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Comment by araes | Hacker News Reader

Really expected a picture of the steel Reef Stars with the article.

Found the site from the sponsors of the project. Bit of a surprise, the Mars, is Mars Candy Bars (M&Ms, Snickers, ect...) Also, a partnership over in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef using the stars. (348 Reef Stars with 5,115 coral fragments of opportunity) Both have fairly extensive pictures of the steel frames coated with sand and the installation.

The main MARRS stats are: "30 sites across ten countries, 60,000 Reef Stars, planting 900,000+ living coral fragments."

Apparently started with "10 years in Sulawesi, Indonesia to restore reefs damaged by dynamite fishing."

[1] https://www.mars.com/news-and-stories/articles/the-big-build...

[2] https://www.gbrbiology.com/2022/04/08/mars-and-coral-rubble-...

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I remmeber the conversation i had with a guy whos job it was to lobby the government in behalf of mining companies for new mining sites. His words were exactly "No project i lobby wont get approved, its just worth too much money to too many people. And dont complain to me about the environment destruction of the mines when you cant exist without your lighting and gas at home." "Corel doesnt make me money. I dont care about dead corel reefs, by the time they all die they will have found out a way to grow them back quickly and everything will be good again".

So thats the ideaology of the people who work in this space. This person lobbied for the largest mining companies in Aus. I guess it really was a preminiation of today, when the GBR has finally shrunk enough to have more uses to corperations then simply being a tailings pond. Now they can leech the funding being earmarked for recovering the reef that they killed. Win win! Money talks. Rare us is ok, but really rare, now thats were the money is at.

The company is using as a promotional tool for their cat food brand and named the Indonesian site after the brand. I would not say they are a particularly ecologically friendly brand.

While there is no doubt that stabilising rubble is an important factor in reef recovery (especially where this is the primary issue, such as in blast fishing sites), IMO this technology is milkdrop in the universe stuff once you pull heating oceans into the equation.

As an aside, the Great Barrier Reef is currently in the midst of an unprecedented fifth mass coral bleaching event since 2016.

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