Posted by Mike on December 11th, 2007 in biology

Sometimes things from your past pop up at the strangest times. Reading this article was one of those times for me. The article discusses using electricity to grow coral reefs. This notion of “growing” a reef by using a low power electric current and accreting a calcium carbonate onto a metal armature has been around since I was in architecture school, in 1975. I know this, because the late Wolf Hilbertz was on the faculty at the University of Texas when I was in school there.

Back then, to Wolf, it was a solution to the housing crisis. Grow the structure, pull them out water when the armature was almost completely accreted in, finish them with a thin layer of concrete, furnish them and voila, you have a complete housing unit, strong, and cheap. Unfortunately, they weighed a ton and were relatively fragile. Also, the charge was not strong enough to overcome the insulating value of the layers of calcium carbonate as the layers grew, so the armature never got remotely close to become accreted in.

The notion of using them for artificial reef is much more practical. The other interesting aspect is the fact that somehow the low current makes the coral thrive, grow and enable the colony to repair breaks. The interesting parallel is that same low current approach helps human bones to knit.

Perhaps, after all of this, we will find that copper bracelets and “magnitotherapy” are not so nutsy after all.

Technorati : coral reef, electricity