Can these corals take the heat?

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1:00Coral reefs are enchanting, right? Like a healthy reef is just this gorgeous ecosystem full of strange, beautiful creatures. But I don't think it's any secret that coral reefs are struggling. By one estimate, the world has lost half of its live corals since the 1950s. And my colleague, Benji Jones, has been reporting on this. Long-time listeners of the show will know him from episodes about discovering new species or the economic value of a bat. But recently, he went on a reporting trip to Palau to cover a project that's trying to turn things around for coral and is trying to do it fast.

2:07Benji, thank you for being here. I'm so happy to be here. It is funny to me that we both went to Palau. Like, anyone who listens to the show knows that I also went to Palau, like, a month before you went to Palau. It's a special place. I found it interesting because whenever we've talked in the past, you are like the most cheerful person delivering the most grim news. Like you always have this exact smile on your face. I have no feeling, yeah. And you're like, everything's dying. But this, you said, was like maybe a slightly more hopeful story? Yeah. Yeah, I recently went to this island nation in the Pacific called Palau.

2:50And I was there to tell a story about coral reefs. And yeah, I feel like it was more hopeful than I felt in a long time about these particular ecosystems. So I felt good. I felt good. And it was like so much fun. Yeah, let's get into it. Like when I was there, I sort of got a chance to actually snorkel. And it was just, I mean, it was stunning. It is literally, like, the most incredible reef ever. I mean, I'm so glad that you snorkeled there so we, like, can bond over Palau's reefs because they really are so special. And, like, out of, like, a calendar almost, like, the watercolor, like, it literally is just so, feels like fake almost.

3:34It's so beautiful. Looking down through, basically, it was like I put this mask on, put my face in the water, and it felt like, you know, those videos of, like, people seeing color for the first time where they'll, like, put on the glasses. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm seeing, like, color for the first time. I, like, wanted to cry. Yeah, I mean, coral reefs are these magical underwater rainforests. They're so full of life. And I've been diving since I was like 15, I think. I love getting to like sink into this other world. And it's like, I want everyone to have that experience because it is so special.

4:18And it makes me really actually sad that reefs are in such bad shape. What's happening to them? Is it just climate change or? There are several different problems that reefs are facing. And there's like pollution, so like sewage and nitrogen from farmland running off into the water. There are diseases that affect corals. There's overfishing, which is bad for the reef. To what you're saying, climate change today, I would say is like the leading threat that reefs are facing. Like there was a report that came out in like 2018 or something that said with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming relative to like pre-industrial times, we could lose 70 to 90 percent of coral reefs.

5:0870 to 90 percent? Yeah. And like, so that is that is truly existential for these ecosystems. And so much depends on them. They're not just cool to look at. They're not just cool for divers and snorkelers and tourists. They're incredibly important for protecting shorelines. They're incredibly important for maintaining fisheries for folks. Like, so yeah, there's like a lot at stake here.

5:35Why is heat specifically such an issue for them? Okay, so... Benji's getting into like... I hope you're ready for me to tell you about coral polyps, because I can talk about this for a long time. So first of all, let's get the basics out of the way. Sure. Coral is an animal. Yes. So I like that sometimes they're like affectionately or maybe not affectionately called rocks, but like they are very much an animal. And not only that, they are a colony of animals. So each individual coral that you're seeing, so like one of those branches, for example, is a colony of little animals called polyps. Polyps, like they're, in my mind, they look like little sacks, like little goo sacks.

6:16Yeah, they're basically goo sacks. Nice. Like all of us. And like us, they have skeletons. Okay. And so they're these little, like, gooey things with tentacles. And they excrete a skeleton. And as they grow... Like, if we oozed a skeleton and it looked like a giant rock. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. And, like, it is that secretion of the skeleton that creates all this beautiful, this three-dimensional terrain that's so important. So you have the polyp, the coral polyp, this little animal. It's in a colony. They're all genetically identical. So all the little polyps in a piece of coral are genetically identical.

