With Rising Sea Levels,

and costal erosion,

defences against the sea are becoming ever more important, but here is the thing, conventional concrete is quite toxic to marine life, enter Econcrete, not only does their patented concreate encourage marine life to colonise it, the blocks are made in such a way that as well as interlocking, they make rockpools as the tide goes out, all photographs from Econcrete,

a project, named Coastalock, is a coastal defence system with textured and indented surfaces that encourage organisms to latch on and colonise, the design by Econcrete is an alternative to traditional man-made flood defences that typically offer little or no value to underwater ecosystems,

the orientation of each row is different, meaning the rock pool-like insets are either angled sideways, upwards or down into the water, providing different conditions for different organisms, "The units are multi-directional, when the tidepool is faced upwards it becomes a water-retaining feature, when sideways a cave, and an overhang when faced downwards," the company explained,

Econcrete's installation was carried out with the Port of San Diego corporation on two sites at Harbour Island as part of the area's Blue Economy Incubator, a scheme for trialling new and sustainable marine technologies, the modules were transported to the two sites site using a barge, before being lifted into place with a crane, a total of 74 interlocking modules have been installed, with each site comprising four rows of up to 10 Coastalock units, each site will be now monitored every six months for signs of colonisation and to evaluate the viability modules as an alternative to traditional tidal defences, Econcrete expects habitation to begin with "tiny ecosystem-builders like tubeworms, coralline algae, and other local sedentary organisms", which will pave the way for more biodiverse ecosystems, the long-term goal, however, is that the Coastalock modules will become home to calcitic organisms, such as coral and clams, what a neat way to make costal defences which also help the marine environment.