As Ocean Waters Heat Up, A Quest to Create ‘Super Corals’
With the world’s coral reefs increasingly threatened by warmer and more acidic seas, scientists are selectively breeding corals to create species with the best chance to survive in the coming century and beyond. Are genetically modified corals next?
In Hawaii this summer, as corals engage in their once-a-year courtship ritual of releasing sperm and eggs into the water by moonlight, Ruth Gates will oversee a unique mating: the coming together of “super-corals” in her lab.
Gates and her team at the Institute of Marine Biology in Kaneohe tagged corals in their local waters that thrived through a heinous hot spell last September. A few of those rugged specimens will be picked for arranged marriages this month, hopefully yielding some offspring even better suited
to thriving in the warmer waters of the future. It will be, she thinks, the first selective mating of corals to try to help them thrive in the face of climate change.
Gates and her colleague, Madeleine van Oppen at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, have been awarded $3.9 million from Paul G. Allen’s philanthropic organization Vulcan Inc. for this and other work into the “assisted evolution” of corals — an attempt to intentionally beef up the genetic stock of reefs to survive the onslaught of climate change. “This idea of homing in on super-performers is a no-brainer,” says Gates. “We have been doing it in the food supply for millennia.”
The work can be tricky — corals don’t like to be touched when breeding. And it’s controversial — some find the idea of active intervention in coral ecosystems disconcerting, since it turns a natural environment into a planned one that might be less biodiverse and less resilient to unexpected challenges like disease. The idea of tinkering with coral genetics is even touchier, even if current work focuses on simple selective breeding for the hardiest corals, rather than on the more controversial prospect of producing corals that have been genetically modified.
