Changing Planet

Back in the Maldives.

Our next step is to create a safe place for the developing embryos to grow for a few days before being put out onto the damaged Olhuveli Reef.

We set up inflatable pools to act like coral nurseries made from netting that has holes small enough to keep the spawn in, but large enough for water to flow through.

So what we need to do now is transfer the embryos we've got in those cultures which are going well.

Corals are really sensitive.

Their eggs and sperm react really badly to changes in the environment, so we need to protect them as much as possible during this critical early high floating stage at the surface of the water.

So what we're going to do now is inflate these pools that we've developed and then we're going to pop a net inside the pool and then we're going to tow these over and anchor them nearby, and then we're going to transfer those embryos across into the pool and hope we don't get torrential rain, in the next 12 hours.

A bit of trial and error, but it mostly worked well, from the beginning.

What I love about being here in coral, frankly, coral science, is that it's so cutting edge, It's so new in some ways that everything you're seeing, you're seeing for the first time kind of ever.

Every step has such massive chance of failure.

Like, if it rains, it's done.

This pool doesn't blow up.

We're done.

In another world first, this coral nursery is going to hear a soundtrack.

Steve is going to play the sounds of a healthy reef to the baby coral that he will later use to attract them back to the degraded reef.

...and then convince them to go down and settle into these places where they've got a great chance of survival, but they'd never find it.

In the lab you've shown this.

Yeah.

So this is basically trying to replicate it, but with a very large chamber in the open ocean This is an industrial scale.

This is taking it up to the scale that we would need it to be to be able to really restore coral reefs.

That's what I love.

Like it's innovation every step of the way.

It's science, it's engineering, it's natural history, and it's conservation and restoration at a grand scale.

Its that hive mind, isnt it Exactly what you need to solve, things like climate change, right?

It's never going to be solved by one thing with one discipline.

It's got to be cross-disciplinary, and I think that is what is so cool about this.

Down, down, down, down, down.

Okay.

Take it across and pop it in the middle.

Fantastic.

The reef restoration will be an ongoing process.

Peter is going to leave the nursery pool here and train the local team how to use it for future spawning events.

Yeah.

Give it a little push.

Nicely done.

Ready to rock!

Now, one more critical step, which is how do you get this spawn, which is in giant buckets here into the contraption?

One slip and it goes over in the ocean, and the experiment is done for at least a month, if not more.

Steady, steady, steady.

Okay, you ready?

Careful!

Yep.

Ready.

Keep it even.

Keep it even.

Right.

...and now, gently pour it in.

Whoohoo!

Babies!