Scientifically Engineered Coral Could Survive Climate Change Devastation

By Richard Schiffman On 5/22/16 at 7:00 AM

Ruth Gates, coral researcher and director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology on Coconut Island, handles a piece of coral at her outdoor wet lab.Elyse Butler

 Tech & ScienceCoralClimate Change

Ruth Gates hops off the launch and gestures toward a mass of submerged coral shimmering darkly in the crystalline waters a few feet offshore. “That whitish coral and the one covered with algae over there are dead,” she says. “The brown coral that you see growing in the gaps is still alive.”

We have arrived at Moku o Loʻe (Coconut Island), the site of the University of Hawaii’s state-of-the-art marine laboratory, where Gates and her team are attempting to learn why some coral animals survive bleaching—when an environmental trigger like warm water causes corals to turn completely white and stop growing—while others, often just inches away, perish. Read more.