During a 2011 trip to Miami, Alex Goad went scuba diving and explored the artificial coral reefs off the Atlantic coast. Such reefs, he realized, are large, heavy, and expensive to fabricate and install. But they serve an important purpose. Natural coral reefs are some of the most biodiverse places on Earth, and they've begun to disappear, leaving thousands of species essentially homeless. Building up artificial reefs where real ones have been lost is one stopgap solution.

So for his final project as an industrial-design student at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, Goad created the Modular Artificial Reef Structure (MARS). Locking and clamping mechanisms on the arms of each MARS unit allow them to snap together easily, like LEGOs. The modular structure makes MARS more flexible than other artificial reefs. "A lot of existing products require a flat seafloor. But around the world, the ocean is not flat, especially where reef systems occur," Goad says.