By the Caribbean Journal staff

As coral reefs continue to dwindle around the region, more and more initiatives are looking to plant new coral and save dying reefs.

But in order to plant the coral, it has to grow somewhere.

That’s the plan for a major new project in the Bahamas: the Coral Farm Education and Research Centre, a Grand Bahama operation whose manager, Coral Vita, is dedicated to growing coral reefs.

The project broke ground in East Grand Bahama this week.

Coral Vita uses technology that grows corals up to 50 times faster, while “strengthening their resiliency to climate change threats,” according to a statement.

The new center is “adding to what is already a very powerful brand in The Bahamas, as a country that is on the cutting edge of conservation in marine and life sciences,” says Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Resources Michael Pintard.

“This project, to me, seems to be a natural option to that, along with the regeneration of the mangroves. These natural defenses, while may seem outlandish or scientific from the outset, will provide us with natural defenses and cost-effective defenses to protect what we have in our country,” Pintard says.

— CJ