Coral Technology
Brennan Phillips (URI) and Stephen Licht (URI)
Photo Credit: NOAA MDBC
Overview
The major goals of this project are to identify and demonstrate successful coral propagation strategies and techniques for deep-sea corals using remote platforms such as ROVs. This effort is exploratory and innovative in a technical sense, as it will represent several first steps in conducting coral propagation, outplanting, and nursery activities in waters deeper than can be accessed using SCUBA, CCR, and/or saturation diving techniques. Such techniques are necessary to investigate and explore MDBC, and many offshore energy and construction projects currently in process, like the Deepwater Horizon, take place in deep water that can only be accessed using ROVs. Deepwater corals are plentiful and diverse in these environments, yet there are few prior examples of restorative methodologies for these sensitive species and communities.
