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For the coral lovers. There are multiple companies working on reef preservation. They are woefully under resourced. If you can help, please do.

by bix6 3mo ago

Aboutplants 3mo ago
I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.
- bix6 3mo ago
  Here’s one successful example that only worked because of human intervention: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.h... They can only survive short duration events. At some point the temp and time is too much and they die. The only way they come back is reintroduction. We’ve lost over 50% of the reefs and are expected to lose 90% by 2050. There are many amazing solutions. Some use corals more resistant to heat stress. Australia has seen some promising results with seed boxes. I know of a few other amazing solutions currently in the lab. We have already gotten in natures way. So now we need to help nature with our technology.
  - lukan 3mo ago
    "So now we need to help nature with our technology." I guess the best help, would be stop getting into natures way so brutally, but since transforming the whole industry takes time and making people aware and care is even harder, some technical solutions to offset some damage is of course welcome.
    - bix6 3mo ago
      Unless we change the incentives, people will continue strip mining everything. I do have hope though as there is a lot that can still be done.
  - markdown 3mo ago
    Don't they just sprout in deeper (cooler) water?
    - bix6 3mo ago
      Only the deep water corals. The photosynthesizing type that most people are familiar with need light.
- phkahler 3mo ago
  I recall reading that the corals can reproduce both sexually and by cloning, with most in nature using cloning. The researchers brought them back to a lab and bred a bunch of them and found a lot of offspring could thrive in the warmer more acidic water, so they wanted to reintroduce them to a reef (or maybe they had). Been a while but it was interesting. Not sure what it takes to shift away from cloning in nature, but waiting for most the reef to die off seems backwards ;-)
  - bix6 3mo ago
    One major issue though is diversity. Many coral gardeners use fragments to clone one type over and over.
    - nothercastle 3mo ago
      Also pests aquariums have some of the toughest pests imaginable
      - bix6 3mo ago
        Algae is prolific!
        nothercastle 3mo ago
        Not just invasive algae all sorts of bugs worms and bacteria too
- bamboozled 3mo ago
  Homeostasis, that was probably an option for most of nature in the 1950s or something, I think the damage is too great to just leave the reefs, forrests and other habitats to "fend for themselves". Even if what you say is true from an environmental perspective, we also have to fight to protect these areas from exploitation from fisherman, mining etc.
  - bix6 3mo ago
    Yep you’ll see most stats base off ~1950. This is when we started noticing and especially in the ensuing decades as SCUBA equipment got good.
  - parineum 3mo ago
    Homeostasis is unnatural.
    - bamboozled 3mo ago
      It is natural.
- bryanrasmussen 3mo ago
  I would suppose getting out of nature's way happens in one of two ways - infrequently because there is nothing of value in an area left to extract so people leave it alone, or infrequently because there is regulation forcing people to leave it alone.
xandrius 3mo ago
You should give some names if you personally know them.
- bix6 3mo ago
  I work with Hybrid Reefs out of Scripps in San Diego. Daniel is an amazing dude, Moore fellow, and prolific inventor. If you can help, there’s contact info on the website. https://www.hybridreefs.com/ https://www.hybridreefs.com/ Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co https://www.coralvita.co https://coral.org https://coral.org is a 501c3. One of my friends is on the board. Other fun stuff. Mars runs one of the most prolific programs: https://www.buildingcoral.com/ https://www.buildingcoral.com/ Reefstarter was backed by my friends at SOSV. They design coastal barriers. Great team. East coast for any of you Floridians. https://www.reefstarter.net/ https://www.reefstarter.net/ There’s more but there’s a few off the top. In general the US is primarily focused on erosion control since the beaches are disappearing. Coral is more an afterthought especially with the gutting of all our science. Australia is really leading the way here with AIMS and Saudi has KAUST. Big ups to the Paul Allen Foundation though, they gave Scripps $10M a few years back. Fun stat to end with: coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value. They get less than $1B a year to ensure they stick around. We’re gonna change that.
  - bluebarbet 3mo ago
    The irony surely being that the "economic value" here supposedly worth $10T is, ultimately, the very cause of their undoing (human economic activity is somewhat directly correlated with environmental destruction). Personally I'd prefer to live in a world where we saved coral reefs for their own sake and not for their economic value. Still, it's a detail. Well done for the amazing work you're doing. We all depend on people like you and the organizations you mention.
    - tjwebbnorfolk 3mo ago
      You'd prefer to live in a world where labor is free and we don't need to work for anything? I like the current world better.

