Crystals And Catalysts

It’s earth day and it's one of the most important days of the year where most of us are more aware of our planet, our climate and the problems this planet will face in terms of climate change if we don’t take any proper actions. I’m sure my friends will tell you all about what you can do to play a significant role in preventing climate change (check out my stories!) but I’d like to briefly tell you what researchers are doing to prevent climate change.

I thought I would write something different on my blog anniversary and sort of go back to my chemistry roots and the reason why I did my third-year research project ... to find a way to prevent the exploitation of coral.  Albeit this blog post will be discussing the degradation of coral reefs and how we are very close to losing the beautiful coral structures under the sea.  Coral reefs are undergoing severe bleaching. This has been reported over several years, not just in 2017. Starting from 1998, reports started to talk about coral bleaching, increasing in severity in 2010 and reaching its highest degree in 2017. Corals, which build reefs, are made up of hundreds of thousands of polyps, living in colonies. These polyps build a skeleton made of calcium carbonate in layers, where the polyps live on top (visible to the naked eye if you're close enough) and the coral reef lives on top of old coral reefs a.k.a limestone.   But coral cannot grow or flourish o...