Super Coral That Can Survive Global Warming | National Geographic

In 1998, 18% of the world's reefs died as a result of a global bleaching event. Many people believe that we've now lost up to 30% of the world's reefs. Another 30% are critically endangered, and the potential for us to see massive degradation in all reef habitats worldwide is high by 2050.

What we now know is that with our climate changing, the water is warming and the water is becoming more acidic. These are two stressors that are extremely difficult for corals to cope with. The rates of change are so fast because of our intervention. The changes in those colors that occur when the coral's health declines evoke an emotional reaction in all of us; the image becomes paler and paler and more washed out.

What we’re trying to do here is to leverage 25 years of basic scientific knowledge that gives us an inkling that corals are perhaps a little bit more flexible in their biology than we would think. There are certain individuals that are doing surprisingly well in conditions that are killing others. So, we’re interested in focusing on those corals and then thinking about how we might build capacity or breed corals that are better able to withstand future ocean conditions that are warmer and more acidic.

I’m all about taking my skill set and applying it in an area that I can, and that's in the area of climate change adaptation. What happens if we don't mitigate fast enough the fossil fuel burning? What do we do? The solution is to attempt to assist corals to adapt or climatize to the changes at a rate that matches the rate of change in the environment.

We have no magic bullet answer; we are at the early stages of this project, and we are trying a lot of things. We’ve done some pretty amazing things to damage the planet, but it’s our role to react and then amend and set the course right. Let’s not be bogged down or paralyzed by the enormity of the problem.

We are doing with corals what nature does; we’re just trying to accelerate the rate at which they do it to keep up with the very fast rates of change in the environment. That’s the only way we’re going to go forward.