Stanford scientists watched bleached coral fully recover in seven weeks after touching a healthy clone
In lab experiments at Hopkins Marine Station, bleached corals got their color back within days of contact with genetically identical healthy coral.
By the Bay Area Brief staff · Edited by Seamus McKenna · · 3 min read
California State Capitol in Sacramento. Photo: Andre m / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped, resized and color-graded). Archive photo of the area; not a photo of the events in this story.
Researchers in Stanford's Palumbi Lab found that bleached corals placed against healthy clones, meaning genetically identical copies, started regaining color within days. They recovered fully in about seven weeks, which KQED reports is the fastest documented recovery.
Bleaching happens when warming water causes corals to expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissue. Lead author Danny Collins, a Ph.D. student at the Doerr School of Sustainability, published the findings Oct. 14 in Science Advances.
The experiments used aquarium-sourced corals at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey County. The researchers say the approach could someday help reefs, which cover 0.01% of the ocean floor but support about a quarter of marine life. It has not yet been tested on wild reefs.
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Stanford researchers found that bleached Pocillopora coral recovered in about seven weeks in the lab after it touched healthy coral from the same genetic individual. The study was published Oct. 14 in Science Advances.
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