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New gel could boost coral reef restoration
Researchers at UC San Diego have developed a gel using nano-particles that slowly release some of coral larvae’s favorite “smells.” When applied to surfaces in lab experiments it increased coral larvae settlement by up to 20 times compared to untreated surfaces.
“Coral are animals, and their larvae are selective about where they are going to attach because once they do, they’re stuck there,” said Daniel Wangpraseurt, the study’s senior author and a marine biologist at Scripps with a previous appointment in UC San Diego’s Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering. Postdoctoral researcher Samapti Kundu works with the gel SNAP-X in the Coral Reef Ecophysiology and Engineering Lab at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. However, Wangpraseurt suggested that their material could be adapted to other species or areas by loading SNAP-X with coral settlement-promoting chemicals collected from suitable crustose coralline algae that are locally present.
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