Xenia Coral growning on Coffeecrete™. Photo by Rob Peck, Coral Centre.

An Artecology and Coral Centre collaboration has seen a tropical soft-bodied coral (Xenia sp) growing and thriving on an artificial reef structure made using a mix of recycled coffee grounds and a reduced carbon cement binder. The team behind the project are calling the novel medium Coffeecrete™!

Just 18 months after experts at the Hampshire based Coral Centre grafted a tiny piece of the Xenia coral on to the Coffecrete™ artificial reef rock using a technique known as fragging, the Xenia soft bodied coral has spread over the entire substrate surface.

Based on the success of this intial substrate test Artecology and the Coral Centre will now expand their reseach with a new project that will seek to create ‘pre-fragged’ coral reef units called CoralPods™. It’s hoped the new system will help in the restoration of the world’s threatend coral reefs and at the same time engage with the wealth of coral keeping hobbyists around the world whose collective knowldege and expertise has mostly been ignored by the scientific/conservation community until now. Nigel George Director of R&D at Artecology said “There is a huge pool of expertise out there amongst the coral keeping hobbyists, our hope is that we can tap into this knowledge reservoir by engaging them in our R&D work with the Coral Centre”.

Director of The Coral Centre Rob Peck said “This is a fantastic project. As part of our public engagement campaign we’re particularly excited to be working with schools throughout the CoralPod™ trials. This really is citizen science at its best!”