Rescue Robot will help revive the Great Barrier Reef of Australia

For the first time, an undersea robot will be used to plant coral babies in parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef damaged by mass laundering, while scientists plan to collect hundreds of millions of corals spawned off the coast from the city of Cairns in Queensland in the coming weeks.

Most corals reproduce by spawning, where eggs and sperm are pushed into the water at the same time. In northern Australia, researchers are preparing to exploit this massive release of coral spawning grounds on the Great Barrier Reef. They will be raised in baby corals in floating pens. Then they will be delivered as "larval clouds" to Vlasoff Reef, about an hour's sailing from Cairns by a semi-autonomous robot.

Professor Peter Harrison, director of the Marine Ecology Research Center at Southern Cross University, said science is giving nature a boost.

"What we are trying to do now is to compensate for the loss of corals that would normally provide enough larvae for the system to heal naturally," Harrison said.

Large areas of the Australian Great Barrier Reef have been damaged by extensive bleaching – or the loss of algae that gives color to the coral. Bleaching is caused by rising water temperatures and aggravated by climate change.

The experience on Vlasoff Reef, which has been hit hard by mass laundering, will be coordinated by divers who will guide the spawning robot, known as LarvalBot.

Professor Matthew Dunbabin of the Queensland University of Technology said that time was a critical factor.

"In future projects, we hope to start doing it more autonomously, but this is a very new issue and we are at the forefront of trying to put this on the ground on the ground. as quickly as possible to be able to count on a reef to preserve, "said Dunbabin.

A coral reef is made up of millions of tiny animals called coral polyps. Reefs are critical ecosystems and host at least a quarter of marine species.

The Great Barrier Reef is about the same size as Italy or Japan. Thirty species of whales, dolphins and porpoises have been recorded along the reef.

It faces a series of threats, from climate change to overfishing, pollution from farms, to the crown of thorny starfish that feed on coral.