As a marine biologist, Taryn Foster never expected her career to lead her back home to her family’s masonry factory in Geraldton, 400 kilometres north of Perth, but that is exactly where she has been figuring out how robotics and automation can restore coral reefs.
Dr Foster founded her company, Coral Maker, in 2019, and it has set itself the ambitious goal of restoring a million corals a year. Traditionally, propagating new coral involves taking a live cutting from an existing colony, and then manually grafting itCoral Maker aims to scale the restoration process, making it possible to repair reefs that have suffered bleaching events more quickly, and even relocate coral colonies to locations that are better placed to withstand climate change.The process could shave years off the time it takes for new coral to reach maturity.
Dr Foster had originally planned to use 3D printers to recreate the “complex, beautiful” shape of coral, but found the machines were too slow to produce enough structures to accelerate the process of reef restoration.