The following is a transcript of the podcast: Episode 121: Industrial designer and founder of Reef Design Lab Alex Goad talks about the amazing things you can do with coral reef restoration technology

Coral reefs around the world are at the receiving end of environmental pressures and human actions, resulting in almost irreparable damage to the undersea landscape.

Factors such as ocean acidification, polluted river runoff, destructive fishing practices, and coral bleaching caused by warming ocean temperatures have wreaked havoc on the coral ecosystem.

Industrial designer and founder of Reef Design Lab, Alex Goad explains how his Modular Artificial Reef Structure or MARS for short, can provide a simple, economical and sustainable solution for underwater coral farming and marine restoration.

Coral farming has a long history, with conventional practices using underwater structures such as coral trees, bio rock structures, steel tables, PVC pipes and concrete blocks to grow fragged corals. Looking for a way to create more permanent structures in a simpler way,

Goad developed MARS as a 3D-printed ceramic LEGO-like structure designed to rebuild the substrate for coral restoration. Combining digital fabrication technologies with traditional techniques, Goad’s modular artificial reef structure can help repair the damage to the marine environment by providing the substrate for various colonising species to grow on while also creating habitats for different marine lives.

MARS is specifically designed for coral reef environments and especially for coral farming projects, but takes a very small, targeted restoration approach, says Goad.

“It can be manufactured locally, deployed using small boats and literally built up like a large underwater LEGO system. The system is essentially a lattice structure, which acts as a substrate for coral to be transplanted onto as well as creating a protective space for various reef species.”

One of MARS’ earliest deployments was on Summer Island, Maldives in 2018 on an existing coral farm. On a recent visit to the island, Goad found that a lot of healthy coral growth had transplanted onto the system as well as natural recruits, with several different species also using the system.

While MARS is still not a really cost-effective solution, he believes the success of the Maldives project holds promise for the future as restoration efforts are scaled up. However, the Maldives project has led to research collaborations with various groups including the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and Melbourne University on using digital fabrication techniques for marine restoration.

Emphasising the need for targeted and manufactured approaches to artificial reef building, Goad says that the systems can be optimised for various species to achieve greater colonisation.

While MARS was originally developed for coral farming, there are clear uses for wave attenuation as well for application in coastal protection in areas such as Maldives, which are experiencing a lot of erosion due to climate change.

Goad has also collaborated with UTS’ Dr David Booth to create an artificial reef structure that’s positioned in the water right next to the Sydney Opera House. A key objective of this project was to create really simple economical structures to develop a habitat for fish.

Extrapolating on his work and its application in the built environment, he cites the example of Sydney Harbour where a substantial part of the natural rocky shoreline has been removed to build seawalls and construct various kinds of structures. Working with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science on the Living Seawalls Project, Goad’s studio has been designing different structures that can be attached to seawalls and built forms to help bring back a lot of those lost habitats.

“We're really starting to research and look at how we could build in the future in a more ecologically inclusive way. So the research is really looking at how we can develop a blueprint for how to build in the future if we do have to build in the marine environment,” he explained.

“The Sydney Opera House is a great example of a structure that was built a long time ago; there wasn't really any sort of real thought in what we were building there.

But that's part of the conversation – if we are building in these environments, we need to start thinking about building for more than just humans; we need to start thinking about everything that's living in these areas.”

So can these technologies be applied in architectural design and the built environment? Goad makes a case for optimising these systems for creating bio-protection for infrastructure. “If we can design seawalls and other marine structures to become an ideal habitat for encrusting organisms, we can actually create structures that are stronger and less likely to be damaged during storms and increasingly aggressive weather events,” he observed.

Commenting on their coral restoration work, Goad says they have mostly been working in areas that were already highly damaged from development projects. Adding a note of caution, he says their approach shouldn’t be used in greenwashing or as a mitigation technique for coral-reef destroying developments.

Catch Alex Goad and Dr Danièle Hromek in conversation at BUILD: Life Below Water at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday 1 September 2022.