Investigating the impacts of climate change on reef-building corals using robotic arms
Blue lights fill the room. The faint smell of salt emanates throughout the space as wires and tubes intricately suspended over robotic arms move along custom-built tracks over four rows of tanks filled with seawater – and fragments of critically-endangered corals. In the Experimental Reef Lab, scientists at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) are investigating how crucial reef-building coral species are affected by the impacts of climate change using a suite of open-source robotic arms designed and built at AOML.