Coral reefs are the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. Being part of the marine ecosystem, they cover less than 1 percent of oceans, yet support about 25 per cent of marine life serving as habitat to up to 9 million species of aqua life forms while serving as a source of food, medicine and tourism.
During the last three decades, about 25 to 40% of Earth's corals have been lost. Unfortunately, the estimate is still increasing thanks to rising ocean temperature, climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, pollution and other human-related factors.
From reports,
As at 2015, about 35% of the corals in Great Barrier reef have been lost.
In the last three decades, coral cover in some areas of Florida and the Caribbean, has declined by 50 to 80%.
Naturally, corals usually takes 25 to 75 years to achieve sexual maturity and about 5,000 to 10,000 years before a coral reef can be formed. Imagine these thousands of years ending in few decades!
...
In a bid to save the coral reefs, maintain balance in the ecosystem and also preserve nature, scientists are into lot of researches to find a way of increasing the number of corals present and also prevent their loss.
The stress paid off as coral can now be grown about 40 times faster in a process known as MICROFRAGMENTING.
Microfragmenting was pioneered by Dr. David Vaughan, the Senior Scientist & Program Manager for the International Centre for Coral Reef Research and Restoration at the Mote Marine Laboratory, Florida, U.S.A.
Before now, coral farming was practiced for the restoration of coral reefs. But with microfragmenting, production is faster than ever and restoration of coral reefs can be accomplished within a decade.
Coral farming is the process whereby fragments of corals are extracted from part of a coral colony or collected from the free-floating larva from a reef, raised in nurseries until they mature after which they are transferred to the restoration site.
Microfragmenting manipulates the surface area of a coral on a two dimensional plane in a laboratory, breaking the corals into smaller pieces of polyps using a specialised saw. This allows corals to grow into clones at 25 to 50 times faster than their normal rate.
Dr. Vaughan said,
"It took us six years to produce 600 corals, with a single one taking about 3 years to grow. Now, with microfragmentation we can cut and produce 600 corals in one afternoon and the tiny pieces would grow back to the same size in just a few weeks that had taken three years to grow.
We are producing more corals faster than we can actually get new tanks to put them in and having to have almost a crew planting them as fast as we’re growing them."
"This is now a new discovery that can give real hope for our coral reefs that has never been there before. So I postponed my retirement until I see a million corals replanted back on the reef." - Dr. Vaughan
References:
- https://medium.com/@amykwilson/microfragmentation-a-breakthough-for-coral-reef-restoration-6a2e862c4e2
- https://www.sharednation.org/products/support-coral-reef-restoration
- https://sci-techmaven.io/superposition/api/amp/superposition/caretaking/new-discovery-microfragmenting-can-save-the-coral-reefs-3FN-MHEuUUWHrBEyjWBVwg/
- https://reefnation.com/microfragmenting-to-restore-reefs/
- http://www.coralvita.co/coral-farming
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