Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Laurin Vogelbaum. Here, coral reefs are being killed off
Speaker 1: faster than they can regenerate due to factors such as pollution, overfishing,
Speaker 1: and the rising ocean temperatures associated with global warming, but
Speaker 1: there is hope in a developing process for helping coral regrow.
Speaker 1: First the bad news. According to coral Vita, a coral
Speaker 1: farming and restoration organization based in Freeport Grant, Bahama, more
Speaker 1: than thirty percent of the world's reefs have died in
Speaker 1: the past few decades, and scientists predict sev of those
Speaker 1: left will die by Reefs provide a habitat for fish
Speaker 1: and wildlife, which promotes a diverse ecosystem and provides a
Speaker 1: source of food for people. Coral reefs also provide jobs
Speaker 1: in the fishing industry, plus the recreation and tourism industries
Speaker 1: thanks snorkeling and scuba diving, all while protecting shorelines from
Speaker 1: erosion and storm damage. The ecosystem of coral reef can
Speaker 1: also provide renewable resources for medical research and in the
Speaker 1: development of such things as painkillers and bone graft methods.
Speaker 1: The world's coral reefs are in decline, but coral farming
Speaker 1: may provide a solution. Coral farming is the practice of
Speaker 1: collecting coral pieces from the ocean, growing them in aquariums,
Speaker 1: and then returning them to the wild. Coral farms can
Speaker 1: be established and maintained at a low cost, and controlling
Speaker 1: growing conditions helps the coral grow more quickly. Some farms
Speaker 1: are actually installed in the ocean, making them less expensive
Speaker 1: to run, while land based farms allow scientists to work
Speaker 1: under optimal conditions and learn more about how to slow
Speaker 1: or prevent coral loss and decay. Florida based MOTE Marine
Speaker 1: Laboratory and Aquarium is credited with the discovery that coral
Speaker 1: grows faster and when it's cut or broken because of
Speaker 1: its natural self healing response to injury. Director doctor David
Speaker 1: Vaughan developed the quick grow technique by accident in two
Speaker 1: thousand six after breaking some coral in a tank, but
Speaker 1: he didn't start using the technique on a large scale
Speaker 1: until the process of fragmenting coral has been used since
Speaker 1: at least the nineteen sixties, but experts say MOTES project
Speaker 1: is the most promising attempt to mass produce reef building
Speaker 1: corals for transplant onto dead or dying reefs so far,
Speaker 1: depending on the species, The corals are grown on tree
Speaker 1: like structures constructed from PVC pipe or frames made from
Speaker 1: cement and plaster. They look a little bit like Charlie
Speaker 1: Brown's Christmas tree. On a bigger scale, A wet saw
Speaker 1: is used to cut the coral into one centimeter wide
Speaker 1: cubes that's a little less than half an inch, a
Speaker 1: process called microfragmenting. Some corals are micro fragmented and put
Speaker 1: through the growth process again instead of being transplanted. After
Speaker 1: being transplanted in groups, the coral eventually fuses together. The
Speaker 1: moat team experiments with different temperatures and acidity levels in
Speaker 1: their tanks to cultivate coral better suited to warmer temperatures
Speaker 1: and rising acidity in the ocean. Once the coral is
Speaker 1: ready to be transplanted, the team searches for dying coral
Speaker 1: of the same species. The new coral is left to
Speaker 1: fading color for thirty days before being transplanted, because the
Speaker 1: bright colors of new coral may inspire fish to be
Speaker 1: too aggressive with it. The new a coral is then
Speaker 1: attached to the old coral with epoxy, and the team
Speaker 1: waits for the new growth to begin. A similar project,
Speaker 1: reported in Aeen issue of Science Daily, was completed in
Speaker 1: Indonesia from fifteen as part of a study from the
Speaker 1: University of California, Davis and Mars Symbio Science. Researchers supplemented
Speaker 1: a coral reef with small hexagonal structures that supported new
Speaker 1: coral fragments to try to encourage fusing a new growth.
Speaker 1: This technique increased life coral by about six at a
Speaker 1: cost of about twenty five dollars per square meter that's
Speaker 1: roughly eleven square feet. Though coral restoration efforts have been
Speaker 1: successful so far, it's important to remember that lab grown
Speaker 1: coral is just a bandage on the real problem. This
Speaker 1: isn't a cure for the problems caused by global warming,
Speaker 1: researchers caution, but it's a method of buying time because
Speaker 1: there isn't enough time to wait for coral to replenish
Speaker 1: itself naturally. A cupcake sized piece of coral would normally
Speaker 1: take about two years to grow, but with this method,
Speaker 1: it grows in about four months. Wild coral takes twenty
Speaker 1: five to seventy five years to reach sexual maturity. The
Speaker 1: exact dator reproduction depends on the coral species, but the
Speaker 1: lab method reduces that time frame to just three years.
Speaker 1: Dr Vaughn told PBS that a coral structure the size
Speaker 1: of a car could be anywhere from five hundred to
Speaker 1: a thousand years old. According to David Gross, a coral biologist,
Speaker 1: Von's goal is to plant one million corals before he retires.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Cheri's three Wit and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: To learn more about this and lots of other developing topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.