4/30/2013 Oceanography

CORAL- BOTS A BRIGHT IDEA FOR CORAL REEF RESTORATION: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/376482095/coral-bots-teams-of-robots-that-repair-coral-reefs

Thank You Jeri Ryan for informing us
 
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JeriRyan/posts     Click on this link for Jeri's site                          

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/376482095/coral-bots-teams-of-robots-that-repair-coral-reefs 
Cick on the link above to learn all about Coral-bot

This is actress Jeri Ryan she is not a Coral-bot, but we think she did play a cyborg on TV once ("7 of 9" on Star Trek Voyager?). We lifted this picture off of her profile photos in her "Google Plus page". We hope she doesn't mind. We simply wanted to credit her with informing us about the Coral-bot project. The real coral -bot is on the smaller photo.  Jeri of course is more photogenic than the Coral-bot and we wanted to be sure you read this. We learned about the Coral-bot from Jeri's social media page ...I think Google Plus (Link below photo). If you click on the hyper link in the headline you'll be following Jeri's link to the Coral-bot video where you can see a prototype in action. This is one cool submersible and a game changer on coral reef restoration in terms of labor costs. Even where volunteer divers are used, they have to pop for some serious travel and lodging costs. Putting people on reefs for repair work is expensive, somebody has to pay and there is not always someone ready and willing. Our own "Captain Ben" who runs the Oceanography and navigation pages, and Ben's Tech Corner once managed a coral reef restoration project. He called it a "serious Sgt. Bilko operation" his way of describing a need for imaginative solutions to stretch seriously limited funding.

 The Coral-bot is a great idea but like so many great ideas in the realm of ocean clean up and repair its a non profit idea. Donations are needed. You can donate as little as a dollar on line. We'll be talking a lot more about this idea in our diving section as the week wears on. We'd love to see our readers, especially our divers and fishermen readers help put the Coral-bot development fund over the top. If you do donate tell them Jeri Ryan told you about it. Click on the link below for a video that explains all. If you are a diver don't forget the organization we featured a few weeks ago GUE, Global Under Water Explorers, they are a permanent feature in our Technical diving section. If you would like to receive technical (penetration, cave, wreck, mixed gases, etc.) diving training and get some instructor led experience while assisting university underwater research and environmental mitigation projects. Even with a fleet of Coral-bots such projects still have tasks that require a human hand , eye, and brain underwater. Coral-bots will make coral reef restoration much faster , cheaper , and effective but human divers will still be needed. This is the nature of ocean damage mitigation today, largely volunteer labor and little funding.


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/376482095/coral-bots-teams-of-robots-that-repair-coral-reefs