Can We Save the World's Coral?

Much of the world's coral is in danger, but a recently developed farming technique could help it regrow. Learn how in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain
Stuff Laurin Vogelbaum. Here, coral reefs are being killed off
faster than they can regenerate due to factors such as pollution, overfishing,
and the rising ocean temperatures associated with global warming, but
there is hope in a developing process for helping coral regrow.

(00:22):
First the bad news. According to coral Vita, a coral
farming and restoration organization based in Freeport Grant, Bahama, more
than thirty percent of the world's reefs have died in
the past few decades, and scientists predict sev of those
left will die by Reefs provide a habitat for fish
and wildlife, which promotes a diverse ecosystem and provides a

(00:43):
source of food for people. Coral reefs also provide jobs
in the fishing industry, plus the recreation and tourism industries
thanks snorkeling and scuba diving, all while protecting shorelines from
erosion and storm damage. The ecosystem of coral reef can
also provide renewable resources for medical research and in the
development of such things as painkillers and bone graft methods.

(01:03):
The world's coral reefs are in decline, but coral farming
may provide a solution. Coral farming is the practice of
collecting coral pieces from the ocean, growing them in aquariums,
and then returning them to the wild. Coral farms can
be established and maintained at a low cost, and controlling
growing conditions helps the coral grow more quickly. Some farms
are actually installed in the ocean, making them less expensive

(01:25):
to run, while land based farms allow scientists to work
under optimal conditions and learn more about how to slow
or prevent coral loss and decay. Florida based MOTE Marine
Laboratory and Aquarium is credited with the discovery that coral
grows faster and when it's cut or broken because of
its natural self healing response to injury. Director doctor David
Vaughan developed the quick grow technique by accident in two

(01:47):
thousand six after breaking some coral in a tank, but
he didn't start using the technique on a large scale
until the process of fragmenting coral has been used since
at least the nineteen sixties, but experts say MOTES project
is the most promising attempt to mass produce reef building
corals for transplant onto dead or dying reefs so far,

(02:08):
depending on the species, The corals are grown on tree
like structures constructed from PVC pipe or frames made from
cement and plaster. They look a little bit like Charlie
Brown's Christmas tree. On a bigger scale, A wet saw
is used to cut the coral into one centimeter wide
cubes that's a little less than half an inch, a
process called microfragmenting. Some corals are micro fragmented and put

(02:29):
through the growth process again instead of being transplanted. After
being transplanted in groups, the coral eventually fuses together. The
moat team experiments with different temperatures and acidity levels in
their tanks to cultivate coral better suited to warmer temperatures
and rising acidity in the ocean. Once the coral is
ready to be transplanted, the team searches for dying coral

(02:49):
of the same species. The new coral is left to
fading color for thirty days before being transplanted, because the
bright colors of new coral may inspire fish to be
too aggressive with it. The new a coral is then
attached to the old coral with epoxy, and the team
waits for the new growth to begin. A similar project,
reported in Aeen issue of Science Daily, was completed in

(03:10):
Indonesia from fifteen as part of a study from the
University of California, Davis and Mars Symbio Science. Researchers supplemented
a coral reef with small hexagonal structures that supported new
coral fragments to try to encourage fusing a new growth.
This technique increased life coral by about six at a
cost of about twenty five dollars per square meter that's

(03:31):
roughly eleven square feet. Though coral restoration efforts have been
successful so far, it's important to remember that lab grown
coral is just a bandage on the real problem. This
isn't a cure for the problems caused by global warming,
researchers caution, but it's a method of buying time because
there isn't enough time to wait for coral to replenish
itself naturally. A cupcake sized piece of coral would normally

(03:52):
take about two years to grow, but with this method,
it grows in about four months. Wild coral takes twenty
five to seventy five years to reach sexual maturity. The
exact dator reproduction depends on the coral species, but the
lab method reduces that time frame to just three years.
Dr Vaughn told PBS that a coral structure the size
of a car could be anywhere from five hundred to

(04:14):
a thousand years old. According to David Gross, a coral biologist,
Von's goal is to plant one million corals before he retires.
Today's episode was written by Cheri's three Wit and produced
by Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works.
To learn more about this and lots of other developing topics,
visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.