Sick Corals Can Heal With the Help of a 'Magic Touch' From Healthy Ones, Offering Hope for Heat-Damaged Marine Ecosystems.
Stanford researchers report that bleached corals in a lab regained color and fully recovered within seven weeks after contact with healthy, genetically identical clones, the fastest documented recovery to date.
Researchers at Stanford University report that bleached, starving corals returned to health within weeks after being placed in contact with healthy clones, which are genetically identical copies. Color began returning within days, and full recovery took seven weeks. The page describes this as the fastest documented coral recovery to date.
The work was done on aquarium-sourced corals in a laboratory at the Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey County. Danny Collins, a Ph.D. student at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, is the lead author. Bleaching happens when ocean water warms too fast and corals expel the helpful algae living in their cells, which can kill them. Reefs cover 0.01% of the ocean floor but support a quarter of marine life. The Coral Reef Alliance predicts that within 30 years, 90% of reefs will face severe annual bleaching.
The finding followed a lab accident. Collins had studied the year before how plastic waste can carry disease-causing bacteria that infect corals, and he wondered whether contact could instead deliver beneficial algae. Around then, Steve Palumbi, a Stanford marine sciences professor and study coauthor, noticed that a colony had tipped over in a tank so that a healthy coral touched a bleached one. Color returned to the sick coral where they met.
The team then tested the idea on other samples. The corals fused, forming a bridge of tissue that let the healthy coral pass its algae to the bleached one. The corals did not have to stay in contact the whole time. A brief period was enough, and the sick coral recovered from there. “It was so much faster and more intense than we ever expected,” Collins said.
The approach has limits. Making a healthy clone of every wild coral ahead of a bleaching event is not feasible, according to the page. Bleached corals in the field can recover, but it can take years, and many never recover fully. Collins said the results suggest that bleached corals can recover quickly if healthy algae reach them. His team is now working on ways to extract algae, grow them in a lab and spread them to bleached corals. He hopes to test the method at field sites in Hawaii and Palau in the coming months to years.
Note: The headline does not say the result came from lab tests on genetically identical clones. The page says that clone-based method is not feasible for wild coral, and the researchers are now developing ways to deliver algae instead.
At a Glance
- Bleached corals fully recovered in seven weeks after contact with healthy clones, the fastest documented recovery to date.
- The experiments used aquarium-sourced corals at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey County.
- Healthy and bleached corals fused tissue, forming a nutrient bridge that moved algae to the bleached coral.
- Researchers hope to test the method at field sites in Hawaii and Palau in the coming months to years.
Sources
This brief was written by Brightside Report from the reporting linked above. Spot an error? Request a correction.