6:56They clone themselves over and over and over again when they grow. A coral polyp has this incredible partnership with a kind of algae, a beneficial algae that lives inside of its tissue. and that algae is basically like a solar power plant that generates most of the energy that coral polyps need to survive. So like the algae is basically photosynthesizing. Exactly, like a plant. Just like a plant does. And then that like photosynthesis creates a bunch of nutrients and it like hands off some of the nutrients to the coral. Yeah, like sugar basically. It's giving to the coral and the algae in return gets like a place to live near the sun.

7:38It can photosynthesize. It's paying rent. It does. It's giving a lot of its sugar to the coral polyp. So why this matters is because when it gets too hot in the ocean, that partnership between the polyp and their like power plant algae breaks down. Scientists think that the algae might be secreting some kind of toxic substance. And so the coral polyp like ejects the algae. And so that is bleaching when all those algae cells leave the coral and then it turns white because it doesn't have algae in it, which gives it a lot of its color. Okay. Basically, that's why we get these, like, almost the images that I've seen look like skeletons, like a graveyard of coral, essentially.

8:22But it's coral, from what you're telling me, like, slowly starving. Yeah, exactly. So it's bleached coral is starving and not dead, but it will be dead if the temperatures don't come back down again. And so basically bleaching is like a very sick coral. What have people been doing about this bleaching? So people are basically planting coral on reefs that are dying to try to regrow them. Okay. In the same way that you would plant like saplings or seeds to regrow forests, which people do too. They're doing that for reefs. And there are actually a lot of people who are doing this replanting of reefs or coral restoration, as, like, scientists call it.

9:07I've seen, like, one source tracking this globally. And there are, like, 900-plus projects around the world to restore coral reefs. So, basically, like, there are these, like, agents all around the world that are trying to rebuild reefs, which is, like, very exciting, very hopeful because people really care. It shows you that people really care. In the same way that I care because, like, I love these ecosystems. So people are really trying to help. Is it super effective or? I mean, so this is like, this is the problem. This is what I really, like, want to talk to you about, which is that because the oceans are getting hotter and hotter, if you're putting corals out into that same ocean, they are going to be more likely to bleach in the future just because the oceans are heating up.

9:57So it's like, why are we planting trees if the forest is just going to burn anyway? Because I remember you doing some reporting a couple of years ago about an effort like this, right? Yeah. So in 2022, I went down to Florida with a photographer, Jenny Adler, and we were there to observe a lot of this restoration work in practice. Like there's this organization called the Coral Restoration Foundation. And like they do pretty cool work. They have these like beautiful trees, they call them, that they sink underwater. They're like made of PVC pipe. And then they hang corals from them. It was just cool to be diving on these reefs that had been replanted.

10:37And so I was like, okay, scientists are like literally regrowing this coral reef. And I'm seeing the results of that. So that was in 2022. Uh-oh. But this was like devastating. So in 2023, there was a record-breaking heat wave that started that summer. And I was like literally cruising over fields of planted coral that was all bleached white. Oh, no. Yeah, it was really sad. It was sad because like I want Florida to have its reef because especially in a place like that, that's really vulnerable to storms. It's so important. 90 % of the live coral over the last, whatever, 50 years is gone. So like being able to replant it is so important.

11:24But I was also sad because all these researchers and this organization that had put like blood, sweat and tears into planting this reef were watching their work over years. They had planted like 40 plus thousand pieces of coral. All that work sort of like disappeared, or most of it did a lot of it did and so yeah it was just sad like surfacing with some of the people from that organization like they were just like devastated it wasn't just their work that was disappearing it was also this like it represented a challenge to the the whole idea of restoring coral reefs because if we know that heat waves are getting worse why put coral back out there Why put all this time and money into planting coral if it's just going to die anyway?

12:16So is there anything that we can do then? Yeah, so that's what I was doing in Palau, was meeting with a researcher, was watching a researcher work who is trying to fix this problem. More on that after the break.

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16:33This is an ordinary dollar that's been kissed with Coral Blue No. 2 semi-gloss lipstick. Actually, it's Coral Blue No. 2. So talk to me about Palau, I guess. Yeah. So Palau is not like one island. It is 340 islands. Yes. Not very many of them are inhabited. But they look like they're floating because the bottoms of these little islands, some of them are like only the size of like a house or a bus or something, they're tiny. but the bottoms of them are eroding. And so it looks like there's a gap between the bottom of the base of the island and the ocean. And so there are like moments when you're boating through these islands and it feels literally like, I hope you got this reference, like the floating islands of Pandora and Avatar.

