Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef Preservation; Scientists are Finding ways to Protect it by Zapping it with Electricity

Science

An Environmental group is look ahead of a new way of restoring the “GBR (Great Barrier Reef) in Australia. They want to make use of electricity for accelerating growth. Named as “Reef Ecologic”, the team is performing a trial method to see if such technique works, as reported by New Scientist. This has involvement of making use of steel frameworks and electricity distribution through them for generating growth. This idea has been into consideration for over a period now, involving projects in the Caribbean, South East Asia, and the Indian Ocean using the stimuli of electricity in such a way. This last approach will be using the same method for enhancing the GBR’s health.

Back in 2015 the BBC Future explained that a low power stream is functioned by the steel, and this electricity differs from the minerals present in the sea water, which is responsible for the growth of the solid limestone on the structure. It makes use of the electrolysis principle, where a chemical reaction is caused by such an electrical current, that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. The trial of Reef Ecological is now under way in one GBR’s part 100 kilometres north of the Cairns. This region was strongly affected by the massive coral bleaching events back in 2016 and 2017. New Scientists marked that it will consume almost a decade for the Coral to grow back naturally, but such a bioroids can boost up the process. A study back in 2016 found out 93% of the GBR had been distressed by bleaching as an outcome of a mass event in coral bleaching. Due to climatic shifts, such events could take place at least once in every five years.

Coral bleaching is generally caused by temperatures of warmer water, as its name states, it then turns the coral into white at the moment algae in their tissues are evicted. Such thing doesn’t kill a coral but it surely makes them weak. Back in 2005, half of the corals reefs were lost by US in the Caribbean.