or 'corals'.

      "All those fish are swimming among the coral" or "This is an encyclopedia of the fishes and corals of the world."

      I don't make

      • I can see you point, however:

        "All those fishes are swimming among the corals"
        would certainly be wrong, whereas

        "This is an encyclopedia of the fish and coral of the world"
        would still be correct.

        "I fish, you fish, we fish, he/she fishes". That is actually the only correct use of the word 'fishes'; as a verb. Fishes as a plural of fish is at best a colloquialism.

        Try looking for corals in a dictionary. It's not there...

  • FTA... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:29AM (#10043634)

    Healthy corals grow quickly--up to ten times faster than normal when exposed to the Biorock Process, even in poor water conditions.

    Could this possibly be used in aquariums? It would be interesting to grow corals in an accellerated rate in an aquarium.

    • Re:FTA... (Score:5, Informative)

      by camelreef ( 807564 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:52AM (#10043901) Homepage
      Those works on electricity and coral growth are originally fromm Tom Goreau.

      I have a friend who worked with Goreau and implemented the system for use in aquariums, but most importantly for his coral farm.

      Once thing not mentionned: corals growing that fast that way are quite brittle, as the critaline structure of their skeletton does not have time to be strong enough. Once electricity is not used anymore, the skeletton acquires normal solidity rapidly.

      Some pictures of a home setup:
      http://rdo.homelinux.org/gallery/saintvulbas2000/M VC_209X [homelinux.org]
      http://rdo.homelinux.org/gallery/saintvulbas2000/M VC_210X [homelinux.org]

      Do not ask what the grids are made of, this is the biggest part of the initial research...

      Nico

    • Re:FTA... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Maltheus ( 248271 )
      Why bother? Saltwater aquariums grow quite out of control on their own. After scraping coraline algae off of everything once or twice a month, you'll be glad just to have things grow slow. Or try trimming back the explosive growth of Anathelia. All of my coral quickly got too big for my tank (when I had one).

      Plus, you probably don't have enough dissovled minerals in your tank to do this without throwing off the balance of other things. It might work if you do frequent water changes, but I don't think that'

  • Undersea domes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:36AM (#10043702)
    I had this "Future Technologies" book when I was a kid, and it explained how we could create pressure-safe undersea domes using this exact technology. Steel grid dome, apply electricity, wait for the minerals, then wait for the coral, eventually you'd have a water-tight, hollow dome. I think this book also talked about a nuclear reactor in every home, so maybe it wasn't 100% accurate. Still, nice to see some technologies actually being applied.

    Nicer still, if the philosophical evil which teaches people that causality is merely an arbitrary construct could be abolished. Then maybe these cyanide and dynamite fishers would learn that you cannot both have and eat your cake.

  • Iron is the essential ingredient? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:39AM (#10043743) Journal
    Since artificial reefs are usually sunken wrecks I wonder if the iron constantly leaching out of these wrecks is the key element to the reefs vigor. I know oceanographers have found that sea water is generally very iron poor and that experiments with iron "seeding" have produced phytoplankton blooms.

    • You dont want (Score:3, Informative)

      by CiXeL ( 56313 )
      phytoplankton blooms in a reef. Its what turns water green and blocks out the light. Iron seeding promotes algal growth. You typically want to use that in temperate regions instead of tropical. I've talked with some of the world's foremost coral experts and they said though that they thought it could be successfully used to pull greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere though.

  • This same idea can be used make underwater buildings [green-trust.org]. It only takes about 1 kWh to make 4.2 lbs of seacrete and its about as strong as sidewalk concrete.

    Its time to grow an underwater home!

  • 5% not correct for worldwide reefs, only Maldive (Score:5, Informative)

    by Creepy ( 93888 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:19AM (#10044228) Journal
    Being a diver, the 5% number by the poster was suspect to me immediately since no location I've been at (Hawaii, Aruba, Cozumel, Florida) has seen numbers close to that. Yes, a large percentage of reefs are threatened, but certainly not 95% wiped out.

    The 5% number is, according to the article, referring to the Maldive islands, a chain to the west-to-southwest of India, not worldwide.

  • Time to sink more old ships? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:21AM (#10044264)
    Yes, I'm not kidding about this.

    There has been a practice to sink the cleaned-up remains of old ships to use them to create artificial reefs. I believe that has been done off the coast of Florida with great success, and other parts of the world are doing this also.
  • I've been storing hundreds of gallons of polychlorinated biphenyls in the back of my shop for years. Now maybe I can dump them into the big drink again without suffering the wrath of that damned coral-hugging MIT hippie in his little Zodiac.

