{"id":636215,"date":"2026-10-20T11:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636215\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T11:00:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:00:24","slug":"researchers-put-bleached-corals-and-healthy-corals-together-for-5-days-and-were-astounded-at-what-they-saw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636215\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers put bleached corals and healthy corals together for 5 days \u2013 and were astounded at what they saw"},"content":{"rendered":"

As global water temperatures continue to increase, many scientists are concerned about the potential impact on corals, which can bleach and die when waters get too warm.<\/p>\n

But there may be hope. A new study published in the journal\u00a0Science Advances<\/a>\u00a0suggests that healthy corals might have the healing touch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBrief contact with healthy corals<\/a> can reverse the effects of coral bleaching,\u201d says the study\u2019s lead author\u00a0Danny Collins, a marine scientist at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.<\/p>\n

Corals are tiny animals that have colourful microalgae called zooxanthellae living inside their tissues. These symbiotic algae are helpful houseguests, which create energy through photosynthesis and share it with their coral host \u2013 a sort of \u2018thanks for having me\u2019 gift, if you will.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, like any house-sharing situation, the roommates sometimes fall out. When water temperatures get too high, the coral kicks the algae out. Without its colourful friend taking shelter inside, it turns white: a process known as\u00a0bleaching<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a race against the clock for the algae to return because the zooxanthellae are the coral\u2019s main source of food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an ongoing, urgent race for solutions to mitigate the catastrophic loss of coral due to bleaching,\u201d write the authors in the paper. \u201cWith widespread impacts from four global bleaching events occurring in 1998, 2010, 2015-16 and 2023-25, and predictions of mass coral bleaching occurring annually by 2080, coral reefs are approaching tipping points of collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bleaching itself doesn\u2019t kill the coral. If temperatures come back down soon enough, algae can return and the coral can recover. If not, or if it returns too slowly, the coral can starve and die.<\/p>\n

This video shows coral bleaching recovery via contact with healthy corals. Credit: Danny Collins<\/p>\n

Collins and colleagues wondered if anything could speed up the recovery of a reef once it had bleached. \u201cCoral bleaching can result in such high mortality that bleached corals are often treated as a lost cause,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, not only are bleached corals not dead, they have remarkable potential to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scientists knew harmful bacteria can spread when corals touch and wondered whether physical contact might also have a beneficial effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, they explored what would happen when they put bleached and healthy corals in contact with each other and they were amazed by what they found. \u201cTheir tissues fuse together, creating a tissue bridge through which the healthy coral rapidly sends large numbers of beneficial algae into the bleached coral,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This point of contact between the two corals allowed algae to transfer into the bleached coral where they can replicate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, the bleached coral recovered remarkably quickly. \u201cJust five days of contact is enough to jumpstart recovery, after which the healthy coral can be removed and the bleached coral can fully recover on its own,\u201d says Collins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for the coral to return to a healthy state. \u201cAll bleached coral in direct contact with healthy coral (n = 5) achieved complete recovery within eight weeks,\u201d they write in the study, and one fragment recovered in just four weeks.<\/p>\n

\"CoralCoral bleaching recovery \u2013 from week zero to week seven. Credit: Danny Collins<\/p>\n

And the corals didn\u2019t need to be touching the entire time \u2013 \u201conly brief physical contact\u201d is required, they say.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA single week of contact, and in some cases as few as three days, provides sufficient symbionts to initiate sustained and full self-recovery,\u201d according to the study. \u201cBy one week, symbiont population doubling time is approximately 4 days, up to an order of magnitude faster than most recovery times for corals in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the first time researchers have shown that corals can recover from bleaching merely by touching healthy corals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are some caveats. Collins notes that this won\u2019t work between just any corals. \u201cThis current approach requires contact between corals of the same clone, which may limit is application on reefs,\u201d he says, \u201chowever, the major advance is now knowing the remarkable potential for bleached corals to rapidly recover once symbionts are reintroduced.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

More research is needed to understand how this new finding can be translated from the lab into large-scale bleached reefs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s hopeful that this is a first step that could lead to real-world solutions that help reefs bounce back from bleaching events.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Collins adds: \u201cThese results offer hope for coral reefs and could inspire a new set of interventions focused on helping bleached corals recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

More wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As global water temperatures continue to increase, many scientists are concerned about the potential impact on corals, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-636215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}