Millions of tiny corals on the Great Barrier Reef have a new mommy—an underwater robot christened the “LarvalBot.”
The black-and-yellow submersibles, which are roughly the length of a skateboard, are part of an ambitious project to conserve the Great Barrier Reef by seeding it with coral larvae, which can grow and help to regenerate damaged areas. The iconic ecosystem has suffered numerous coral bleaching events over the last two decades, overwhelmingly attributed to climate change.
“We aim to have two or three robots ready for the November spawn. One will carry about 200,000 larvae and the other about 1.2 million,” Matthew Dunbabin, a professor of science and engineering at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology, said in a statement on Thursday.
Coral bleaching can occur when too-warm water temperatures cause them to expel their zooxanthellae—tiny photosynthetic algae that symbiotically inhabit coral tissue, and supply it with up to 90 percent of its energy. Without these organisms, coral appear white and skeletonized. Their absence also makes coral vulnerable to mortality. A 2016 ocean heatwave around the Great Barrier Reef was associated with mass die-offs of 30 percent of its coral population.
But sometimes corals can bounce back, and that’s where LarvalBot can help.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
