“We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there.” Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. “All we’re trying to do is to repair the damage.” “Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time,” van Oppen said. Van Oppen said there were concerns about losing genetic diversity and critics who said the scientists were “playing gods” by tampering with the reef. Scientists found that between 20, the world lost about 14% of its coral.Īssisted evolution was not widely accepted when first proposed. Gates, who died of brain cancer in 2018, also said she wanted people to know how “intimately reef health is intertwined with human health.”Ĭoral reefs, often called the rainforests of the sea, provide food for humans and marine animals, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for tourist economies and even medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimers disease.Ī recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other research organizations concluded bleaching events are the biggest threat to the world’s coral reefs.
“We’ve given (coral) experiences that we think are going to raise their ability to survive,” Gates told The Associated Press in a 2015 interview. And the idea attracted Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who funded the first phase of research and whose foundation still supports the program. The scientists proposed bringing corals into a lab to help them evolve into more heat-tolerant animals. In 2015, Ruth Gates, who launched the resilience lab, and Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science published a paper on assisted evolution during one of the world’s worst bleaching events. “And so that’s what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.” “Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe,” said Crawford Drury, chief scientist at Hawaii’s Coral Resilience Lab. And they found selective breeding held the most promise for Hawaii’s reefs. So, researchers are focusing on those hardy survivors, hoping to enhance their heat tolerance. The coral turns white - a process called bleaching - and can quickly become sick and die.įor more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef. When ocean temperatures rise, coral releases its symbiotic algae that supply nutrients and impart its vibrant colors.
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