Skip to main content

Preliminary Research and Documentation

The following research and documentation is meant to get this project started. Please consider this a work in progress. Significant work is needed to move this project forward.

Requirements Algae farm

  • Structure

    Algae and Materialmicroalgae need sunlight, water and carbon dioxide sunlight to grow. - NaturalAlgae coralsfarms areinstalled madenear industrial areas use the carbon dioxide emissions from industries, and help in purifying air naturally. 

    They can be grown in either a closed loop system or in a open tray system.

    A closed loop system is built by creating an array of calciumtransparent carbonate (limestone). We need to investigate if we can print using calcium carbonate and other materialspipes that are are sturdy and eco-friendly. The structure must be sturdy enoughexposed to withstandsunlight. underwaterThese currents and impact by big fish. The coloring must look natural.

  • Inside the structure - The structure needs to have chambers or crevices that fish can use to hide from predators. Or make it their home. Fish love that. When designing the structure, we need to ensure that there is enough natural lighting in the crevices. Also we need to investigate if we can add artificial lighting and maybe even a camera to study polyps and other marine life.
  • Rooting the structure - Natural corals tend to grow roots and grow into the in the ocean bed. The 3D printed coral must have a rooting structure thatpipes can be drilledinstalled intovertically or horizontally depending available space.

    An open tray system is an array of channels that are exposed to sunlight. These need more space since the oceanchannels floor.are Thisalways willinstalled make the overall structure sturdy enough to withstand under water currents and impact by big fish.

image-1616588401769.png

Figure 3 - Coral reef installationhorizontally.

 

References

When

Incultivating 1997algae on algae farms, there are some basic requirements for producing a good stock, regardless of the firstspecies. SayaLight, de Malha expedition was conducted by Wolf Hilbertz, Thomas Goreau, Kai Hilbertzwater, and Carolineminerals Mekie.are Dueall important ingredients in producing healthy algae. So is carbon dioxide. This combination produces the energy algae needs to the distance and cost of getting there, only 1.5 days could be spent on site on the North Bank. Several dives were conducted, about 1.5 hours of underwater video was taken documenting the fauna and flora, and a small Biorock™ coral nursery was constructed, powered by a single floating solar panel. The area was found to be dominated by seagrasses, but small coral reefs were found with a very high diversity of coral and fish species. 

Surprisingly these reefs were not dominated by any one group of corals, as is typical of most Indian Ocean reefs. Instead the coral populations consisted of small numbers of many different groups of corals, widely distributed. The larger corals were mostly rounded heads of Porites, or clumps of columnar Heliopora or Millepora, with smaller corals of many kinds around them. Many corals were observed to be loosely attached to the bottom, and many were being attacked by boring sponges, by several distinct coral diseases, or had algae overgrowing their edges.

Detailed information is available in the Saya de Malha Expedition (2002) report.

Also See

Dr. David Vaughan at the Mote Laboratory is growing coral 40 times faster than in the wild. The lab takes a coral that is about as big as a golf ball and cut it into 20 to 100 micro-fragments. Each fragment grows back in a few months. Detailed information and links are available in the Micro-Fragmenting report.

 grow.

Marine Restoration - Coral Reefs 

 

Licensing

This project is being developed as an open-source project with the following licensing:

Back to top