Healthy Coral Reversed Bleaching in Its Neighbor With Just 1 Week of Contact
Stanford researchers have discovered that bleached corals can recover by physically fusing with healthy corals, which transfer necessary symbiotic algae and nutrients. This contact-based recovery process offers a potential new method for coral reef restoration.
Why it matters
As climate change accelerates coral bleaching, this discovery provides a potential biological intervention to help preserve fragile marine ecosystems.
(Danny Collins) Corals cannot survive long without the algae that live inside their bodies.
But under stress from factors like heat, pollution, and UV exposure, these algae can become toxic to the coral, which evicts them.
Without their algal symbionts, corals turn white, in what is known as coral bleaching. A 'bleached' coral has limited time to acquire new algal symbionts before it starves to death.
With the threat of coral bleaching events growing each year, Stanford scientists have found a technique that could help rescue corals on the brink of death.
"While bleached corals may be dying, they are not dead yet," says Stanford marine scientist Danny Collins. "The question we wanted to answer is, once a coral has bleached, what can we do?"
A clue came from his colleague Steve Palumbi, who had noticed something interesting in a lab tank.
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