{"id":656025,"date":"2026-10-24T20:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T20:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/656025\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T20:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T20:32:11","slug":"a-random-lab-accident-just-revealed-the-unusual-technique-that-can-revive-dying-coral-in-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/656025\/","title":{"rendered":"A random lab accident just revealed the unusual technique that can revive dying coral in weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The oceans are in trouble. Rising temperatures due to climate change<\/a> not only raise sea levels but also put enormous stress on coral reefs.<\/p>\n

When waters get too warm, healthy coral<\/a> will expel the helpful algae living inside them. The coral then becomes drained of color, severely weakened, and vulnerable to disease. In other words, \u201cbleached coral<\/a>\u201d is dying coral.<\/p>\n

The loss of coral and coral reefs devastates vast amounts of ocean wildlife, and humans too. So finding ways to stop, slow, or reverse coral bleaching is of major interest to scientists. And the latest breakthrough was completely unintentional.<\/p>\n

Lab studying coral encounters a \u201chappy accident\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Palumbi is a professor of marine sciences at Stanford and an ocean researcher. One of his major research areas is coral, and his work recently led him to notice something pretty strange in his lab.<\/p>\n

According to Science Alert,<\/a> Palumbi had collected various samples from the same coral colony when two of the samples \u201cfell\u201d into each other inside their tank. One was bleached, or dying, and the other was completely healthy.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s strange is that by the time he noticed the two were touching, color had begun to return to the bleached coral, specifically at the point of contact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was blown away watching the actual color of this healthy coral slowly spread over into this bleached coral,\u201d Palumbi\u2019s fellow Stanford marine scientist Danny Collins told Science Alert.<\/p>\n

The bleaching had mysteriously reversed itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cHelping hands\u201d method for reviving dying coral discovered<\/p>\n

The researchers were incredibly intrigued by what they were witnessing. After further study, they realized that the healthy coral\u2014through physical contact\u2014was actually able to pass along some of its symbiotic algae to the unhealthy coral.<\/p>\n

Testing revealed that bleached coral could make a miraculous recovery through prolonged contact with healthy coral. Crucially, direct physical contact was the key. If the pieces of coral were even a few millimeters apart, the process didn\u2019t work. What they observed was the two corals \u201cfusing\u201d together and forming a \u201cnutrient bridge\u201d for the algae to transfer across.<\/p>\n

Just one week of contact was sufficient to build up enough good algae on the bleached coral for it to fully recover in about seven weeks. It\u2019s like a little life-saving hug.<\/p>\n

In the wild, bleached coral can recover if environmental conditions, such as ocean temperatures, improve. But the process often takes months, which is too slow. Most coral that gets severely bleached ends up dying during that time period.<\/p>\n

The groundbreaking method and research were recently published in Science Advances<\/a>. Informally, the researchers are referring to the technique as \u201chelping hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers temper real-world expectations<\/p>\n

Bringing healthy coral into contact with bleached coral produced amazing results in the lab, but Stanford researchers still don\u2019t know whether the effect can be replicated in the wild.<\/p>\n

Even if it can, it\u2019s a process that\u2019s likely to be slow and labor-intensive, meaning \u201chelping hands\u201d won\u2019t save the oceans on their own.<\/p>\n

The technique could potentially be used in emergencies to save critically endangered reefs, but the worldwide coral reef network is going to need a lot more than that to return to its full strength.<\/p>\n

Without ocean warming stopping or reversing course, coral bleaching is likely to continue and worsen. But scientists like the Stanford team are making amazing discoveries all the time that might just help us tilt the scales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The oceans are in trouble. Rising temperatures due to climate change not only raise sea levels but also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[286741,2592,242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-656025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-best-of-humanity","tag-conservation","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}