'Super Corals' Could Survive Warming Oceans: Page 2
This is a healthy coral reef.
This is a healthy coral reef. Many corals worldwide are dying from high water temperatures and pollution runoff from land.
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30 Days of the Ocean: Photos
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The month of June honors both National Ocean Month and World Ocean Day (June 8). What better time, then, to check out photos of undersea life and be reminded that things "down there" are just as important as things up here on land. Here, a manatee goes about its day. The manatee, also known as a "seacow," is an air-breathing herbivore listed as a federally endangered species. Manatees are slow moving and can't swim quickly away from boats. This often results in collisions that can kill or injure them. Whales Counted With Space Satellites
NOAA
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Life's a beach. Mom and her baby elephant seal roll around in the sand in Ano Nuevo Island, Calif. Elephant Seal Calls Tell Rivals Who's Boss
NOAA
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A humpback whale breaches in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, off the coast of California. Distinct Humpback Whale Populations Found in North Pacific
Robert Schwemmer, NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries
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A blue rockfish fans for the camera in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, in California. 200-Year-Old Fish Caught Off Alaska
NOAA
View Caption + #5: A Southern sea otter, aka,
Enhydra lutris nereis , wonders what all the fuss is about, at South Harbor, Moss Landing, Calif. The World Ocean Day Photo Contest entrant was Submitted by Dr. Steve Lonhart. PHOTOS: Otter vs. Gator: Otter Wins
NOAA
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A white-lobed sponge brightens up the scenery. It's one of several images of rarely seen deep-sea animals that were captured on camera in Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary during a NOAA expedition. Researchers used a NOAA remotely operated vehicle in waters 328 to 656 feet deep off the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. The research was funded by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program. Strange, Carnivorous Sponge Found In Deep Sea
NOAA
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This image brimming with colorful marine life is from the Pearl and Hermes Atoll. It's a huge oval coral reef within several internal reefs and is the second largest among the six atolls in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. PHOTOS: Sharks, Marine Mammals Hang in Paradise
NOAA
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Having no backbone isn't always a bad thing! Just ask any octopus. These boneless invertebrates know how to squeeze into (and out of) many a tight spot. They have three hearts, nine brains and blue blood. (Two hearts send blood to the gills, while the third pumper sends it to the rest of the body.) VIDEO: Octopi Have a Brain in Every Tentacle
NOAA
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Rapture Reef sits within the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument. The monument encompasses more than 140,000 square miles of ocean and coral reef habitat. PHOTOS: Life in Australia's Great Barrier Reef
NOAA
View Caption + #10: A sea turtle swims off of the Hawaiian islands.
NOAA
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This seal is eager to wriggle its way back to freedom, as divers release it from fishing nets. Marine debris -- such as these nets -- makes a serious impact on its surroundings. From being an eyesore on a beach to injuring marine life or stopping a 400-ton vessel at sea, it causes problems that are difficult to ignore. Seal Pup Found in Forest
NOAA
View Caption + #12: Grey matter artwork? Nope! It's a sharknose goby (
Elacatinus evelynae ) propped up on brain coral in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
NOAA
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Gates and her team theorized that if they could take some of these "super-performing" corals and push them to the limits of the heat, acidity and pollution they could withstand, then create offspring, the babies might end up with those same robust characteristics.
Scientists are busy breeding a new kind of coral they hope will be able to withstand the harsher conditions predicted of future seas.
Troy Mayne, WWF
"How much stress do we have to give them before they develop a genetic memory for it?" Gates said.
"The hope is that, as parents, we can program our offspring to do better," said Raphael Ritson-Williams, a post-doctoral student on Gates' team. This is no different, he said.
The first round of the experiment formed the doctoral thesis of Hollie Putnam, an ocean scientist on Gates' team who now runs that part of the program. The offspring of super corals were raised in the lab until, in 2014, they were big enough to go back out to the reef.
The results of that experiment were published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, Gates said.
"The first babies were transplanted back to the reef with zero percent mortality and survived the bleaching" event of 2014, Gates said. "It was a very significant result."
More funding -- $4 million from Microsoft’s Paul Allen’s Vulcan Foundation -- arrived in June for the five-year program and Gates' team is about to transplant more super coral babies to one of the reefs in Kaneohe Bay.
Gates acknowledges that her work is controversial to some scientists, who think she's poo-pooing the approach of trying to mitigate climate change in favor of direct intervention.
But Steve Vollmer, Associate Director of the Marine Science Center at Northeastern University, isn’t one of them. “They are good first steps to understanding the potential for adaptation in corals,” he told Discovery News.
Gates said: "We should be doing everything we can, politically and practically."
So what's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for Gates?
"In each location, to have robust (coral) species that are always ahead of climate change," she said. "But humans will always be involved. (Warming) is happening too quickly for corals to evolve on their own."