Monday, August 23, 2004

Chia Reef

Grow your own Coral Reef in 3 easy steps.

1. Place electrical wires.
2. Charge wires.
3. Add water and coral.

This is really incredible. When I visited Hanauma Bay in Hawaii for my first snorkeling experience, what I really noticed was the grey sea bottom. All of the coral had died because of people stepping on it. Just by touching the coral with our feet, nothing else would grow on it.

Now, with a bit of electrical and some new seed, we can regrow the sea floor with Super Coral and bring back all life with it. Amazing.

Brown, an Australian who settled in this fishing village of 8,000 people in 1992 and a co-owner of the cottages, said that within days of receiving their first jolts of electricity, the bars grew a white limestone film. This covering provides the necessary substrate for coral growth.

The grids were then seeded with small fragments of live coral, which begin to grow "between five and 10 times faster than normal, with much brighter colors and more resilience to hot weather and pollution," said a co-owner of the Taman Sari Cottages, an American who goes by the single name Naryana.