SF scientists fight climate doom with lab-grown coral breakthrough

"Rebecca Albright, a longtime coral reef scientist at the academy, said her team is creating baby corals to help mitigate their devastating and widespread decline. Over the past three decades, more than 50% of the coral reefs around the world have been lost, mostly over the past 10 years, Albright said. If changes aren't made soon, 90% to 99% of the coral reefs that are remaining could be deteriorated by 2050, she said."

"Albright said the academy's work comes because of the "urgency of the global coral reef decline" and the fact that ocean waters have "started to become inhospitable." The main problem is an increasingly widespread process called coral bleaching (zooxanthellae), which is a stress response when the ocean gets too warm due to climate change, Albright said. The coral expels its algae to protect itself and the animal turns white and starves to death."

A lab at the California Academy of Sciences is breeding juvenile corals to bolster reef recovery amid widespread decline. More than half of global coral reefs have been lost in the past three decades, with most losses in the last ten years. Without intervention, 90% to 99% of remaining reefs could deteriorate by 2050. Rising ocean temperatures trigger coral bleaching, causing corals to expel symbiotic algae and lose their primary food source. In nutrient-poor clear waters many corals cannot compensate for lost photosynthetic nutrition. Recovery depends on growth and reproduction, making propagation efforts urgent.

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