AN UNDERWATER vacuum cleaner can suck up reams of invasive seaweed, breathing new life into suffocated coral reefs. Dubbed the Super Sucker, the machine is a modified version of a system designed for gold dredging, developed by a team led by Eric Conklin at the Nature Conservancy in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Two divers pull seaweed from the reef and place it into a suction tube, which carries it onto a barge. The team cleared 8000 kilograms of invasive seaweed from two 210-square-metre plots off the Hawaiian coast.
Only 90 per cent of the seaweed could be removed, and it was expected…
