Some of the most wonderful discoveries are serendipitous, and so it is with the story of how a revolutionary technique to speed up regeneration of coral reefs was discovered. It involves the insights of a marine biologist who lived in Belize and knew its reefs well, and the accidental discovery by another biologist that staghorn coral accidentally broken in his laboratory tank had regrown in a week by itself.

Micro-fragmenting has been a game changer for marine biologists worldwide. It dramatically speeds up coral tissue regeneration. Where it would take at least a century for coral to reach maturity in nature, microfragmenting allows coral to become mature in two years.. The full-grown coral are also sexually mature, which would otherwise take at least 75 years. It is a discovery as amazing as the realization that tropical forests could be regrown in their complexity – something else we didn’t think could be done.