Our rrreefs journey began in 2019 off the coast of Magoodhoo Island in Fafoo Atoll, where we hung our first tiles, underwater, to test the material and surface topography of our bricks. Now three years later, we couldn’t be more proud of our work.
(check the project here to know more about it)
Not only have baby corals settled on our tiles without any additional help from humans, but they have already reached a considerable size and grown into truly beautiful specimens, as you can see in the pictures below.
We installed 81 tiles in 5 different spots. Then Covid hit and no one looked at the experiment for 15 months. In March 2021 we counted 49 tiny baby corals (30 corals per m2), and now – not even two years later – they are HUGE!
Not only that, also almost all of them seem to have survived. We are still waiting for detailed images from our collaborators, but the few we got in December 2022 show that we even missed quite a few corals back then.
The right material and surface topography does make a difference, these survival rates are higher than reported on natural reefs in the Maldives.
We couldn’t be more proud.
Our aim is to develop the best reef system for natural coral recruitment and survival. Our first reef – built in Colombia in Sept 2021 – is now 15 months old, and thus at the stage that these Maldivian tiles were in March 2021.
The findings have been part of the planning and development of our Brick Model 2.0.
We cannot wait to see what it will look like after 3 years in the water. ❤️
pictures: Dr. Davide Seveso from the MaRHE Research Center, University of Milano Bicocca