The Frankenword glossary (Science: 359:154, 2018) omits Frankencorals! It covers death-dealing Frankentechnologies that alarm the public, but life-giving electrical technologies are completely excluded. We’re shocked: none of your examples involves electricity like the Global Coral Reef Alliance’s Biorock electrolysis technology, the sine qua non for genuine membership in the Frankenclub!
Despite widespread electrophobia, Biorock’s electrifying results are entirely beneficial: greatly increased settlement, growth, survival, and resistance to stress of all marine organisms examined, plants and animals, mobile or sessile (T. J. Goreau, 2014, Electrical stimulation greatly increases settlement, growth, survival, and stress resistance of marine organisms, Natural Resources, 5:527-537 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/nr.2014.510048). Instead of convulsions and rigor mortis, Biorock corals uniquely survive severe high temperature bleaching events that kill more than 95% of corals around them, and quickly smile back at us because the low currents used are in the natural range and show no negative effects, except for predatory sharks, which get confused and won’t bite food right in front of them (M. P. Uchoa, C. C. O’Connell, & T. J. Goreau, 2017, The effects of Biorock-associated electric fields on the Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi) and the bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas), Animal Biology, DOI 10.1163/15707563-00002531).
Biorock is the only marine material construction material that grows solid self-repairing structures 2-3 times harder than concrete (T. J. Goreau, 2012, Marine electrolysis for building materials and environmental restoration, p. 273-290 in Electrolysis, J. Kleperis & V. Linkov (Eds.), InTech Publishing, Rijeka, Croatia), and regenerates severely eroded beaches at record rates (T. J. F. Goreau & P. Prong, 2017, Biorock reefs grow back severely eroded beaches in months, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, Special Issue on Coastal Sea Levels, Impacts, and Adaptation, J. Mar. Sci. Eng., 5(4), 48; doi:10.3390/jmse5040048), rapidly grow beach sand from calcareous algae, restore seagrasses and salt marshes under severe stress where all other methods fail, keep whole coral and oyster reef ecosystems alive when they would die, and grow them back at record rates where there is no natural regeneration (T. J. Goreau & R. K. Trench (Editors), 2012, Innovative Technologies for Marine Ecosystem Restoration, CRC Press). Biorock Indonesia and our partners are about to start Biorock mangrove and Nipa palm restoration of illegally deforested Borneo mangroves for orang utan sanctuaries and to sequester atmospheric CO2 as peat in what we expect to be the single most cost-effective carbon sink.
The reason marine life gets a charge from the Biorock method is that we operate in the beneficial range that galvanizes natural biophysical membrane voltage gradients all forms of life use to make biochemical energy, so they don’t need to use up to half their energy pumping protons and electrons backwards to maintain membrane voltage gradients, whose collapse means death (as caused by high voltages and currents). That’s why we call it electro-tickling, the antithesis of electrocuting high voltage currents everybody is monstrously terrified of!
Published in Science Magazine eLetter 359:154