17:24Call me basic. I don't care. It's a great movie. And, but like I could just sort of suspend disbelief for a little bit, like being on the boat, like the hair, Like the wind blowing through my hair, my not very much hair. Luscious locks. Yeah, exactly. What's interesting about being there for a story about restoration, about coral reefs, is that Palau's reefs are actually, as you saw, they're doing really well. There are a couple reasons that make it a really good place to study coral reefs. One of them is that there are loads of them. So, like, the flip side of it being healthy is that, like, there are all these coral reefs.

17:59There are tons of populations of coral. So if you want to study coral and study how different corals survive or don't survive under warming, it's a good place just because you have a lot to access. There's a marine lab there. You also, I think, went to this marine lab. Yeah, Picric. So the Palau International Coral Reef Center. You got it. Yeah. I believe. And they have a wet lab in the back. And you can always expect to find big tanks full of sea creatures. And in this case, lots of coral and clams and urchins. But you were there to talk to one researcher in particular, right? I've known this guy for a while.

18:34His name is Steve Palumby. Okay. He's at Stanford, and he is really focused on improving coral reef restoration. How can we make this better? Particularly, he's done a ton of work on heat tolerance within corals. Heat tolerance. So trying to basically identify which coral colonies are going to be more likely to survive should a heat wave come. And can we then use those more heat-tolerant corals to rebuild reefs? So instead of just putting any corals out to restore a reef, let's use the ones that are hardier in the face of heat so that they won't die. So there's this whole field of inquiry into why some corals seem to be more heat-resistant than others.

19:17And it's not simple. There is a genetic basis to it. It is rooted to some extent in a coral's genome, in its DNA. that algae that it has this partnership with, that matters too. So certain strains of the algae are more heat resistant than others. So you have to get the right algae to be able to tolerate heat better. And there's also like conditioning, like what did that particular colony experience in the past? Will that make it more likely to be resistant to heat in the future? So there are all these different scientific questions about what is it about these corals that we see surviving heat that makes them survive?

19:52What makes them so special? I mean, that sounds like a lot of work then if you're trying to if you're trying to tease out like the coral and the algae. I mean, yes, I think like there is still a lot of unknown when it comes to the basis of heat tolerance. And the problem with that is that like we don't have time. We don't have time to like pursue just the science to try to figure out exactly what corals are more heat resistant and be perfect about it. Like really understand the genetic basis, for example, or like understand everything about the symbiont, the algae in it. And so from Steve's perspective, this guy, the Stanford biologist who's been working in Palau for a while, he's basically like, we kind of know enough right now to make restoration better, to start figuring out which corals are heat resistant and planting them in the ocean.

20:52And so Steve is like, okay, what can we do right now to improve the way that we're planting corals so they survive if future heat waves come? What does that look like, essentially? What does kind of being like, we know enough to start doing stuff. What is the stuff that he's doing? Yeah. So Steve's thing is basically finding a way to quickly test corals for their heat tolerance before planting them on the reef. And so what he has spent a lot of his time doing is trying to figure out how to create a quick heat test to run corals through that isn't going to take a ton of time and resources. So basically, he will take bits of coral off the wild reef, bring them back to Pickrick, this lab in Palau, and then essentially put them into picnic coolers.

21:49Picnic coolers like the, like, oh, it's a little white thing with a red top. Yes, like what you put like fruit and cheese in for a picnic in the park. And they'll take it to Prospect Park, yeah. So these coolers are outfitted with like aquarium heater, a small pump, and there's some seawater in them. So he puts these little pieces of coral into the coolers, and then essentially he just turns the temperature up and sees which ones bleach first and which ones stay colorful, indicating that they might have some advantage under warming conditions. Interesting. And the innovation here is A, it's pretty simple because it's a picnic cooler.

22:30Like you can buy that online. And same with the other parts, and it's pretty cheap. but it's also fast. So a lot of like the more traditional or like a lot of heat tests run for two weeks or a month. And the idea there is that it's supposed to be like better mimicking natural conditions. But what Steve is trying to show is that even if you just have four days, you can heat up the water really quickly in increments. So yeah, like 30 degrees Celsius is the baseline and then you ramp up to 34 and then to 35 the next day and then 36 the next day. Just do that for four days. And then each morning you check the corals in your cooler and see which ones are still colorful, which ones are not.

