To regrow a coral reef overnight

Electric Reef Restoration

You’ve chosen to imagine a future where a damaged coral reef regrows almost overnight. You might want to learn more about electric reef restoration, including a method called Biorock, which uses gentle electricity to help minerals form around underwater structures where corals can grow. Just don’t turn the electricity up too high and shock the whole ocean!

Fun Facts:

In the 1970s, architect Wolf Hilbertz discovered a way to use electricity to grow rock-like material from minerals in seawater, which was later adapted to create places for coral to grow.
Bali has an underwater garden with more than 100 Biorock structures.
Scientists and conservationists can grow coral fragments in underwater nurseries, then move them onto damaged reefs to help rebuild them.

Electric Reef Restoration

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We’re discovering electric reef restoration, including a method called Biorock. It sends a small electric current through metal structures underwater. Minerals in seawater slowly collect around the metal and form a hard coating, where corals can attach and continue growing. Scientists are testing when this method can best help damaged reefs, but we should still pay attention to warming oceans, pollution, and other causes of reef loss. And make sure you don’t turn the electricity up too high and shock the whole ocean!

Fun Facts:

Wolf Hilbertz patented the technology for Biorock in 1979, decades before today's growing interest in rebuilding damaged reefs.
One of the world's biggest Biorock projects is in Pemuteran, Bali, where community members have used the technology for coral restoration there since 2000.
Small pieces of healthy coral can be grown in underwater nurseries until they are large enough to be moved onto damaged reefs.
Coral is actually an animal! A coral colony is made of hundreds or thousands of tiny animals called polyps, which build hard skeletons that can become part of a reef.
Sometimes scientists collect millions of tiny coral babies during spawning, raise the baby corals, and release them onto reefs where they may grow.

Discussion Question:

What might an ocean look like 20 years from now if people restore many reefs—or if they do not?

LISTEN

Physical Build:

You can design your own reef-restoration structure using cardboard, pipe cleaners, string, foil, and recycled materials. Build a shape with hiding spaces for tiny fish and places where pretend coral could attach. Then redesign one part to help even more kinds of reef creatures.

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Digital Build:

With an adult, ask ChatGPT:

“Design three strange underwater structures that could help a damaged coral reef recover.”

Choose the most interesting idea, then change it into your own design. Draw it, build a model, and decide which creatures might live on, under, or inside it.

or bring an extinct animal back to life?

Animal De-Extinction

De-Extinction

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You’ve chosen to imagine a future where extinct animals can walk the Earth again. You might want to learn more about de-extinction, where scientists use tools like cloning, selective breeding, and gene editing to create animals that resemble extinct species. Just please don’t de-extinct the T-Rex…we’ve seen how that story ends!

Fun Facts:

In 2003, a cloned Pyrenean ibex was born using frozen cells saved before the species disappeared, although it survived only a few minutes.
Since 1987, the Quagga Project in South Africa has selectively bred plains zebras to produce animals with fewer stripes, like their extinct quagga relatives.
DNA can survive in ancient mammoth remains, allowing researchers to compare mammoth genes with those of their closest living relatives, Asian elephants.

De-Extinction

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We’re learning more about de-extinction, or attempts to recreate parts of extinct species. Scientists can study DNA left inside old bones, skins, or other remains. They may then use living relatives to recreate some lost traits. The new animal may be a close stand-in, not an exact copy. Researchers also ask where these animals would live and how they might affect today’s ecosystems. Just please don’t de-extinct the T-Rex…we’ve seen how that story ends!

Fun Facts:

The last known quagga died at Amsterdam Zoo in 1883. More than 100 years later, South Africa's Quagga Project began selectively breeding plains zebras to bring back the quagga's distinctive coat pattern.
In 2025, Colossal announced three gene-edited pups with traits from extinct dire wolves. The company calls them dire wolves, but many scientists describe them as modified gray wolves, not true dire wolves.
Researchers can compare thousands-year-old mammoth DNA with Asian elephant DNA to find genes connected to traits like shaggy fur, small ears, and surviving extreme cold.
Scientists have even made extra-woolly mice while studying mammoth traits.
Scientists working on dodo de-extinction are studying the Nicobar pigeon, one of the dodo's closest living relatives. The plan involves changing cells from living birds to recreate some of the dodo's genetic traits.

Discussion Question:

If scientists can bring back an extinct animal, does that mean they should? What should they think about before deciding?

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Physical Build:

You can design a home for a returned extinct animal using cardboard, paper, clay, sticks, and recycled materials. Pick an extinct animal and build a habitat with food, water, shelter, and enough space. Then add something showing how your animal would share its world with species living there today.

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Digital Build:

With an adult, ask ChatGPT:

“Imagine three possible futures if woolly mammoths lived on Earth again.”

Compare the futures it gives you. Choose one, change anything you disagree with, and draw a scene showing how mammoths, people, plants, and other animals might all fit into that world.