This MIT spinout designed an artificial reef to save shrinking beaches

To fight erosion, Coastal Assembly’s reef works with nature instead of against it.

[Photo: Coastal Assembly]

Until recently, a beach on a tiny island in the Maldives was eroding away. The usual solution would be to dredge sand to try to replace what was lost—but that works only temporarily, and it harms marine ecosystems. Two years ago, a Marriott resort on the island experimented with something different: using an artificial reef designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers to repair the beach.

Within six months, across a 300-foot shoreline, the depth of the beach grew by 90 feet. Now, two years later,........

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