A Million Little Pieces: The Race to Rebuild the World’s Coral Reefs
WiredLisa Carne was swimming through a bed of seagrass in northern Belize when she saw a hunk of elkhorn coral lying loose on the sandy bottom. Today, Carne’s nonprofit, Fragments of Hope, works with local fishers to identify promising spots and track the fate of every piece of coral they place on the reef. Coral restoration has not summed up to even 1/100,000th of the area of shallow coral reefs worldwide.” Coral reefs anchor some of the most vibrant ecosystems on the planet, home to a quarter of the oceans’ biodiversity in a tiny fraction of their total area. Half a billion people worldwide depend directly on reefs to protect their coastlines, support local fish populations, and attract tourists. Ruth Gates, the late coral biologist and director of the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology, told the The New Yorker in 2016 that she couldn’t bear the idea that future generations may not experience coral reefs: “We’re at this point where we need to throw caution to the wind and just try.’’ To rebuild reefs at scale takes a different kind of effort—and, perhaps, a different kind of person.
History of this topic
Restored coral reefs show incredible speed of recovery: Study
Live Mint
Indonesia leads the way in restoring coral reefs, scientists say
Al Jazeera
Coral reefs and their benefits have declined by half since the 1950s
The Independent
New coral reef restoration technology aims to reverse climate change damage
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