Abstract
Coral reefs are one of the most important marine ecosystems in the world. While many worldwide efforts are working on novel solutions to counteract the plethora of environmental pressures they face, coral reefs will continue to face immense pressures if carbon emissions are not drastically reduced. Most restoration efforts focus on growing corals to repopulate damaged reefs. While this process does immediately increase the quantity of live coral on reefs, these active restoration efforts are expensive, time-intensive, and may only have ephemeral ecological effects given out planted corals’ low long-term survival rates. However, technology can scale restoration efforts and help overcome each of these hurdles. This study is focused around one such technology known as Mineral Accretion Technology or MAT. MAT was introduced over three decades ago and has been suggested to increase coral growth rates anywhere from 50- 500%. However, MAT remains understudied and avoided by much of the restoration community, leaving its full capability unknown. This study sought to test if MAT is a microenvironment phenomenon that increases the alkalinity within the coral’s direct vicinity. Through two months of experimentation with Pseudodiploria clivosa, individuals under MAT treatment that were within the range of alkalinity enhancement (< 1cm from the cathode) saw growth rate increases ranging from 60% to 250% (F (1,42) = 113.40; p < 0.0001). However, corals outside of this region grew at the same rate as those which were not under treatment, suggesting that MAT indeed a microenvironment phenomenon. Additionally, through IPAM testing, MAT had no negative impacts on the overall health of corals under the treatment. With the growth of microfragmentation and juvenile recruits in the restoration community, MAT is a technology that should be more widley adopted by the restoration community. It is seemingly most applicable to increasing growth rates of microfragments and sexual recruits. Future studies should be completed to compare results to other alkalinity enhancement methods and finetune electrochemical reactions to prevent runaway precipitation and increase overall efficiency.