  • One Bit of Good News (Score:4, Informative)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @10:09AM (#10044905) Homepage Journal

    Now if only someone could figure out a way to replenish the stocks of large ocean fish that have been reduced by 90% since 1950 [scienceagogo.com].

  • biorock is expensive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2004 @10:39AM (#10045391)
    I coached high school debaters on their ocean topic last year, and artificial coral reefs were a popular point of contention. I won't really go into detail here, but don't rely on that website as your source of information. The Coral Reef Taskforce is nothing more than a front for the creators of BioRock. The whole webpage is a large advertisement. Other makers of artificial reefs and many professional scuba diving organizations also don't really care for BioRock because it is ugly, expensive, and potentially dangerous (I guess there's a risk of shock).

    In any case, I'd love to see solutions put in place to save coral reefs, but I'm not so desperately enthusiastic that I'll heed the words of a website infomercial that proclaim BioRock to be the best solution.
    • No modding needed here so I'll post instead.

      I've taken a pretty comprehensive look at the website and noticed that Hilbertz, invented the mineral accretion process to create structures in seawater, in 1977, and because the website was so heavy in words like patent, trademark, intelectual property ect. I decided to look a little deeper.
      A quick GOOGLE brought up Stanford's [stanford.edu] website which give us patent numbers and other interesting information such as;
      • Patent - 4,246,075, Hilbertz, W.H., Mineral accretion
  • In 1992 Marshall T. Savage published the Millennial project.sub titled "Colonizing the Galaxy in eight easy steps"

    A supposedly scientifically based proposal for near and far term large scale projects. His near term proposal was to make floating cites out this material (which he called "seacrete"). It was a wonderfully idea and I really like to live in such a place. But I must say the longer he goes on the more he falls on his face and just winds up being a total freak. Of course freaks are like gravity

  • The method of accreting a reef-like shell to a conductive superstructure was mentioned in a book I read several years ago, called The Millenial Project. Much of it was kind of kooky, but there was one section which talked about using this method in order to build large sea colonies in 'dead' zones. Then, by exploiting temperature differences in the sea water below it, the colony could create electricity for use in extracting hydrogen from the sea water, thus supplying a hydrogen economy.

    Robert Ballard rece
  • A few years back I read an article where they were doing this to create structures that could then be moved onto land and used for building. It seems that they've adapted the technology to helping the reefs.

  • But why does it work? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Colonel Panic ( 15235 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @01:40PM (#10047753)
    The article doesn't really explain why the growth was better on the artificial reefs. Is it due to the electric current somehow stimulating coral growth?

    Or perhaps it's due to the fact that these structures are very open and allow a lot of water flow throughout the structure of the reef (thus allowing greater nutrient flow to the corals).

    The attachement argument alone doesn't seem to be the only explanation: I use super-glue to attach corals in my aquarium and that works very quickly.

    Perhaps similar effects could be acheived by slight electrical stimulation of already existing reefs? More experimentation needs to be done.

    I hope that they're right, however, in their observations. It would be great if we could save some reefs. Coral reefs are among the most beautiful and diverse eco systems on the planet. It would be a shame to lose them because of our carelessness.
  • Does it strike anyone else as... interesting... that the Director of the "Global Coral Reef Alliance" is also the registrant of, and one of the pricipals of, the commercial organization they're proposing as the solution?

    Hmmm.

  • The problem with electro-accretion (Score:3, Informative)

    by patrissimo ( 807689 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @04:26PM (#10050010)
    Various people above mentioned other uses for electro-accretion, like building floating cities ala Marshall Savage. Unfortunately his energy numbers are off by a factor of 42 - he didn't integrate power over time, just used power as his energy number. It turns out to be just too inefficient to be useful for much except coral restoration. The main problem is that the accreting seament doesn't conduct, so it dissipates more and more energy as it builds up. So its way more expensive that just shipping cement from land (unless you are doing something tricky like restoring reefs).

    Details and references here [seastead.org]. (I replied with some comments about this, but I didn't have an account so they have 0-ratings, so I got an account to post this. Hope its not too bad form to comment in multiple places.)

  • I heard that "ground" on a coral island isn't actually ground, but several volts above ground, which can interfere with switches, relays etc. and cause unwanted currents and corrosion.

    Perhaps there is an evolutionary cause/effect relationship going on here.

  • growing concrete (Score:2, Interesting)

    by aggiefalcon01 ( 730238 )
    I remember reading in my college Chemistry book about a similar process in which one could literally "grow" concrete slabs by submerging an electrically-charged mesh into a calcium/mineral-rich solution (a.k.a. ocean water).

    Anyone else hear of this more recently?

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