A project by Coral Vita is one of the five winners of Prince William's Earthshot Prize. As one of the winners, Revive Our Oceans has won £1 million.
The project was started by best friends Sam Teicher and Gator Halpern. Coral Vita makes use of special tanks to grow corals much faster on land before repainting them back in the ocean.
Project That Grows Corals Wins Earthshot Prize
A project that uses special tanks to grow corals faster on land before planting them back in the ocean is one of the winners of the Earthshot Prize. Scientists have long been studying the replanting of corals as a solution to the problem of corals dying.
The project was started by two best friends in the Bahamas, according to a report by the BBC, who put up Coral Vita.
"Using special tanks, they have developed a way to grow coral up to 50 times faster than they normally take in nature," said the BBC.
According to the Earthshot website, the two best friends also work with communities in the Bahamas as well as private companies and government officials to educate people about the environment as well as to create new jobs and increase funding for environmental protection.
Per the Earthshot website, "With Coral Vita's methods, a single farm could potentially supply coral for an entire nation, and they ultimately envision a network of such farms in every nation with reefs, kickstarting a restoration economy to preserve the ecosystems that sustain us all."
Related Article: Laboratory-Bred 'Super Corals' May Help Repopulate Disappearing Great Barrier Reef
How Coral Vita Does It
According to the Coral Vita website, they follow five steps in their restoration process:
Assess - Coral Vita first studies a reef and its water quality to identify a possible restoration site
Create - A restoration plan is then developed, which include the specific coral species that will be grown
Raise - Corals are grown using accelerated growth and improved resiliency methods. This is done on land.
Install - The sufficiently mature corals are replanted in the ocean
Monitor - Coral Vita monitors the restoration progress
The Coral Vita website mentions the use of micro fragmentation, which allows them to "accelerate coral growth rates by up to 50x, growing mature species in months rather than decades while vastly expanding the diversity of species for restoration."
The Earthshot Prize
Coral Vita is one of the five winners of this year's Earthshot Prize, which is an annual award created by Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, as a reward for people who are trying to save the environment.
Other winners of this year's Earthshot Prizes include a project from India that uses a portable machine to make fertilizers out of agricultural waste and the Republic of Costa Rica, which won the prize for a project that involves paying local citizens to help restore the country's natural ecosystems.
The City of Milan Food Waste Hubs from Italy also won Earthshot this year for their project that involves collecting unused food and giving it to those who need them. A project from Thailand, Germany, and Italy that uses renewable energy to make hydrogen is also a prize winner this year.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Isabella James
