CoolCoral: Raspberry Pi Pico coral cooling solution
How do you cool ocean coral? A group of volunteers discuss this regularly and their current solution makes use of Raspberry Pi Pico.
As the climate around the globe changes, nature itself is being affected. Ocean reefs and their coral are just one of the ecosystems under threat, so research into them is very important.
“Field experiments involving coral in tropical climates are increasingly hampered by heatwaves – and that’s a pleasant turn of phrase,” Explains Iestyn Jones, a member of the volunteer group CoolCoral Project. “Basically, unpredictable heatwaves cause unpredictable temperature shifts that can overwhelm and, more often than not, kill coral samples and render oceanographic experiments fruitless.”
These fatal heatwaves are becoming more regular due to global warming, however the device the group have been working on “concentrates cool water onto coral samples and alleviates the fatal effects”. Water cooling for coral then, like a high-spec gaming PC.