Reef recovery
A report recently published in the journal Marine that extensively reviewed three decades of coral reef conservation in Indonesia, documenting 533 restoration projects across the country, has found that only 16 per cent of them included post-installation monitoring, key for long-term fruition. One community-led coral project has, however, been revealed to be a rare success. Residents of Gili Trawangan Island self-funded their restoration project, testing methods they learned on the internet to maintain small coral reef gardens around the coast. The results have surprised scientists, showing the benefit of community involvement and post-monitoring care when it comes to reviving coral reefs.
In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sank. The resulting oil spill was the largest in history, discharging more than four million barrels of crude oil into the sea. Twelve years later, scientists are still wondering where it has all gone. Now, a team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA has discovered that nearly ten per cent is likely to have been dissolved into seawater by sunlight, a process known as photo-dissolution. The team used LED reactors to test what happens to oil under different types of light and in different hypothetical spill scenarios. The findings may help to improve our understanding of where the rest of the oil is going.