Breathing life into corals

Just as climate change is responsible for causing dire effects on the ecosystem on land, its effect on the marine ecosystem is as palpable. One of the most disheartening manifestations of the latter is the deterioration and the decline of coral reefs all across the world. The beautiful, multi-colored colonies of polyps are now turning into clusters of bleached skeletons due to increased human intervention and rise in temperature. This sorry sight prompted a 17-year-old Mumbai teenager, Siddharth Pillai, to start a dialogue around marine conservation. And within a year, Siddharth has become the first Indian to build a modular artificial coral reef in Pondicherry.

Reminiscing about the moment he was met with inspiration, he says, “Last year, when I participated in a fish identification course, I learned the difference between the bleached coral and normal coral. So, we went to inspect a reef that has undergone a bleaching effect, and there were just dead white crushed corals. It was disgusting to see how something so beautiful had just died. I told myself that I will do something about it. Everybody owes something to the ecosystem because we have been destroying it for the last hundred years.”

Talking about one of the most significant reasons for coral deterioration, Siddharth holds the rise in ocean temperature caused by global warming as a culprit. Elaborating further, he says, “Corals are actually animals called polyps, and they form a symbiotic relationship with bacteria in the ocean. While the bacteria serve as the food producer for the polyps, the latter serves as home to the former. So what happens is that when the ocean temperature rises above 30 degree Celsius, say 31 to 32 degree Celsius, as a defense mechanism, the coral lets goes of the bacteria, and eventually dies.”

After spending time researching at the Pondicherry based diving center Temple Adventures during his summer break last year, Siddharth returned to the city and started making moulds for the reef, using 3D printers. He spent 30 days in designing and experimenting before he landed up with a triangular block structure with ridges, grooves, and holes for the corals to latch on to.

“What artificial reefs do is that they give polyps an artificial base to grow on because corals are polyps that build upon a calcium layer. These artificial reefs give them that calcium layer to build off from, rather than not growing at all. So, I wanted to make this structure very complex and porous so that it attracts polyps to latch on to,” says the 11th standard student from B.D Somani School. To give the polyps the calcium base, he used dolomite - a type of calcium carbonate, and cement to add strength to the structure.

In October last year, he immersed these blocks on the seabed off Pondicherry and claims to have received a successful result so much so that he has even been granted a patent by the Indian patent office. “It had begun to show results in a mere three months of what it would have usually taken seven to eight months,” he says. Inspired by the result, he crowdfunded a more elaborate and larger reef called, Bennington Reef (named after Chester Bennington of Linkin Park), and is planning to open a Reef Rehabilitation Program that will enable people to buy these blocks at meager sums and give their contribution towards coral conservation.