SYDNEY, July 21 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government Friday announced several new plans including firing salt into clouds and covering a "sun shield" in water to save the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Barrier Reef has suffered from bleaching for two straight years as sea temperatures rise due to climate change. It's also threatened by farming runoff, development, and the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish.
The government collected plans to protect the reef in January, and six ideas out of 69 submissions will be tested.
One of the selected plans is firing salt crystals extracted from seawater into clouds to make them more reflective and deflecting solar rays back into space.
"The water vaporises and you're left with a salt particle which will float around, and if you can introduce those into the system you can increase the amount of sunlight reflected back," said David Mead, a researcher at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who thought the plan has real potential.
Another idea is putting a thin film with light-reflecting particles in seawater to cover the reef and protect corals from heat stress.
"The great thing about the film is it is only a molecule thick so you can swim straight through it and it'll just keep self-forming," Andrew Negri from the Australian Institute of Marine Science told national broadcaster ABC.
These ideas are parts of the "Reef 2050" plan which was first released by the Australian government in 2015 to protect the reef and improve water quality.
According to a recent research by University of Queensland and Australian Institute of Marine Science, the marine ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef is losing the ability to recover from damage, and average coral recovery rates have recorded a sixfold drop.