Australia is genetically modifying the coral reef to help it survive climate change
Environment — di Lorenzo Brenna
Australian scientists are trialling a form of “assisted evolution” to help the coral reef adapt to global warming.
Australia is genetically modifying the coral reef to help it survive climate change
Australian scientists are trialling a form of “assisted evolution” to help the coral reef adapt to global warming.
The Great Barrier Reef, a Unesco World Heritage Site, is slowly dying, killed by climate change. Warming waters and the growing acidification of the oceans, combined with human impact and the invasion of a species of starfish that feeds on coral, are causing the degradation of one of the planet's richest ecosystems.
The reef has lost around half of its coral cover over the past thirty years. The Australian government is trialling a new technique to help coral reefs cope with the constant rise in ocean temperatures by genetically modifying the coral species that make them up.
According to researchers, without intervention the Great Barrier Reef could shrink to less than 10 per cent and corals would be supplanted by algae and sponges. Scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims), in collaboration with the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, have trialled "assisted evolution" to help corals adapt more rapidly to climate change.
It is the first time that genetic modification has been used for conservation rather than commercial purposes. The new study began at the Aims "sea simulator", a large aquarium housing tropical marine organisms that enables scientists to conduct cutting-edge research.
Several types of coral were introduced into the aquarium shortly before the annual spawning event and paired through in vitro fertilisation to create new hybrids. Coral from the central section of the Great Barrier Reef was crossbred with coral from cooler waters to see whether the hybrid is more resistant to higher temperatures.
Scientists are also looking into the possibility of altering the algae that live within coral tissue, so that they can adapt better to climate change. The aim is to accelerate the evolutionary process of corals to help them withstand the rapid warming of the oceans.
Corals can adapt to different temperatures, but these changes usually take thousands of years. "We are trying to speed up a natural process — this is theoretically possible," said Madeleine van Oppen, a scientist at Aims.