Dr. Diego Ramírez and the Marine Biology reef lab have been awarded a €2.4 million grant to scale their cold-water coral restoration trials from the Northlight fjord to three North Atlantic sites over the next four years.
The project builds on five years of experimental work in the department’s reef lab, where fragments of cold-water coral are grown on engineered substrates before being transplanted onto damaged reef sections. Early trials in the fjord achieved survival rates above 70 percent — unusually high for cold-water species.
“The fjord gave us a natural laboratory a few hundred metres from the classroom,” said Dr. Ramírez. “Students in MB230 Coral Reef Ecology monitored the transplants as part of their coursework, and several of their observations ended up in the grant proposal.”
The new funding will support two PhD positions, a research technician, and expanded fieldwork berths aboard RV Skarv for undergraduate students.