A University of Hawaii researcher’s idea to breed "super corals" that can endure warmer and more acidic ocean waters has won a new global competition that seeks novel ways to deal with climate change.
Ruth Gates, a researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, submitted the $10,000 winning concept.
There were 36 entries in Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s first "Ocean Challenge: Mitigating Acidification Impacts" contest. The award was announced Tuesday.
Gates, who studies stress impacts on coral at Coconut Island in Kaneohe Bay, worked on the "human- assisted evolution" coral idea with Madeline van Oppen, a senior principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The duo aims to identify which coral species are resilient enough to surviving rapidly changing ocean conditions, and then to breed those species.
"Some attribute in their biology is making them better suited to their environment," Gates said Tuesday.
Studies have identified the world’s coral reefs — ecosystems that are crucial to generating life in the oceans — as especially vulnerable to man-made climate change. If they’re to survive, they’ll have to adapt.
Fast-moving warming and acidification in the ocean don’t give coral "the normal timelines to do these things themselves," Gates said. "We’re trying to accelerate the natural process."
"There is such a pressing need," she added.
The approach would not introduce foreign DNA into the coral, as is done in the controversial production of genetically modified crops, Gates said. Instead, she said, it would be similar to breeding traits into dogs over time so they’re adept at handling certain tasks.
"It’s just never been applied in a marine setting like this," Gates said. It’s the kind of uncharted idea that typically doesn’t receive funding through government outlets — making its Ocean Challenge win especially significant, she added.
However, winning the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation prize doesn’t guarantee Gates and van Oppen’s breeding experiments will occur. They must now submit a formal proposal to be approved by the foundation for it to proceed, and Gates estimates the project would cost millions of dollars to put into action.
If the foundation doesn’t accept their proposal, simply winning the Allen Foundation’s inaugural Ocean Challenge raises strong awareness of the concept as a possible way to combat climate change impacts on the oceans, Gates said.
Gates and van Oppen aim to submit the proposal by mid-December, and accept the prize in February during a meeting on ocean sciences in Honolulu. If the foundation accepts their proposal, the duo hopes to start working on the project by early next year, Gates said.