23:08And the ones that are still colorful are the champions. They're the winners in this stress test, in this heat test. And so when, once he's figured out, like, this one's extreme, like, this one's a champion, this one's maybe, like, middle of the pack, whatever, what does he then do with those corals? Like, where do they go? Yeah, so I'll just briefly say He works with this other researcher at Stanford named Courtney Claypack, who does a lot of the implementation of the restoration. So she's trying to build this project out. But the idea is that because they're still trying to understand how well these tests work, these quick four-day tests work, they are planting all of those corals that they've tested on the reef, including the low heat-tolerant ones, the medium heat-tolerant ones, and the high heat-tolerant ones, and then seeing what happens in the wild.

23:58What does the nursery look like? So it's like desperate to get out to this one spot on the reef where they had been adding all these heat resistant, according to these tests, these quick tests, heat resistant corals. They're trying to regrow a reef in Palau that one of the few reefs that's in bad shape for the local community. The local community, the governor, this guy Sharp, was like, this used to be an amazing fishing ground. We have since lost the fish here. Can you help us rebuild the reef? asked Pickrick, got in touch with Steve. Steve's like, okay, let's make this the spot of a nursery where a lot of our climate, a lot of our heat tolerant corals can go so that over time they might have a higher chance of surviving if there are marine heat waves in the future.

24:42So we got to snorkel and see this cool like restoration site. What was it like? Like what did the nursery look like? We were like a couple miles from shore, but it was pretty shallow. That's like one of the cool things about coral reefs in a place like this. Like you can be really far offshore and it's really shallow because the reef has grown up. So yeah, we jumped in and on the seafloor, there were a bunch of these metal structures that look a little bit like sort of like spiders on the floor of the ocean. And they're really common in restoration. You actually attach the corals with like zip ties to those, they're called Mars stars.

25:15And I'm snorkeling out over this garden of these metal structures covered in coral. And it was just cool because I had known what they had been through. The cool thing about this work and why it's different than a lot of the restoration that I've seen is that there were 26 different species of coral. So it was really diverse. and some of them look like these green fuzzy mittens. Some of them look like that kind of incredible neon blue antlers. Some of them just kind of lumpy and purple. Those are my favorites. There were fish, too. There were giant clams there. There were sea cucumbers. There were parrotfish.

26:04What's next? Do they take hardy Palauan coral to other places? Do other places do this test? Like, what could this teach us for other environments? Yeah. It's a good question because we know that, like, yeah, this particular reef is not in desperate need of restoration, but so many other ones are. Basically, like, right now, there are already similar projects going on in different parts of the Pacific. So there's one in Maui. There's one in the Federated States of Micronesia. There's one in the Marshall Islands. So they're testing this approach in a bunch of different places. In the future, the idea is that because this is so affordable and it's pretty straightforward, four days, picnic coolers, etc., things you can buy online, anyone can implement this like heat testing protocol into their restoration.

27:00So basically, like, why don't we just add this one step of like, let's test the corals that you're going to put out so that we don't just, I don't know, roll the dice to see if they have what it takes to survive. So like, let's be more strategic about what we are planting on a reef. Given that it's like, it's not easy. Like I just said, like this testing approach is easy. It's easy relative to other tests. But like doing coral restoration is like really labor intensive. I mean, it's like you have to have boats. You have to have a staff. You have to have the equipment. Seawater, like, kind of, like, erodes, like, destroys everything on land.

27:32Like, it is hard to, like, raise coral. And so finding ways to make that easier is, like, helpful. So the idea is basically that, like, other people around the world could do this and just take the winners from those tests to plant. So it really strikes me that this is not, it's not just sort of, like, restoration of the reef as it was. Such a good point. restoration is not a great word for what we need to do because we can't we're not trying to restore reefs to some former state like restore is like let's bring back whereas it is no longer enough to look to the to like try to bring what we had back it's not enough it won't work that's what lots of people have tried and then the coral dies we now need to like recreate or re-engineer what these ecosystems look like because things have just gotten so bad.