Accelerating Biodiversity Recovery with 3D-Printed Reef Tiles
Since archiREEF’s inception in late 2020, the company’s mission has been to help coral reefs find a better, more sustainable home, so they can thrive in an environment that is becoming ever more challenging. In the time since, it has been evident that helping along coral reefs led to a higher survivorship of related species and, with that, a greater biodiversity around the coral reefs we helped restore.
Indeed, to us, it is interesting to see the general sustainability conversation revolve around elements such as carbon neutrality but very rarely focus on biodiversity. Despite the United Nations declaring this to be the decade of ecosystem restoration, again and again, the general public seem drawn to the likes of carbon credits. While there is merit in focusing on CO2 and its capture, preserving or even restoring biodiversity seems to be the main prize, the raison d’etre as it were.
In this context, we have always seen our work to be mainly focused on biodiversity and its preservation and recovery. Consequently, it makes us proud to see archiREEF’s efforts manifest themselves in biodiversity impact. With our pilot deployment in Hong Kong, we have been able to secure 98% survivorship, which is 4X higher than traditional methods, and a significant increase in the diversity of the reef fish and invertebrates.
Our hope is that the world comes together to put biodiversity in the spotlight and that we can collaboratively find a tangible way of measuring biodiversity impact that doesn’t just carry financial benefits but makes positive change in nature visible to the naked eye.