Artificial reef success in the sea off Pulau Tioman, Pahang May 10, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : Conservation , trackback
Corals take a long time to grow, at a rate of around 1cm per year, and therefore once damaged, underwater habitats can take many years to recover, if at all. Work is being done to try and rebuild some of these damaged corals and environmental science graduate Wong Leong Sze of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) has been spending the last two years cultivating corals on a new artificial reef called Aquascape, designed by an enthusiastic underwater photographer and advertising executive, Daniel D’Orville, says the article from the Malaysian Star
With almost 20 years of scuba diving behind him, D’Orville has seen much destruction of reefs as a result of development and pollution.
“I’ve always wanted to do something to restore degraded coral reefs. Corals take a long time to grow, probably 1cm a year. To help the reef expand and regenerate, they need a stable base to grow on.”
Having kept a close watch on the Aquascape reef, Wong Leong Sze is optimistic and happy with the coral growth so far. Coral fragments which he had transplanted onto the cement mounds in September as part of his masters research programme, have grown between 1mm and 8mm. A few have sprouted an impressive 2cm.
But what satisfies him most is the large number of coral juveniles which have settled on the Aquascape, most of which are too tiny to be discernible to non-scientists. After all, this was the whole reason behind placing the Aquascape in the sea – to provide a hard surface or substrate for coral larvae to attach themselves to and grow.
Apart from corals, various species of marine invertebrates such as sea urchins, sea cucumbers, crinoids and cushion stars, as well as marine snails and fish have sought refuge at the Aquascape reef.
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