A Japanese researcher who conducted a project in Okinawa to explore the effectiveness of growing reefs via mineral accretion in 1989, says he remains unsure of the effectiveness of the technique.
"From a scientific, data-collecting viewpoint, the results were good," said Dr. Kimiaki Kudo, research supervisor of the Marine Ecosystems Research Department at the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center in Kanagawa Prefecture, of the four-year experiment. "But it was impossible to say if this was due to the (mineral-accretion) method," he added.
The project was instigated by the Okinawa Prefectural Government and an Okinawa-based shipbuilding firm, who asked Kudo to look into an alternative coral-growing technology that might help Okinawa's rapidly diminishing reefs recover.