DARPA Thinks Walls of Oysters Could Protect Shores Against Hurricanes

The Pentagon is testing a prototype seawall designed to be colonized by oysters.

Oysters are effective wave-killers of how they pile onto each other in large, smooth mounds.

The Pentagon 's Reefense initiative is the Pentagon ’s effort to test if hybrid’ reefs, combining man-made structures with oysters or corals, can perform as well as a good ol’ seawall.

DARPA has given awardees five years to develop hybrid reefs that take up to 90 percent of the energy out of waves.

The man-made component should block waves immediately, but it should be quickly enhanced by organisms that build, in months or years , a living structure that would take nature decades to build.

The Rutgers team has built its prototype out of 788 interlocked concrete modules, each 2 feet wide and ranging in height from 1 to 2 feet tall.

Coral reefs are thought to provide coastal-protection benefits worth billions of dollars .

A third Reefense team, led by scientists at the University of Miami , takes its inspiration from a different sort of coral.

An unexpected permitting issue will force the Miami team to exit Reefense in 2025 , without building the test unit.