When you listen underwater the process of replanting a coral reef sounds disconcertingly like carpentry.
Christine Roper, a doctoral candidate from Canada who works with the University of Technology of Sydney, grips a piece of live “donor coral” and a wire clip in one hand and a claw hammer in the other.
She’s three or four metres down, hovering about a section of what is known as the Opal reef, about an hour or so off the coast of Port Douglas in far north Queensland if you travel on a fast tourist boat.
She braces the living coral fragment against a section of dead reef, carefully positions a stainless steel clip attached to a nail over it, and then delicately bangs it in.
The tap, tap, tap resonates crisply through the warm winter water. It is louder than the scraping of the parrot fish gnawing away at living reef nearby, louder even than the breath in your ears.
Continue reading on the Sydney Morning Herald website: Faced with destruction of the reef, a small band do ‘coral carpentry’