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SCIENCEMonday 9 November 2015
Scientists tinker with evolution to save Hawaii coral reefs
CALEB JONES among the healthy, Gates is called assisted evolution, losing somewhere in the raising standard coral and
Associated Press said her team is now “look- and while it has been used range of 10 to 20 per- planting it in the ocean.
COCONUT ISLAND, Hawaii ing for the healthy individ- for thousands of years on cent of the coral reefs this “Restoration needs to
(AP) — Scientists at a re- uals in a sea of pale cor- other plants and animals, year,” NOAA coral reef have brood stock that can
search center on Hawaii’s als.” the concept has not been watch coordinator Mark handle the changing con-
Coconut Island have em- Gates and her team are applied to coral living in Eakin said when the report ditions on reefs,” he said.
barked on an experiment taking the coral to their the wild. was released. “Hawaii is Gates said more research
to grow “super coral” that center on the 29-acre isle, “We’ve given them expe- getting hit with the worst needs to be done before
they hope can withstand once a retreat for the rich riences that we think are coral bleaching they have they can begin to address
the hotter and more acid- and famous and home going to raise their abil- ever seen.” scalability.
ic oceans that are expect- to television’s Gilligan’s ity to survive stress,” Gates And this is the second con- In 2013, Gates and her
ed with global warming. secutive year Hawaii has Australian counterpart Dr.
The quest to grow the In this Sept. 28, 2015 photo, living coral is shown under a experienced widespread Madeleine van Oppen,
hearty coral comes at a bleaching. who does coral research
time when researchers microscope at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology on Scientists say some coral at the Australia Institute
are warning about the has already fallen victim of Marine Science, won
dire health of the world’s Coconut Island, Hawaii. Associated Press to global warming. About the $10,000 Paul G. Allen
reefs, which create habi- 30 percent of the world’s Ocean Challenge for their
tats for marine life, protect Island, and slowly expos- said. She said they hope population has already proposal to assist coral
shorelines and drive tourist ing them to slightly more to see these corals, which perished as a result of evolution.
economies. stressful water. will soon be transplanted above average ocean Allen’s foundation then
When coral is stressed by They bathe chunks of cor- into the bay, maintain their temperatures, El Nino’s ef- asked them for a propos-
changing environmental al that they’ve already color, grow normally and fects and acidification. al to fully fund the idea,
conditions, it expels the identified as having strong then reproduce next sum- Gates and her team un- which they eventually
symbiotic algae that live genes in water that mim- mer. derstand the challenges did with a $4 million grant
within it and the animal ics the warmer and more In early October, the Na- of scalability and time. in June. Allen, who co-
turns white or bright yellow, acidic oceans. They are tional Oceanic and Atmo- Having success locally founded Microsoft with
a process called bleach- also taking resilient strains spheric Administration said does not necessarily mean Bill Gates, has various cli-
ing, said Ruth Gates, direc- and breeding them with that coral reefs worldwide they will be able to scale mate-related projects in
tor of the Institute of Ma- one another, helping per- are experiencing bleach- their project to address his philanthropic portfolio.
rine Biology at the Univer- petuate those stronger ing, calling the event ex- a massive, global marine Hawaii’s Gates said that
sity of Hawaii. traits. tensive and severe. crisis before much of the while the goal of their proj-
If the organisms are un- The theory they are testing “We may be looking at world’s coral reefs are al- ect is to help coral survive
able to recover from ready gone. global warming, there is
these bleaching events, Tom Oliver, a marine bi- still a need to end human’s
especially when they re- ologist and team leader reliance on fossil fuels and
cur over several consecu- at NOAA’s Coral Reef Eco- to mitigate the emission of
tive years, the coral will system Division, said the greenhouse gasses that
die. Gates estimated that project is scalable with the cause global warming.
about 60 to 80 percent of requisite amount of effort “Even if we stopped all
the coral in Kaneohe Bay and funding. He said, “the greenhouse gas emissions
has bleached this year. question is not can they today, there is still this lag in
“The bleaching has inten- do it, it’s can they do it fast the atmosphere where cli-
sified and got much more enough?” mate change will continue
serious,” said Gates of the Oliver said that many reef for probably hundreds of
coral around the bay. restoration projects strug- years,” Van Oppen said.
Where they once looked gle because of the cost “It’s hard to imagine it’s
for the bleached coral and time involved with not going to get worse.”q
