Record levels of heat in the ocean are causing a worldwide mass bleaching event on coral reefs, as seen here on the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists are working on creating more heat-resistant coral to help restore reefs.
"They're these microscopic, sort of nondescript algae," says Matthew Nitschke, research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, as he magnifies a few under a microscope, revealing golden-brown circles. The algae in Nitschke's lab have been grown over hundreds of generations, subjected to an accelerated version of survival-of-the-fittest. They've been exposed to heat, singling out those best able to handle higher temperatures, which then go to produce future algal generations.
"They begin to starve," Nitschke says."That primary energy source – the loss of that during a heat stress event is potentially catastrophic for an individual coral. They are now in a race against time."Corals bleach, turning ghostly white, when they're under stress from hotter temperatures. If the heat subsides, they can recover.
"The last thing we want to do is make things worse," says Line Bay, a research program director at the Australian Institute of Marine Science."We don't want to produce lab-adapted corals and then put them out in the real world where they don't do well."
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