Coral reefs are facing a serious bleaching crisis, but there's hope on the horizen. Scientists are using 3D-printing technology to print artificial reefs resembling the texture and architectural structure of their natural counterparts.
Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau and founder of Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center, and his team have been working on a 3D-printed reef project to replicate natural reefs in the Caribbean.
"We're experimenting with building coral out of what coral is made of," Cousteau told science magazine Popular Mechanism.
His team conducted the experiment by putting 3D-printed reefs on the ocean floor near the Caribbean island of Bonaire.
If the fake reefs successfully trick fishes and even baby coral polyps to inhabit and multiply, this technology can be spread to rehabilitate the fragile coral reef ecosystems in other areas.
Similar experiments are in progress in many other regions.
Dutch maritime company Boskalis is working on a restoration project for Monaco and has printed six reefs to be submerged in the Monaco Larvotto Reserve. The company will then monitor these artificial reefs for two years to see how much of the marine life that occupied the natural reef returns.
"It is an interesting step forward, in terms of putting something back that is really reflective of what was there originally," said Ruth Gates, a marine scientist at the University of Hawaii. "I think it's great."
Coral bleaching is a process in which coral colonies lose their vivid color, which happens when the water is too warm for the microscopic algae living in the organisms.
Australian scientists surveyed the Great Barrier Reef last month and surprisingly found that about a fourth of its coral has been killed off due to a massive bleaching event last year.
Scientists predicted that more than 90 percent of coral will die by 2050 even if the world could halt global warming now.
