7 ms·

A controversial plan to save corals

31 points by oori 11y ago

oori 11y ago
Quote: "We have used selective breeding to create new dog breeds and improve crop yields. Could it also help corals survive the ravages of climate change?"
helthanatos 11y ago
Wow... Someone doesn't want to let nature deal with nature
- ethbro 11y ago
  Which is fine, except for the large number of outcomes that lead to fishery collapse and massive starvation. Nature can do incredibly "smart" things, but it also has the benefit of operating on orders of 1,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 / 1,000,000s of years. I'd rather large portions of human population not be dead for most of that time until a new equilibrium is established.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    >Nature can do incredibly "smart" things, but it also has the benefit of operating on orders of 1,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 / 1,000,000s of years. Actually, the latest evidence is that evolution happens in relatively small time frames as conditions change. The problem is you're not guaranteed a handy mutation in that time frame - lots of species have gone extinct for lack of a trait that would have allowed them to survive.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      Evolution of a single species and full ecosystem stabilization are two different things. Even with rapid evolution over a small time frame, I can't imagine the entire system finds a new equilibrium as quickly?
      - gozur88 11y ago
        Oh, that's probably true. Not all species will adapt, and as the niches get refilled things will be chaotic.
sna1l 11y ago
I feel like there is so much unknown here as well. Fat tail risk in these kinds of experiments always seem to be ignored. A + B is not ALWAYS greater than B
jessaustin 11y ago
The trigger was always a sudden surge in ocean temperature. Aaaargh! This is not the only cause of coral bleaching! [Edit: removed apparently-distracting sentence.] Blaming climate change for coral death is sort of an "E: other" multiple-choice answer for when we've already eliminated sewage, agricultural pollution, chemical pollution, fishing techniques like cyanide, uncontrolled seaweed (often as a result of overfishing herbivorous fish), sedimentation, etc. Blaming climate change is the favorite maneuver of careless locals eager to blame the rest of the world for their dead reef.
- akiselev 11y ago
  Did you not just read the same article I did, about how coral reefs can have different genetics and microbiomes, like all other animals, each with a different ability to adapt to increasing temperatures? Do you have a hard time believing that two rabbits standing next to each other can have different genetics and respond differently to environmental changes?
- markdown 11y ago
  Have you been to the Pacific Islands, thousands of miles from any continent with industrialised agriculture? Swam in Vanuatu? Dived in Samoa? Snorkelled in Fiji? There is coral bleaching on a massive scale that can't be explained by any of the reasons you mentioned. Here in Fiji, last month we had ocean temperatures so high that thousands of fish died. This is unprecedented in Fiji: https://www.newswire.com.fj/community/fisheries/fish-kills-unprecedented-temperature-threatens-marine-eco-system/ https://www.newswire.com.fj/community/fisheries/fish-kills-u... The same happened in Vanuatu: http://eveningreport.nz/2016/02/09/vanuatu-heat-wave-suspected-cause-for-sudden-death-of-fish/ http://eveningreport.nz/2016/02/09/vanuatu-heat-wave-suspect... A week after that happened, the same warm seas spawned the second biggest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the entire Southern Hemisphere, killing ~50 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Winston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Winston
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    I've lived on several Pacific Islands, and spent time on others. Sadly I haven't made it to Vanuatu, Samoa, or Fiji. Your links seem to refer to fish deaths rather than coral bleaching.
birken 11y ago
Personally I don't think bleaching is as big of a problem as acidification. The natural selection process they are attempting to speed up happens naturally anyways. Corals bleach, then the more robust ones which didn't bleach overgrow them and the reef lives on. Acidification is much worse, because you can't build calcium carbonate without carbonate ions, and acidification lowers the quantity of carbonate ions in the water. There is no natural selection for this, you can't build coral skeleton without the proper building blocks. It just makes all corals grow much more slowly, and thus when negative events happen it takes the reef much longer to recover. If the pH goes down low enough, at some point corals just can't build their structure anymore, which would be the end of the coral reefs as we know them. And the only way to prevent ocean acidification is to lower the amount of co2 in the atmosphere, which isn't happening and wont happen for a very long time. It is going to be a tough century for the coral reefs. Not-fun fact: The atmosphere is around 0.04% CO2, yet dissolved CO2 (either as CO2 or carbonic acid) is by far the largest dissolved gas in the ocean because of the reaction which forms carbonic acid. See the graph of atmospheric co2 vs ocean pH [1] to see how large the impact is. 1: http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-photos/ocean-acidification-graph http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-photos/ocean-acidification-graph
- sitkack 11y ago
  Listen Debbie Downer, the methane inversion that will happen in the oceans and is already happening in the tundra will cause runaway global warming before the reefs are dissolved. The best case scenarios are 1) global collapse of civilization or (and the one I am rooting for) 2) fusion power comes online and we use it to remove all of the excess carbon from the oceans and the atmosphere.
  - tslug 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure fusion power will have another damaging waste footprint no one is talking about, heat pollution. What do you do with it all? It's like skipping the greenhouse gas that traps the heat and going straight for the heat itself.
zipwitch 11y ago
Back in 2012 coral reef zoologist / mathematical ecologist Roger Bradbury, argued that the coral reefs are already "zombie ecosystems" and we're better off focusing our efforts on trying to understand what happened, rather than futile efforts to save the coral reefs. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-coral-reefs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-co...

