A team of scientists are getting creative about how to provide these underwater gardens with the best chance of survival against global warming, starting with coral found in Sydney Harbour.

On a brisk winter’s day in Sydney, most people find the seawater temperature near freezing.

A team of Sydney scientists are getting creative about how to provide these underwater gardens with the best chance of survival against global warming, starting with coral found in Sydney Harbour.

Using these findings, researchers will give corals what a nutritional supplement is to humans, but instead of vitamin C, it’s fat.

“If corals can feed well, they’ve got a better chance at surviving a bleaching event.”

“The window for saving the Great Barrier Reef and other reefs in the world is getting smaller and smaller”, she cautioned.

  • @[email protected]
    4•9 months ago

    I hope it’s human fat. How amazing would it be if the obesity epidemic solved the destruction of coral reefs.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    1•9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Senior research fellow Selina Ward from the University of Queensland said an increase by just one degree above maximum summer temperatures can be enough to cause damage.

    With a passion for coral conservation, Jen Matthews is leading the ground-breaking research, after she was awarded a Biodiversity Fellowship by the University of Technology Sydney.

    Half-way through a three-year research project, Dr Matthews and her students are hoping that tweaking what corals eat to include more fat, will help to shield them from heat stress.

    “Just like every organism, corals require an optimal nutrition to grow, reproduce and survive diseases and environmental changes,” Dr Matthews said.

    With the help of her students, native and invasive coral was collected from Cobblers Bay and off the Manly heads to be dissected and tested under different heat conditions in controlled aquariums at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science laboratories.

    The specimens are then biopsied before scientists use DNA genotyping and lipidomics to understand a coral’s ideal nutrition when faced with thermal stress.

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