Creating corals that can survive climate change

Healthy coral gets its brown or purple color from Symbiodinium, micro-algae that live in the coral's tissue. Each of the red dots in this photo is a single Symbiodinium. This color, confocal microscopic image show coral polyps before bleaching. Each of the red spots in this photograph is a single-cell micro-alga of the genus Symbiodinium. These tiny symbiotic plants give healthy coral its brown or purple color. (Photo by Katie Barrott/Gates Lab)

Keyhole Reef, one of dozens of small reefs rising abruptly from the depths of Kāne‘ohe Bay,  is showing troubling signs of stress these days because of climate change. Here and there along the steep face of the reef, clumps of coral have turned stark white. This bleaching means the coral has begun to eject the micro-algae that normally live within its tissues and provide up to 90 percent of the nutrients that coral needs to live.

And that has scientists worried, because similar things are happening in tropical waters around the world. Coral reefs are one of the planet’s keystone habitats, as rich in species as the rain forest. But they’re even more vulnerable to climate change and the warm, acidic ocean conditions it is creating. Yet scientists may be coming up with a way to protect the fragile reefs for the warmer world of the future

Ruth Gates, director of the Hawai‘i Institute for Marine Biology (HIMB), calls the process human-assisted evolution. Last spring, she and Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute for Marine Sciences received a $4 million grant from the family foundation of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen for a plan to develop strains of coral that will be able to withstand changing ocean conditions.

Read more about it in the Washington Post.