For the coral lovers. There are multiple companies working on reef preservation. They are woefully under resourced. If you can help, please do.

by bix6 3mo ago

For the coral lovers. There are multiple companies working on reef preservation. They are woefully under resourced. If you can help, please do.

Aboutplants 3mo ago

I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.

bix6 3mo ago
Here’s one successful example that only worked because of human intervention: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.h... They can only survive short duration events. At some point the temp and time is too much and they die. The only way they come back is reintroduction. We’ve lost over 50% of the reefs and are expected to lose 90% by 2050. There are many amazing solutions. Some use corals more resistant to heat stress. Australia has seen some promising results with seed boxes. I know of a few other amazing solutions currently in the lab. We have already gotten in natures way. So now we need to help nature with our technology.
- lukan 3mo ago
  "So now we need to help nature with our technology." I guess the best help, would be stop getting into natures way so brutally, but since transforming the whole industry takes time and making people aware and care is even harder, some technical solutions to offset some damage is of course welcome.
  - bix6 3mo ago
    Unless we change the incentives, people will continue strip mining everything. I do have hope though as there is a lot that can still be done.
- markdown 3mo ago
  Don't they just sprout in deeper (cooler) water?
  - bix6 3mo ago
    Only the deep water corals. The photosynthesizing type that most people are familiar with need light.
phkahler 3mo ago
I recall reading that the corals can reproduce both sexually and by cloning, with most in nature using cloning. The researchers brought them back to a lab and bred a bunch of them and found a lot of offspring could thrive in the warmer more acidic water, so they wanted to reintroduce them to a reef (or maybe they had). Been a while but it was interesting. Not sure what it takes to shift away from cloning in nature, but waiting for most the reef to die off seems backwards ;-)
- bix6 3mo ago
  One major issue though is diversity. Many coral gardeners use fragments to clone one type over and over.
  - nothercastle 3mo ago
    Also pests aquariums have some of the toughest pests imaginable
    - bix6 3mo ago
      Algae is prolific!
      - nothercastle 3mo ago
        Not just invasive algae all sorts of bugs worms and bacteria too
bamboozled 3mo ago
Homeostasis, that was probably an option for most of nature in the 1950s or something, I think the damage is too great to just leave the reefs, forrests and other habitats to "fend for themselves". Even if what you say is true from an environmental perspective, we also have to fight to protect these areas from exploitation from fisherman, mining etc.
- bix6 3mo ago
  Yep you’ll see most stats base off ~1950. This is when we started noticing and especially in the ensuing decades as SCUBA equipment got good.
- parineum 3mo ago
  Homeostasis is unnatural.
  - bamboozled 3mo ago
    It is natural.
bryanrasmussen 3mo ago
I would suppose getting out of nature's way happens in one of two ways - infrequently because there is nothing of value in an area left to extract so people leave it alone, or infrequently because there is regulation forcing people to leave it alone.

xandrius 3mo ago

You should give some names if you personally know them.

bix6 3mo ago
I work with Hybrid Reefs out of Scripps in San Diego. Daniel is an amazing dude, Moore fellow, and prolific inventor. If you can help, there’s contact info on the website. https://www.hybridreefs.com/ https://www.hybridreefs.com/ Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co https://www.coralvita.co https://coral.org https://coral.org is a 501c3. One of my friends is on the board. Other fun stuff. Mars runs one of the most prolific programs: https://www.buildingcoral.com/ https://www.buildingcoral.com/ Reefstarter was backed by my friends at SOSV. They design coastal barriers. Great team. East coast for any of you Floridians. https://www.reefstarter.net/ https://www.reefstarter.net/ There’s more but there’s a few off the top. In general the US is primarily focused on erosion control since the beaches are disappearing. Coral is more an afterthought especially with the gutting of all our science. Australia is really leading the way here with AIMS and Saudi has KAUST. Big ups to the Paul Allen Foundation though, they gave Scripps $10M a few years back. Fun stat to end with: coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value. They get less than $1B a year to ensure they stick around. We’re gonna change that.
- bluebarbet 3mo ago
  The irony surely being that the "economic value" here supposedly worth $10T is, ultimately, the very cause of their undoing (human economic activity is somewhat directly correlated with environmental destruction). Personally I'd prefer to live in a world where we saved coral reefs for their own sake and not for their economic value. Still, it's a detail. Well done for the amazing work you're doing. We all depend on people like you and the organizations you mention.
  - tjwebbnorfolk 3mo ago
    You'd prefer to live in a world where labor is free and we don't need to work for anything? I like the current world better.