Create 2024/Coral Reef Digital Twins and a Distributed Genetic Ark for Coral Conservation: Submissions:2023/WikiJournal

This submission has been accepted for WikiConference North America 2024.

The oceans are no longer a safe place for corals: we need a 100-year plan to keep them alive so that future generations also have a chance. Embracing Wikimedia’s core principles of openness, free access, and community contribution, I propose a strategy to create digital and genetic twins of the world's coral reefs. This involves capturing the topology, species diversity, abundance, and biogeochemistry of the reefs using existing technologies, alongside establishing a living, distributed genet ark of coral diversity. Corals are remarkable ecosystem engineers, capable of clonal reproduction, which will be crucial for this initiative. As a living complement to digital twins of reefs, I propose using a distributed network of university, public, and home aquaria to keep corals alive indefinitely. This will be tracked in an open ledger system based on proof-of-life, with all coral genets monitored and balanced through the network, using a leveling system to incentivize the preservation of diversity. We must explore the scope of our symbiotic nature with corals: for all of human time, we have relied on them. Now they rely on us.