[HN Gopher] A moonshot for coral breeding
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A moonshot for coral breeding
Author : Petiver
Score : 204 points
Date : 2022-10-22 02:55 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hakaimagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hakaimagazine.com)
| baxtr wrote:
| Tangential: It's amazing to realize that corals are in fact
| animals.
|
| _Though coral may look like a colorful plant growing from roots
| in the seafloor, it is actually an animal._
|
| Source: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/coral
| eloisius wrote:
| Or colonies of millions of tiny animals. They are indeed
| fascinating and beautiful. I just went diving this morning and
| I'm in my way to a second dive right now. The effects of
| bleaching are visible, and it pains me to think that in my
| lifetime they could disappear.
| baxtr wrote:
| You're checking HN while you are on the way to your second
| dive this morning?
|
| Wow.
| eloisius wrote:
| It's pretty bad...
| baxtr wrote:
| I feel you...
|
| And now put down that damn phone and enjoy the dive! :D
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Colonies of millions of tiny animals that incorporate plants
| into their tissues in order to generate energy from the sun.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Also many shallow water coral actually get their color from
| photosynthesizing single-celled organisms they live in
| symbiosis with. Coral bleaching happens when the animal kicks
| out this cell, the animal isn't necessarily dead.
| ips1512 wrote:
| Nice
| ggm wrote:
| A similar programme for tank breeding and reseeding has been
| working in Queensland too. Getting tank corals to spawn is hard I
| believe. They're aiming to breed up higher temperature tolerant
| initial colony types to use for rebuilding bleached coral.
|
| Small instances are "seeded" onto a bad spot with a stable base
| matrix like a scaffold, to develop and grow. The matrix either
| decays over time or is stable and not a problem left in place. My
| understanding is that beneficial fish and related species are
| needed for the full biome to "work" and the seeded early
| coloniser types help these animals come in from surrounding
| areas. Without this work, a more rapid colonisation by less
| beneficial types can happen.
|
| Almost any remediation gets my upvote for trying, but at scale
| avoidance of the man made causes of coral death is much more
| important.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| aliqot wrote:
| A lot of what hobbyists might not realize at first is the fact
| that coral are colonies of many many tiny organisms each
| performing their role, like zooxanthellae. These structures are
| enabled by entire ecosystems of ancillary bacteria on adjacent
| rock and the water column that maintains the equilibrium. A lot
| of the acute die off we see is not just warming waters or
| pollutants harming the coral itself, but primarily the damage
| to the unseen symbiotes, food sources, and bacterial colonies
| that are part of the coral's life cycle.
|
| With few exceptions if you have a piece of coral in your tank
| and it dies, it's your fault. They're immortal otherwise when
| left undisturbed. Some common pet store coral like pulsing
| xenia, green star polyps or zooanthids will grow in spite of
| the worst conditions to the point where they become invasive.
| All you need is a single polyp and most coral specimens we're
| familiar with will eventually grow and spread as far as the
| ecosystem will allow.
|
| Deep deep layered sand beds, areas of stagnant water and high
| flow water, macroalgae, various gas exchange areas, copepods,
| amphipods, all of it is part of a holistic picture that is
| needed for these bacteria to be happy. This process can take
| years of what I call 'strategic neglect' by not messing with
| the deeper darker anoxic layers of sand and algae. If those
| bacteria are happy the coral has no choice but to thrive.
|
| I hope this new effort to get the coral to spawn without
| subdivision succeeds so that future generations can see the
| same things we once saw, and the life it creates below.
| jl6 wrote:
| Strategic neglect is really the heart of conservation. More
| than anything, ecosystems need to be left alone, as free as
| possible of human influences.
| whiddershins wrote:
| That's not true in North America.
|
| In the northeast, the forests we see are actually
| cultivated, and much that is deciduous would become pine
| forest with impassable underbrush without human
| intervention.
|
| Prevention of wildfires requires human intervention and
| brush clearing. I believe this is a factor right now in
| California.
|
| The Great Plains is largely cultivated, and without proper
| maintenance is shrinking.
|
| Some people theorize that much of the lush vegetation
| European settlers saw in New England was actually human
| cultivation, that was left untended due to mass smallpox
| deaths.
|
| Strategic neglect is a strategy, but when applied naively
| you may not end up with the ecosystem you wanted.
| theptip wrote:
| > Prevention of wildfires requires human intervention and
| brush clearing. I believe this is a factor right now in
| California
|
| Prevention of all wildfires requires intervention, but
| the natural state is lots of small fires and that
| actually results in fewer huge fires, so "neglect" is a
| valid strategy. Unfortunately it's hard to do proscribed
| burns to "catch up" to the natural state as they are
| unpopular.
| aliqot wrote:
| Wildfires are the natural earth's own clearing process,
| returning carbon harvested by the trees to the soil. It's
| only a negative thing because it effects us.
| ggm wrote:
| I'm sure you know this but for others; the "tanks" here are
| university lab near industrial scale plastic 10,000l tanks,
| not glass walled home aquarium tanks. Same same, but they
| know what their doing and what complex symbiotic organisms
| coral are. UQ's Heron Island has table rigs under lighting
| but on the mainland at JCU and I believe the CSIRO it's
| pretty massive.
|
| Australian uni Tank farmed corals have spawned in the same
| lunar phase as reefs for a while I believe, it's getting them
| to do it more frequently and doing the "IVF" like stuff, and
| implanting on scaffolding which is hard.
|
| Not a coral scientist. I welcome corrections
| liveoneggs wrote:
| You can do it at home with a lunar light, temperature
| controller, and a curtain.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9jsNTyeGNk
| somishere wrote:
| AIMS are the main org I know of that are doing lab-based
| synchronised spawning in Australia, and more interestingly
| IMO spawning/survivorship under future conditions. SeaSim
| is fairly well known here and tends to get national media
| attention around the annual mass coral spawning event
| (expected early next month).
|
| https://www.aims.gov.au/about/facilities/national-sea-
| simula...
