The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) is attempting for the first time a process to restore coral reefs in the Gulf of Kutch using biorock or mineral accretion technology. Gujarat’s Forest Department is also helping in this attempt.
A biorock structure was installed one nautical mile off the Mithapur coast in the Gulf of Kutch on January 19.
What is Biorock?
- Biorock Technology, also called mineral accretion technology is a method that applies safe, low voltage electrical currents through seawater, causing dissolved minerals to crystallize on structures, growing into a white limestone similar to that which naturally makes up coral reefs and tropical white sand beaches.
- This material has a strength similar to concrete. It can be used to make robust artificial reefs on which corals grow at very rapid rates. The change in the environment produced by electrical currents accelerates formation and growth of both chemical limestone rock and the skeletons of corals and other shell-bearing organisms
Gulf of Kutch example
- The location for installing the biorock had been chosen keeping in mind the high tidal amplitude in the Gulf of Kutch. The low tide depth where the biorock has been installed is four metres, and at high tide it is about eight metres.
Success rate
- In 2015, the ZSI scientists with the support of the Gujarat Forest Department had successfully restored branching coral species (staghorn corals) belonging to the family Acroporidae (Acropora formosa, Acropora humilis, Montipora digitata) that had gone extinct about 10,000 years ago to the Gulf of Kutch.
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