[HN Gopher] Seeding steel frames brings destroyed coral reefs ba...
___________________________________________________________________
Seeding steel frames brings destroyed coral reefs back to life
Author : westurner
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-03-17 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| westurner wrote:
| > _Because this loose rubble is in constant motion, tumbling and
| rolling around, coral larvae don't have enough time to grow
| before they get squashed. So the first step to bringing damaged
| reefs back to life was stabilizing the rubble. The people running
| the MARS program did this using_ Reef Stars, hexagonal steel
| structures coated with sand. _"These structures are connected
| into networks and pinned to the seabed to reduce the movement of
| the rubble," Lamont said._
| h2odragon wrote:
| surely there's no easily seen problems being ignored in the rush
| to "do good" here.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Reef
|
| steel and saltwater are kinda known to have problems
| westurner wrote:
| From "Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726539&p=3#37728049 :
|
| >> _Years of creating artificial reefs from old tires are
| catching up._
|
| > _People probably don 't even realize that_ most tires are
| synthetic rubber and thus are also bad for the ocean _._
|
| > _Is there a program to map the locations of old synthetic
| tire reefs, and what is a suitable replacement for reef
| reconstruction and regrowth?_
| lupusreal wrote:
| I really hate this kind of brainless driveby pessimism. Look up
| the steel frames they're using; they're tiny. The amount of
| steel being added to the ocean by this project is absolutely
| inconsequential compared to the steel added by innumerable
| other human activities. Even shipping containers falling off
| ships dwarfs this project, let alone ships themselves sinking.
| Furthermore, we have decades of experience that tells us that
| corals and fish quite like steel shipwrecks, debris, etc.
| What's more, the frames they're using demonstrably do work as
| scaffolding for coral growth; it's not an untested idea.
| h2odragon wrote:
| the problems i allude to involve the steel no longer being
| steel within a very short time after hitting the water. As
| with the wiki reference, stuff you're expecting to pin
| together with steel will likely not stay together.
|
| It's not pessimism to say "this could be done better; we've
| seen the methods being used _fail repeatedly before_ "
| bigfudge wrote:
| Presumably they don't have to be around for too long though
| as they will be replaced by coral once their job is done?
| Your comment did seem needlessly pessimistic to me, and was
| absent any specialist knowledge of the engineering involved
| in this project that might have justified it.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| How could it be done better?
| hinkley wrote:
| The steel isn't structure, the coral is.
|
| The steel is scaffolding.
| pvaldes wrote:
| It does not matter. Steel will rush and disappear in a few
| decades, but its main purpose in the meanwhile is blocking
| trawls and pirate fishing
| hinkley wrote:
| Plankton growth is limited to iron availability. We've talked
| about spraying rust on the ocean surface to drop global
| temperatures.
| samatman wrote:
| In addition to a few ill-considered projects to make reefs out
| of used tires, many tens of thousands of steel-hulled ships
| have been scuttled in tropical waters.
|
| It's fine.
| westurner wrote:
| - "Playing sounds of healthy coral on reefs makes fish return"
| (2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36450824#36465577 and
| other Coral Restoration links
| araes wrote:
| Really expected a picture of the steel Reef Stars with the
| article.
|
| Found the site from the sponsors of the project. Bit of a
| surprise, the Mars, is Mars Candy Bars (M&Ms, Snickers, ect...)
| Also, a partnership over in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef
| using the stars. (348 Reef Stars with 5,115 coral fragments of
| opportunity) Both have fairly extensive pictures of the steel
| frames coated with sand and the installation.
|
| The main MARRS stats are: "30 sites across ten countries, 60,000
| Reef Stars, planting 900,000+ living coral fragments."
|
| Apparently started with "10 years in Sulawesi, Indonesia to
| restore reefs damaged by dynamite fishing."
|
| [1] https://www.mars.com/news-and-stories/articles/the-big-
| build...
|
| [2] https://www.gbrbiology.com/2022/04/08/mars-and-coral-
| rubble-...
| somishere wrote:
| The company is using as a promotional tool for their cat food
| brand and named the Indonesian site after the brand. I would
| not say they are a particularly ecologically friendly brand.
