I have begun researching sustainable materials for a large scale coral restoration project in Cuba…here is an excerpt from my travel blog from last November 2022.
After many hours for traveling on a dusty potholed road from Havana we finally reached Guanahacabibes peninsula …as the sunset I looked down to the pile of coral bones that made up the beach under my feet. This was not my first time on a shore like this the coasts were the same composition dried coral skeletons where I studied reef restoration in Indonesia off the Gili Trawangan where I studied biorock , the process by which ligh volts of electricity using the anodic -cathodic process grows a layer of calcium carbonate 3x’s the strength of concrete . …
The question arose then as it does now “Why not use these bleached skeletons of coral for substrates? The calcium carbonate- lime and texture is what coral larvae crave! It is so simple and SO much better and potentially more efficient than imported concrete- a substance whose production is responsible for 10 percent of the holes in our biosphere’s ozone layer… anyway I am on it ! Coral bones pictured here with a barracuda jaw…