This week, researchers at Australia’s Southern Cross University and CSIRO gave hope that millions of coral larvae on the Great Barrier Reef can help replenish degraded reefs thanks to the development of
This week, researchers at Australia’s Southern Cross University and CSIRO gave hope that millions of coral larvae on the Great Barrier Reef can help replenish degraded reefs thanks to the development of a “larval seedbox.”
Results from the first trial have found coral settlement to be up to 56 times higher across thousands of square meters of reef. Large scale operation is achievable as tens of millions of larvae can be collected during the annual mass coral spawning that occurs each November in the Great Barrier Reef.
The development comes as global warming is crossing dangerous thresholds sooner than expected with the world’s coral reefs now in an almost irreversible die-off - scientists have described this as the first “tipping point” in climate-driven ecosystem collapse.
The last two years were Earth’s warmest on record, with marine heatwaves that stressed 84% of the world’s reefs to the point of bleaching and, in some cases, death. Coral reefs sustain about a quarter of marine life, so this has an adverse impact on marine biodiversity.
Other Australian institutions are working on boosting the chance of larval survival too. Ecologists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and others have developed techniques to raise young
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