Submarine drone to rebuild reefs damaged by climate change

Since August 2018, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia has a special protector: an autonomous underwater drone called RangerBot that monitors the status of the reef and protects the corals from the reefs. predatory starfish. But now, researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia, have announced that the RangerBot has a new mission: it must be renamed "LarvalBot" and will be reused to spread coral babies.

Scientists have collected hundreds of millions of corals from coral survivors of the Great Barrier Reef who have not yet succumbed to coral bleaching. These are then reared in small corals in special floating pens. Once they have grown enough to survive, they are delivered by the LarvalBot to a designated area of ​​the reef. If necessary, many coral larvae can be distributed at one time in a "larval cloud" that can cover an entire damaged area of ​​a reef. This technique is called larval restoration and may be the best hope for reefs for the future.

The next large-scale coral spawning is planned for the end of November and, with the help of LarvalBot, coral larvae should be able to spread up to 100 times faster than they could do alone. Two or three robots will transport a total of 1.4 million larvae, which they will scatter over an area of ​​1500 square meters per hour per robot. This intervention is necessary because of the enormous damage to coral reefs caused by climate change, which has led to the massive death of reefs in the world and in Australia in particular. The phenomenon of coral bleaching is of particular concern because the rise in sea temperature causes corals to lose their symbiotic seaweed and consequently their color, which kills them outright if they are not controlled.

Professor Matthew Dunbabin of QUT's Institute for Future Environments, who is responsible for the QUT robotics team, is optimistic about the potential of bot technology. "This could revolutionize coral restoration on reefs around the world," he said in a statement shared by the university. "Although this is new, we have tested different technologies and are convinced of its success."