Climate change and pollution are tag-teaming to destroy natural coral reefs that clean our oceans and house thousands of sea creatures. Since climate change and pollution are man-made problems, some cities, like Miami, are trying to come up with man-made solutions. Enter the Concrete Coral, a project from nonprofit organization Reefline, aiming to turn life beneath the waves of Miami’s coastline into an art gallery with a functional, environmentally friendly purpose.
The AP reports that these man-made coral sculptures are shaped like cars and are made from marine-grade concrete. They’ll soon be covered in 2,200 native corals grown in a local Miami lab, many of which survived the near-cataclysmic 2023 mass bleaching event that killed off thousands of coral species along Miami’s coastline.
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The reef sculptures were designed by artist Leandro Erlich and dreamed up by REEFLINE founder Ximena Caminos with architect Shohei Shigematsu. Miami Beach is backing the project with a $5 million bond and the promise of more to come in the form of a proposed 11-phase, $40 million corridor of reefs stretching along the city’s seven-mile coast.
Future installments included a giant blue whale heart called Heart of Okeanos and a sprawling, star-shaped reef titled The Miami Reef Star. Each addition will “attract a lot more life and add biodiversity and really kind of push the envelope of artificial reef-building here in Florida,” said Colin Foord, who runs REEFLINE’s Miami coral lab.
The project is multifaceted. It’s an art project mixed with environmentalism and bioengineering, with a little bit of tourism sprinkled in, as Miami is hoping that it will attract snorkelers, divers, and cattle to come out to see these aquatic sculpture gardens just 20 feet below the surface for themselves.
None of this is going to stop climate change, but it might be able to mitigate its effects while humanity gets its act together.
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