This woman wants to save our coral reefs: And her company IntelliReefs is poised to do it.

• Author: Lastoe, Stacey

THE PROBLEM, AS MELODY BRENNA SEES IT, IS OBVIOUS: WE TRASH OUR WATERS.

The founder of IntelliReefs, a sustainable marine-based solutions company based in Salt Lake City, does not mince her words when it comes to the planet and her beliefs around the unfortunate way many, if not most Americans, have turned a blind eye to this urgent environmental issue.

But Brenna and a small but mighty team of people are endeavoring to turn things around through something called Oceanite, a unique reef restoration system that uses site and species-specific marine mineral substrates to enhance the growth and resilience of at-risk species.

The innovative conservation efforts have the potential to combat overharvesting as well as climate change and helps with issues caused by pollution. Essentially, IntelliReefs' marine solution is in a unique position to keep the ocean's crucial life-giving services--oxygen and food--afloat.

INTELLI ... WHAT?

Brenna was living in Texas when she was approached by coral reef experts who she says basically came to her and said: "If we don't figure out ocean infrastructure and come up with a substrate, a testable substrate that can be deployed all over the world, we're going to lose the reef."

Her Texas-founded company, Milestone Architectural Ornamentation, with the integral assistance of Dr. Konstantin Sobolev, IntelliReefs' CTO and co-founder, created an industry-first laboratory for the casting of reef restoration technology and nanomaterials. Over 20 years of research went into the creation of Oceanite.

The high-performance mineral mixtures can be cast into a myriad of designs and scaled up too, allowing for the creation of new habitats along coastlines. Since Oceanite is specifically tailored to the individual site, the species residing in the particular region, and the function of the species, its potential impact is significant.

The work of Milestone Architectural Ornamentation laid the foundation for IntelliReefs, which officially formed in 2017, about seven years after Brenna relocated to Utah from Texas. It wouldn't be long before IntelliReefs would be ready to activate Oceanite and use it as a viable element to be cast and placed in the waters of the Caribbean where it would be used to improve the quality and diversity of oceanic applications. Brenna calls it "really forward-thinking science."

"Have you seen 'Chasing Coral'?" Brenna asks, referring to the 2017 Netflix documentary that followed a team of divers...