31 points by oori 11y ago

oori 11y ago

Quote: "We have used selective breeding to create new dog breeds and improve crop yields. Could it also help corals survive the ravages of climate change?"

helthanatos 11y ago

Wow... Someone doesn't want to let nature deal with nature

ethbro 11y ago
Which is fine, except for the large number of outcomes that lead to fishery collapse and massive starvation. Nature can do incredibly "smart" things, but it also has the benefit of operating on orders of 1,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 / 1,000,000s of years. I'd rather large portions of human population not be dead for most of that time until a new equilibrium is established.
- gozur88 11y ago
  >Nature can do incredibly "smart" things, but it also has the benefit of operating on orders of 1,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 / 1,000,000s of years. Actually, the latest evidence is that evolution happens in relatively small time frames as conditions change. The problem is you're not guaranteed a handy mutation in that time frame - lots of species have gone extinct for lack of a trait that would have allowed them to survive.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Evolution of a single species and full ecosystem stabilization are two different things. Even with rapid evolution over a small time frame, I can't imagine the entire system finds a new equilibrium as quickly?
    - gozur88 11y ago
      Oh, that's probably true. Not all species will adapt, and as the niches get refilled things will be chaotic.

sna1l 11y ago

I feel like there is so much unknown here as well. Fat tail risk in these kinds of experiments always seem to be ignored. A + B is not ALWAYS greater than B

jessaustin 11y ago

The trigger was always a sudden surge in ocean temperature. Aaaargh! This is not the only cause of coral bleaching! [Edit: removed apparently-distracting sentence.] Blaming climate change for coral death is sort of an "E: other" multiple-choice answer for when we've already eliminated sewage, agricultural pollution, chemical pollution, fishing techniques like cyanide, uncontrolled seaweed (often as a result of overfishing herbivorous fish), sedimentation, etc. Blaming climate change is the favorite maneuver of careless locals eager to blame the rest of the world for their dead reef.

akiselev 11y ago
Did you not just read the same article I did, about how coral reefs can have different genetics and microbiomes, like all other animals, each with a different ability to adapt to increasing temperatures? Do you have a hard time believing that two rabbits standing next to each other can have different genetics and respond differently to environmental changes?
markdown 11y ago
Have you been to the Pacific Islands, thousands of miles from any continent with industrialised agriculture? Swam in Vanuatu? Dived in Samoa? Snorkelled in Fiji? There is coral bleaching on a massive scale that can't be explained by any of the reasons you mentioned. Here in Fiji, last month we had ocean temperatures so high that thousands of fish died. This is unprecedented in Fiji: https://www.newswire.com.fj/community/fisheries/fish-kills-unprecedented-temperature-threatens-marine-eco-system/ https://www.newswire.com.fj/community/fisheries/fish-kills-u... The same happened in Vanuatu: http://eveningreport.nz/2016/02/09/vanuatu-heat-wave-suspected-cause-for-sudden-death-of-fish/ http://eveningreport.nz/2016/02/09/vanuatu-heat-wave-suspect... A week after that happened, the same warm seas spawned the second biggest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the entire Southern Hemisphere, killing ~50 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Winston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Winston
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I've lived on several Pacific Islands, and spent time on others. Sadly I haven't made it to Vanuatu, Samoa, or Fiji. Your links seem to refer to fish deaths rather than coral bleaching.

birken 11y ago

Personally I don't think bleaching is as big of a problem as acidification. The natural selection process they are attempting to speed up happens naturally anyways. Corals bleach, then the more robust ones which didn't bleach overgrow them and the reef lives on. Acidification is much worse, because you can't build calcium carbonate without carbonate ions, and acidification lowers the quantity of carbonate ions in the water. There is no natural selection for this, you can't build coral skeleton without the proper building blocks. It just makes all corals grow much more slowly, and thus when negative events happen it takes the reef much longer to recover. If the pH goes down low enough, at some point corals just can't build their structure anymore, which would be the end of the coral reefs as we know them. And the only way to prevent ocean acidification is to lower the amount of co2 in the atmosphere, which isn't happening and wont happen for a very long time. It is going to be a tough century for the coral reefs. Not-fun fact: The atmosphere is around 0.04% CO2, yet dissolved CO2 (either as CO2 or carbonic acid) is by far the largest dissolved gas in the ocean because of the reaction which forms carbonic acid. See the graph of atmospheric co2 vs ocean pH [1] to see how large the impact is. 1: http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-photos/ocean-acidification-graph http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-photos/ocean-acidification-graph

sitkack 11y ago
Listen Debbie Downer, the methane inversion that will happen in the oceans and is already happening in the tundra will cause runaway global warming before the reefs are dissolved. The best case scenarios are 1) global collapse of civilization or (and the one I am rooting for) 2) fusion power comes online and we use it to remove all of the excess carbon from the oceans and the atmosphere.
- tslug 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure fusion power will have another damaging waste footprint no one is talking about, heat pollution. What do you do with it all? It's like skipping the greenhouse gas that traps the heat and going straight for the heat itself.

zipwitch 11y ago

Back in 2012 coral reef zoologist / mathematical ecologist Roger Bradbury, argued that the coral reefs are already "zombie ecosystems" and we're better off focusing our efforts on trying to understand what happened, rather than futile efforts to save the coral reefs. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-coral-reefs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-co...