Robot arms are being trained in Western Australia to restore coral reefs with positive early results
Fish in a hundred vibrant shades flit between monumental towers of coral and the waving jelly arms of sea anemones. The colours and diversity of life on a tropical coral reef can be dazzling. Such a habitat, with its base of solid rock-like coral, can appear almost indestructible. But sadly, that is just an illusion and coral is in dire straits.
As many people know, although it often looks like colourful rock, coral is a community of invertebrates known as polyps. These soft-bodied creatures form hard exoskeletons by extracting calcium carbonate from the sea which, over time, grow to become coral reefs.
These corals are highly sensitive to changes in their environment and in recent years many of the world’s coral reefs have been impacted by coral bleaching. As oceans warm, the coral becomes stressed, which leads them to expel the symbiotic, nutrient–providing algae that live within them and give the coral its colour. The polyps revert to their transparent state, causing them to appear white, as if they have been ‘bleached’, which – if the waters remain warm and they are unable to take on more algae, will cause them to eventually die.
In the period between 2009 and 2020 there was a 14 per cent worldwide decline in coral, which was largely caused by sustained coral bleaching. And the situation is expected to get worse, with scientists estimating that a 1.5C increase in water temperatures would see 70-90 per cent of the world’s coral reefs destroyed. In fact, some scientists estimate that by 2070 there is a very real danger that there will be no healthy coral reefs left anywhere.
Coral reef restoration programs have been in existence for some time but these tend to be a labour-intensive and very slow process that cannot hope to restore all the world’s reefs. Now though AI technology could be coming to the rescue. In the Abrolhos Islands, 60km (40 miles) off the coast of Western Australia an innovative new project is underway to restore coral reefs using a mixture of robots and AI technology. Small bits of coral are grafted into special limestone bases which are then planted on the sea floor.
This technique speeds up the process of rejuvenating coral reefs but planting the required amount of coral cuttings by hand is very repetitive and time-consuming so robot arms are being trained through AI to do the task instead of people. At the moment, the technology is still in the development phase, but initial lab results are encouraging and it’s hoped that once the robot arms hit the sea they will greatly speed up the process of reef restoration.
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As well as robot coral gardeners, technology is also being used to protect and enhance coral growth in other ways. Clouds act as a kind of natural parasol and the more – and brighter – cloud there is the cooler the ocean below. Scientists are experimenting with the idea of injecting sea salt into ocean clouds. If the technique works then scientists believe that the injected clouds can be brightened by up to 5 per cent, which would help keep the planet – and the coral reefs – cooler.
Another, perhaps even more bizarre technology-driven solution to coral destruction, is through singing like a fish. We can’t really hear it, but coral reefs are noisy places and by training computer algorithms to analyse underwater sounds, scientists are hoping to understand the noises that indicate a healthy coral reef ecosystem. And, once they have that information, the idea is to erect loudspeakers on the sea bed which would be used to attract fish and other coral animals back to the reef system by playing recordings of the sound of a healthy coral ecosystem.
All of this technology is very much in its infancy, but if all goes according to plan there’s the chance that in the future Nemo will have plenty of healthy coral reef to play on.
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