MIT artificial reef helps Maldives beach double in size, growing by 90 feet

A 300-foot beach on a tiny island in the Maldives was slowly eroding away. In order to solve the problem, a Marriott resort on the island experimented with something different. Instead of dredging sand, they used an artificial reef designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers to repair the beach.Coastal Assembly, a startup that spun out of the MIT research at the end of 2025, and raised $4.4 million in a rounding of funding this year is now scaling up.