Scuba divers in Australia have taken advantage of travel restrictions in 2020 to plant coral at the Great Barrier Reef. Eco tourism company Passions of Paradise, which usually runs scuba dives over the famous reef, has instead being attaching new coral to the beleaguered organism as part of a project called the Coral Nurture Program, which has seen more than 1,000 pieces of coral attached to the reef by various diving groups.
For the project, managed by the University of Technology Sydney, the divers attach the coral to the reef by “clipping”, whereby fragments that have naturally broken off are attached to nursery frames, where they regrow. As they grow, more fragments are removed from them and attached to the original reef. The method means there is a constant source of new coral to attach to the reef.
The Great Barrier Reef, which is actually a network of thousands of individual reefs and islands, spans more than 2,300km. However, in recent years it has suffered catastrophic bleaching – when a reef expels the symbiotic algae living in its tissue, turning it white – due to rising sea temperatures in the Pacific.
This project by researchers and the local tourism industry will hopefully expand into a continuous solution to save this vital underwater ecosystem.
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Scuba divers in Australia have taken advantage of travel restrictions in 2020 to plant coral at the Great Barrier Reef. Eco tourism company Passions of Paradise, which usually runs scuba dives over the famous reef, has instead being attaching new coral to the beleaguered organism as part of a project called the Coral Nurture Program, which has seen more than 1,000 pieces of coral attached to the reef by various diving groups.
For the project, managed by the University of Technology Sydney, the divers attach the coral to the reef by “clipping”, whereby fragments that have naturally broken off are attached to nursery frames, where they regrow. As they grow, more fragments are removed from them and attached to the original reef. The method means there is a constant source of new coral to attach to the reef.
The Great Barrier Reef, which is actually a network of thousands of individual reefs and islands, spans more than 2,300km. However, in recent years it has suffered catastrophic bleaching – when a reef expels the symbiotic algae living in its tissue, turning it white – due to rising sea temperatures in the Pacific.
This project by researchers and the local tourism industry will hopefully expand into a continuous solution to save this vital underwater ecosystem.