"Curaçao Arks: Rebuilding Reef Resilience"

This Caribbean island is home to some of the world’s most studied reefs. But in recent years, reef health has declined due to microbialization, warming waters, and declining grazer populations.

• Environment: Global reef degradation driven by microbialization (DOC, low O₂)
• Application: Midwater Arks elevate reef communities into cleaner, high‑flow, high‑oxygen zones to disrupt degradation feedback loops
• Project goal: Determine how Ark placement and design can maximize beneficial community assembly, coral health, accretion, and water chemistry

In 2022, our team deployed two Coral Reef Arks in midwater zones off the coast of Curaçao. These 3D reef scaffolds host corals, invertebrates, microbes, and fish communities while enabling unique water chemistry conditions above the seafloor.

Feature:

• Diagram or image of Arks
• Bullet highlights: midwater suspension, UrGH modules, coral mounting zones

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This project functions as a live experiment, measuring over 7 core variables to assess reef recovery and microbial rebalancing.

• Microbial DNA sequencing (via ARMS)
• Viral load & diversity
• Water chemistry (O₂, DOC)
• Flow velocity
• Coral fluorescence & growth
• Urchin and grazer recruitment
• Algal turf reduction (in progress)