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Another place doing some important research is KAUST above
| Jeddah on the Red Sea. They are working with one of the
| Barrier Reef photogrammetry capture programs to monitor
| coral and doing replacement testing etc due to higher
| average water temps so a coral evolved to withstand Red Sea
| summer might be a fit for the more recently hotter QLD
| water. I hope something like this works one of the most
| amazing things I have ever seen was a spawning event years
| ago. Coral is the canary in the coal mine of Climate Change
| and if we can't help them adapt then I am afraid we might
| not be able to either.
| ghotli wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I read an article that made me
| feel more like quitting my career and starting a new one.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| If you feel that way you seriously should consider it. I have
| often had people tell me that they want to change, but then
| gone on to explain all the reasons why they can't. There are
| many very interesting opportunities out there.
| baxtr wrote:
| What made you feel this way? Because you feel like your time
| could be "better" spent?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Hakai has a way of doing this. Their research in British
| Columbia is literally awe inspiring at times, and they're
| experts at writing and presenting it.
| trash3 wrote:
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| How about corals fixating CO2 from the atmosphere?
| andai wrote:
| I've been wondering something. So corals evolved 535 million
| years ago. During this time the earth went through large
| fluctuations in temperature (ocean temperatures of 35 degrees,
| Antarctica being tropical), and CO2 concentrations over twice as
| high as we have now. But supposedly they can't handle the current
| conditions? That makes no sense to me.
|
| Are the causes of coral bleaching actually understood? Wikipedia
| lists a dozen potential factors. It seems more likely to me that
| it's something other than CO2/temperature considering the
| species' history.
|
| On the other hand it could well be that during the times when the
| temperature was changing rapidly, most of the corals died off,
| leaving behind only the most resistant ones.
| rileyphone wrote:
| Marine species like coral and starfish are supported by a
| symbiotic holobiont of bacteria and dinoflagellates that
| provide it with protection and nutrition. Raising ocean
| temperatures contribute to the disruption of this biome, but
| there is something else at play IMO. The bacteria consisting of
| the holobiont, especially the Rhodobacterales, can quickly
| transfer genes and plasmids, to devastating effect [0]. There's
| evidence that the ultimate genetic source of these
| destabilizing bacteria is in wastewater treatment plants - I
| don't have the sources on hand ATM but there are cases both in
| Miami and China.
|
| 0. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35254236/
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Excepting mass extinction events (impacts, supervolcanoes),
| have the conditions ever changed as quickly as are now?
| Retric wrote:
| Evolution doesn't have a great memory, we used to live in the
| ocean and now drowning is a real threat. Plenty of land mammals
| have gone back to aquatic living but they don't regain gills so
| they still go back to the surface. The transition from feet to
| fins also took a very long time.
|
| So yea massive changes over 50 years means mass die offs and
| even extinctions. Assuming we eventually stop introducing
| massive changes and in 5 million years aquatic ecosystems will
| be fine, but we care about the short term.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Plenty of land mammals have gone back to aquatic living
| but they don't regain gills so they still go back to the
| surface._
|
| Breathing air is probably a superior system anyway, since
| mammalian fish utterly dominate gilled fish in nearly every
| respect. What gilled fish can dive like a sperm whale,
| acquire the bulk of a blue whale, or the agility of a
| dolphin?
| Retric wrote:
| What's the point of diving like a sperm whale if you can
| just stay at the bottom of the ocean? As to overall
| performance the fastest swimmer is the Indo-Pacific
| Sailfish clocked at 68 mph.
|
| The blue whale is more bulky and faster than a whale shark,
| but young whale sharks can simply dive too low to be at
| significant threat from Okra. So breathing has real
| disadvantages.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| What's the point of having gills to stay at the bottom of
| the ocean if you're going to get dominated by sperm
| whales anyway? I don't know if sperm whales eat young
| whale sharks, but they certainly could if they wanted to.
| They can dive deeper than any whale shark.
| Retric wrote:
| We don't have any evidence that sperm whales attack them.
|
| Okra packs have been observed attacking juvenile baleen
| whales on the other hand.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Are you the superior system if you're at the top of the
| food chain but your species' continued existence is more
| tenuous than the lower prey animals?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I think the greatest threat to marine mammals is the
| decline of all the other fish they eat.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| You can breed acroporas (elkhorn is a type of acropora) in your
| home and the list of species where spawning triggers are being
| documented is increasing.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jamie+craggs+co...
|
| Light pollution is (yet another) a big deal problem for the reef.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| "The New Ronco Spawn-o-Matic! Just point it at your aquarium,
| pull the trigger, and shazam! Gametes everywhere!"
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(page generated 2022-10-22 23:02 UTC)