
The Fight to Save Coral (2017) - vezycash
https://scienceline.org/2017/03/fight-save-coral/
======
eloff
Oceans are in fact largely great blue deserts. Occupying less than one percent
of the ocean floor, coral reefs are home to more than twenty-five percent of
marine life. And 90% of all ocean life is found in coastal waters.

To me this means that we should invest a focused effort in planting coral
reefs in protected areas (and protecting additional areas for the same.) This
would have the effect of creating more marine sanctuaries safe from human
fishing pressure, which will seed surrounding fishery areas and become a win-
win. New Zealand has done this to great effect (creating protected areas, not
planting reefs.)

I think however the typically human reaction is see a coral reef that's dying
and try to use re-planting to bring it back to life. Unless that's coupled
with re-planting higher-temperature corals, that's neither going to work or be
sustainable as the Oceans continue to warm for hundreds of years to come. I
would rather see more resistant corals being planted, or coral reefs being
planted in colder waters.

Lastly, while it is a great tragedy that the coral reefs are dying, it should
be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it at the end
of the last ice age when sea levels rapidly rose 400 feet and drowned all of
Earth's reefs at the time. That doesn't make things any less tragic, or
absolve us of the blame, but perhaps helps frame things by remembering that
Earth is not a steady-state system but a rather a system of constant flux and
adaptation.

I hope that in the same way humans have been having massive negative effects
on nature and the climate, we can also pool together and create some equally
impressive positive effects on the natural world.

~~~
jniedrauer
> it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it

There weren't 7 billion humans back then. My big concern is that we're well
above the pre-green-revolution carrying capacity of Earth and it wouldn't take
all that much to put us in a position where we can't feed 3 billion people.
It's possible that a greenhouse earth will give us more arable land to work
with, and we'll be just fine. It's likely that things will become ugly during
the transition, as formerly arable land becomes desert, the oceans stop
providing food, and mass migration causes global unrest. A lot of people are
going to starve.

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
For those that want to dive deeper it looks like this meta-analysis might be a
good starting point for the human carrying capacity of the earth.

[https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/54/3/195/223056](https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/54/3/195/223056)

> When taking all studies into account, the best point estimate is 7.7 billion
> people; the lower and upper bounds, given current technology, are 0.65
> billion and 98 billion people, respectively.

~~~
wavefunction
Seems like this calculation completely disregards the emotional effects of
that many people in such close proximity.

~~~
yathern
Well if we have 98 billion people on earth - lets see how dense we get. This
[site]([http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/thoc/land.html](http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/thoc/land.html))
argues there's about 24,642,757 square miles of habitable land on Earth - this
is discounting deserts and mountains, and of course oceans.

That puts about 6 people per acre in all the habitable spots on the globe.

To put that into perspective, Manhattan has about
[27,000]([https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-maps/nyc-
population/...](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-maps/nyc-
population/population-facts.page)) residents per square mile - or 42 people
per acre. There are other, denser cities out there as well. People-dense parts
like this make other parts more people-sparse.

I'm sure by the time (if) we have 98B people - Manhattan will be much more
people-dense, and many more cities will be similarly dense. So it may be that
50B people live in massive, dense cities, leaving the other 50B to be in more
suburban-yet-still-dense zones.

However, this is the 'idea' case of all habitable land being used for
habitation. There is also the need for farms and industrial land, and all
manner of other places for human activity, and the vast things needed to
support it. Ideas like vertical farming solve for some of these, but are not
perfect.

~~~
baroffoos
98B might be possible if we did everything perfectly efficiently and optimized
every single part of the planet leaving absolutely nothing allocated for the
bare essentials to keep people living. The reality is we would never get
anywhere close to that level of efficiency and would destroy the planet much
sooner.

------
somishere
Live and work on the GBR, for a reef non-profit. Should be noted the mass
bleachings were 16/17 and unprecendented in scale and frequency. We
fortunately havent had any events of this magnitude since. Huge amount of work
being done, but should be noted the only real solution involves tackling
climate change. There are a whole bunch of interesting coral restoration
projects happening on the GBR right now with some new ones (with unique
methodologies) kicking off soon. We work with a bunch of them here
@citizensGBR, including the 'larval restoration project' which is a
collaboration between a number of universities and other conservation-focussed
orgs. Interactive project-explainer: [https://citizensgbr.org/p/larval-
restoration-project/](https://citizensgbr.org/p/larval-restoration-project/)

------
rmbryan
How is this an accident?

The technique called “microfragmenting” works by essentially cutting living
corals into 1-5 smaller polyps using a specialized saw.

~~~
scapegoat444
This is something the reef tank community has been using for years, in fact
there are whole businesses built around the practice of fragging and selling
corals... to the point that there is already equipment made for this purpose.

From "frag tanks" built wide, long, and shallow to allow light to have an
easier time reaching the corals, to "frag plugs" made from ceramics that allow
people to glue coral frags to to slot into existing rock, egg crate, etc.

I think maybe the accidental discovery was that the researcher found that this
very common procedure to cultivating aquarium corals ended up also promoting
the growth speed too.

~~~
crazydoggers
Well dime size is generally smaller than most hobbyists frag. Obviously
fragging coral is done rather often in the reef tank hobby, but usually for
the purpose of trimming growth, aquaculture, and sharing colonies.

Plus, Ive been in the hobby for 8 years, and I’ve never heard of purposely
placing frags from the same colony next to to each other so they fuse.

I’m unaware of anyone studying the impact of fragging specifically on growth
rate in this way.

Edit: I’ve found some discussion of at least one reef hobbyist experimenting
with the method based on this research. So yes this was somewhat novel.

[https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-microfragging-sps-
exper...](https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-microfragging-sps-
experiment.488187/)

------
erkose
Forum had a segment, "Bay Area Scientists Work to Grow Coral, Restore
Imperiled Reefs", today.

[https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101870644/bay-area-
scientists...](https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101870644/bay-area-scientists-
work-to-grow-coral-restore-imperiled-reefs)

