Dehai

Can Red Sea Corals Save the Worlds Reefs?

Hot water tolerant Red Sea corals could be the key to saving the
worlds reefs. It will take an international effort to create the
massive coral nurseries here in the Red Sea needed to begin to bring
back to life the enormous areas of bleached dead coral reefs in places
like The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, or from the coasts of
Florida to the Indian Ocean, but it can be done.

Red Sea corals living in shallow waters here in the historic Zula Bay
in Eritrea annually tolerate water temperatures of up to 37c/98f with
only moderate bleaching, with the bleached portions able to recover
once water temperatures go down. If all species present tolerate these
high temperatures there will be species that can tolerate even higher
levels of temperature stress.

So the world needs to immediately start to identify and culture these
species of corals so that in 4 to 5 years the beginnings of an effort
to replant the worlds reefs with heat tolerant corals will begin to
make a difference.

Corals can grow very rapidly in the right conditions. Coral regrowth
on underwater lava fields on volcanic islands in Indonesia have seen a
meter or more growth in 10 years. If heat tolerant corals are planted
in the midst of the massive damage a decade should see serious growth
and 30 or 40 years could see coral forrests blooming again.

Many scientists are worried about the acidification of the oceans from
the absorption of CO2. This acidification interferes with the
absorption of calcium carbonate by shell fish and corals and weakens
their shells or coraline structures and could see the virtual
extinction of shell fish and reefs.

What may ameliorate this is a rapid rise in sea levels due to the
large input of fresh water from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice
caps, something like 7 meters or 23 feet sea level rise just from
Greenland.

This large, sudden influx of fresh water, if combined with seeding and
harvesting the shallower waters where coral reefs grow with certain
kinds of algae (algae “eat” CO2) should reduce this acidification.

Developing acid tolerant corals is the next step and with the Red Sea
being the saltiest, hottest water on the planet acid resistant corals
are highly likely to be present in our reefs.

Again, actually doing this, growing heat and acid tolerant corals here
in the Red Sea in Eritrea will take a massive international effort if
the world is going to start to meet the challenges of replanting hot
water devastated coral reefs across the planet.

This isn’t the first time I have written about this, challenging the
scientific community concerned with the calamity inflicting the
planets coral reefs to come up with a plan to use our heat tolerant
corals.

I can only hope that someone, somewhere out there will hear my plea
and can get the worlds environmental and marine scientists serious
attention about starting a coral reef replanting scheme using hot
water tolerant Red Sea corals to save the worlds reefs.

Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and
reporting from here since 2006. His speeches, interviews and articles
can be seen on Facebook at thomascmountain and he can best be reached
at thomascmountain at g mail dot com