Innovation is also moving fast in the techniques need to create new corals and successfully deploy them on reefs. One breakthrough is the reproduction of the entire complex life cycle of spawning corals in a London aquarium, which is now being scaled up in Florida and could see corals planted off that coast by 2019. “But it is too late to leave them alone, given the pace at which we are losing corals,” said van Oppen, who said the broad aim is to speed up natural evolutionary processes. “We are starting to see what is possible in the laboratory,” said van Oppen and the group are already decoding the genomes of some symbionts. However, all the restoration efforts are only buying time for coral reef survival in the face of global warming – rising temperatures will overwhelm all reefs unless checked.

Source: The Guardian December 23, 2017 07:52 UTC