|
| While there is no doubt that stabilising rubble is an important
| factor in reef recovery (especially where this is the primary
| issue, such as in blast fishing sites), IMO this technology is
| milkdrop in the universe stuff once you pull heating oceans
| into the equation.
|
| As an aside, the Great Barrier Reef is currently in the midst
| of an unprecedented fifth mass coral bleaching event since
| 2016.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a Canadian guy who discovered back in the 1980's gentle
| electrolysis can create artificial coral.
|
| He was getting funding to try to raise an atol off Madagascar as
| recently as ten (ed: twenty) years ago, shortly before he passed.
|
| Someone more recently thought they found that electrical
| potential attracts coral polyps, so perhaps the "electrolysis"
| was less chemical and more biological.
|
| When I hear about steel to creat coral I think of galvanic
| action.
| adolph wrote:
| It is interesting to think about how much could be done to
| mitigate human impact on various ecosystems if we humans had an
| improved grasp on animal senses. Recommendable: "An Immense
| World" by Ed Yong
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Immense-World-Animal-Senses-Reveal/dp...
| gs17 wrote:
| >so perhaps the "electrolysis" was less chemical and more
| biological.
|
| According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorock it's
| chemical:
|
| > The chemical process that takes place on the cathode is as
| follows: Calcium carbonate (aragonite) combines with magnesium,
| chloride and hydroxyl ions to slowly accrete around the cathode
| coating it with a thick layer of material similar in
| composition to magnesium oxychloride cement. Over time cathodic
| protection replaces the negative chloride ion (Cl-) with
| dissolved bicarbonate (HCO3-) to harden the coating to a
| hydromagnesite-aragonite mixture with gaseous oxygen evolving
| through the porous structure.
|
| But it does seem the process creates an environment that's very
| beneficial for coral growth in general.
| hinkley wrote:
| That's what he claimed but I don't think he updated his
| research. Which is why I said "more recently"
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| I wonder if anyone could explain the reef-are-fine idea
| (https://www.australianenvironment.org/gbr-report-2024) that
| seems to contradict the climate-change -> bleaching -> no more
| reefs idea. It looks like crackpottery and is promoted by one
| former academic. But he was fired for talking about it so that
| suggests the climate-change idea is politically enforced and thus
| also untrustworthy. So is Peter Ridd wrong on something or are
| they orthogonal issues or what?
| pvaldes wrote:
| To resume in a couple of paragraphs the outcome of a very
| complex and chaotic system, concerning thousands of different
| species is not realistic. Just assume that this is only a raw
| simplification.
|
| Bleaching is caused by more than one factor. Corals are an
| antique, diverse and rich group of organisms and they know a
| few tricks about survival for millions of years.
| Retric wrote:
| 'But he was fired for talking about it' is a rather bold claim.
| Many people get fired who didn't promote fringe ideas, but
| claiming you got fired for exposing some big lie is great
| publicity. I would suggest looking for evidence before assuming
| someone is telling the truth when they say such things.
|
| As to bleaching it's not an every year or every reef thing. The
| general consensus in terms of recent events only 1998, 2002,
| 2016, 2017, 2020, and 2022 had wide scale impacts and there's
| quite a bit of recovery between those dates and many areas that
| aren't impacted. However, more frequent bad years has impacts
| not just on the ecosystem but also tourism. EX:
| https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/04/10/2016-2017_gbrble...
| somishere wrote:
| Minor omission, but you missed 2024 from your list of mass
| bleaching events. Though I guess it's too early for consensus
| as to the scale of the impact.
| tiahura wrote:
| Returning from French Polynesia it seems like coral engineering
| has made a lot of progress in the last dozen years.
| somishere wrote:
| These rubble stabilisers solve _a_ legecy problem affecting coral
| reefs, namely how to produce a solid substrate for coral to grow
| on, at an infitessimilly small relative scale.
|
| The problem is that they do little for _the_ problem affecting
| coral reefs, namely warming waters and acidification.
|
| They're equivalent to nail clippers for a person with cancer.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-17 23:01 UTC)