Reef Restoration Technique Inspired by Coral’s Healing Properties

Innovation: Industry

Coral Vita

Image: USFWS/Jim Maragos / Flickr /

Regulate Reproduction or Growth

Reproduction and growth are two physiological processes that occur in all living systems. There are situations when conditions are right for both, and other situations when continuing either harms the living system because both have a very high energy cost. Reproduction and growth are unique in that both can stop until conditions improve, although stopping either for an extended time can cause problems. An example of regulating reproduction is a process called delayed implantation or embryonic diapause found in some mammals, such as otters. An otter’s embryos sometimes temporarily cease developing and won’t develop further until the female senses that conditions are suitable.

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Maintain Biodiversity

The greater the amount of genetic and species variation in an ecosystem, the more resilient that ecosystem is to disturbances. Variation in ecosystems across the Earth also contributes to the Earth’s resilience to unpredictable changes. This variation is called biodiversity. Because living systems compete with each other for scarce resources, maintaining biodiversity involves creating conditions for a large variety of species to successfully co-occur and reproduce. For example, within a wetland, there are different vegetation types. This diversity results in a complex mosaic of microenvironments as the vegetation types alter air flows, light regimes, and water temperatures and chemistry. Because organisms vary in their ideal environmental conditions, these micro-environments increase the diversity of plants in the wetland. In turn, having a wetland in an otherwise dry area increases biodiversity at an even larger scale.

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Control Erosion and Sediment

Ecosystems must maintain their soils on site and prevent it from being washed away. Organic matter, minerals, and other nutrients in soil support organisms from microorganisms to the largest mammals. But because of the pull of gravity, water flows unless impeded. Therefore, the presence and actions of many, diverse organisms hold soils in place and slow water to allow sediments to settle out rather than be washed downhill. For example, in forests, downed logs that fall crossways to the slope efficiently slow water flow, trapping soils carried by the water and causing water to soak into the soil. In areas lacking logs and other structures, water can flow so fast that it cuts into the soil, causing erosion that washes the soil away.

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Manage Disturbance in a Community

When environmental conditions change, they can disrupt an ecosystem’s equilibrium. Excessive rain can cause flooding and drought can cause forest fires. An ecosystem must be resilient to such disturbances. Disturbances are unpredictable in location, size, and intensity, so ecosystems must be able to regrow and must have a variety of duplicate forms, processes, or systems that are dispersed in location. For example, a forest ecosystem can recover from fire because diverse organisms play different roles in different ways and in different locations. Many organisms can resprout or grow from seeds triggered by fire, and their dispersed distribution ensures that an entire population isn’t decimated. Though the recovered ecosystem may look totally different from the pre-fire one, the ecosystem as a whole remains healthy.

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Cooperate Within the Same Species

A species is a group of organisms capable of breeding to produce fertile offspring. When individuals within a species undertake activities that benefit one another, that cooperation benefits not just the individuals, but also local and wider populations of that species. Collaborating in activities such as finding food, controlling parasites, and protecting from predators enhances overall survival. To cooperate, there must be enough benefit to an individual, and especially to a population, to justify any risk taken by individuals. Through cooperation, risk is distributed among individuals and the benefits to the community are greater than the sum of the benefits to individuals. An example is birds that gather in flocks, a cooperative activity more beneficial than acting alone. While some birds forage, others watch for predators. When one finds food, others also feed on it. Despite potential short-term competition for an individual that finds food, over the long-term, that same individual benefits when others find different food sources.

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Coral Vita grows climate change-resilient corals up to 50 times faster than usual growth by harnessing corals’ natural healing processes through micro fragmentation on land-based farms.

Benefits

Accelerates coral growth rates
Makes corals more resilient to climate change
Allows for large-scale restoration

Applications

Restoration as a Service (RaaS)
Habitat and biodiversity conservation
Ecotourism
Fisheries
Shoreline protection

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 9: Industry Innovation & Infrastructure
Goal 14: Life Below Water

The Challenge

The planet has lost more than half of its living coral since 1950, a result of climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, and pollution. Coral farming is proven to help restore reefs, but traditional ocean-based farms are limited in scale, species diversity, and geography, and the corals they cultivate are still vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change.

Biological Model

When pieces of coral are broken off of a reef (by a wave, for example), a natural healing process kicks in. Detecting the open space around the break, the individual coral polyps redirect their energy from producing gametes for sexual reproduction that will send baby corals far and wide. Instead, the polyps focus on growing larger and reproducing by budding––cloning themselves in place. As broken fragments grow, they also can fuse with other pieces nearby, protecting themselves by becoming part of a larger, stronger, and safer colony once again.

See Related Strategy

Many tinyt polyps make up a large undulating coral colony

Biological Strategy

Corals Break Up to Build Back

Corals

Coral colonies shift energy from spawning to budding to rapidly repair or rejoin broken elements.

Innovation Details

Coral Vita is a startup harnessing the functions and techniques of micro fragmentation to effectively grow corals on land-based farms. Corals are broken into tiny pieces and placed near each other to trigger healing and fusion, a process that can greatly accelerate coral growth. Coral Vita developed land-based farms to have the opportunity to optimize the tanks’ conditions either to promote growth or to intentionally stress growing corals to prepare them for warming and more acidic oceans. Once the corals have matured enough, they’re transplanted into the wild and monitored.

With these techniques, Coral Vita is able to grow a wide variety of species, including all-important massive corals, which serve as the building blocks of reefs but typically grow too slowly to be useful for restoration projects.

Unusual in the coral restoration space, Coral Vita uses a for-profit commercial model, with the goal of finding more financially sustainable pathways to fund ecosystem-scale conservation, envisioning large-scale, high-tech, land-based coral farms in every country with a reef.

Video: Climate Change-Resilient Corals Grow Up to 50x Faster Using This Natural Healing Process

The Human Factor

During their graduate work at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Coral Vita cofounders Sam Teicher and Gator Halpern were sitting on a porch and talking about environmental issues that weren’t being solved fast enough. Halpern and Teicher (a longtime scuba diver who had worked at a coral farm in Mauritius) landed on coral reef conservation and restoration.

With early guidance from their advisor, biologist David Vaughan, who discovered the effects of micro fragmentation, and Ruth Gates of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, who helped pioneer methods to improve corals’ resilience, they developed a business plan for a cutting-edge, commercial coral farming business—one that capitalizes on corals’ own natural healing properties to accelerate growth and on evolution to strengthen individuals. “These organisms—part animal, part plant, part rock—are underwater city builders,” they say. “There’s no better inspiration than coral.”

Ray of Hope Accelerator

The Ray of Hope Accelerator supports an annual cohort of ten high-impact nature-inspired startups representing various sectors and regions addressing the world’s biggest environmental and sustainability challenges. The accelerator builds upon years of experience as the Ray of Hope Prize. Created in honor of Ray C. Anderson, founder of Interface, Inc. and a business and sustainability leader, the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize (2020-2023) shone a light on the innovative, nature-inspired solutions that we need to build a sustainable and resilient world. Coral Vita was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Ray of Hope Prize.

Sun rays filter through the forest canopy and shine upon a rocky creek

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The Ray of Hope Accelerator supports nature-inspired solutions addressing the world's biggest environmental and social challenges.

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