AN UNDERWATER vacuum cleaner can suck up reams of invasive seaweed, breathing new life into suffocated coral reefs. Dubbed the Super Sucker, the machine is a modified version of a system designed for gold dredging, developed by a team led by Eric Conklin at the Nature Conservancy in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Two divers pull seaweed from the reef and place it into a suction tube, which carries it onto a barge. The team cleared 8000 kilograms of invasive seaweed from two 210-square-metre plots off the Hawaiian coast.
Only 90 per cent of the seaweed could be removed, and it was expected that it would grow back. But within weeks the remaining seaweed was gone, and two years later it has not returned. 鈥淚 was flat out amazed,鈥� says Conklin, who presented the results at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last week. He cautions, however, that the system might not work as well in areas with more pollution and fewer seaweed-eating fish.
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