# data[].attributes.headline
Possible solution to save the coral reefs

# data[].attributes.subject
Possible solution to save the coral reefs

# data[].attributes.body
BBC (2019, July 14). Reef rescue: Could this robot help save corals? BBC news.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The world's coral reefs are in trouble - pollution and rising sea temperatures have seen vast areas damaged.

But could this submersible robot, which can deliver millions of coral larvae to damaged reef systems, help restore them?

The BBC Travel Show finds out more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reef rescue: Could this robot help save corals?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world's coral reefs are in trouble - pollution and rising sea temperatures have seen vast areas damaged. But could this submersible robot, which can deliver millions of coral larvae to damaged reef systems, help restore them? The BBC Travel Show finds out more.

# data[].attributes.body
NOAA (2021, February 6) Are corals animals or plants? NOAA's National Ocean Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Corals are sessile, which means that they permanently attach themselves to the ocean floor, essentially "taking root" like most plants do. We certainly cannot recognize them by their faces or other distinct body parts, as we can most other animals.

So what exactly are corals?

Corals actually comprise an ancient and unique partnership, called symbiosis, that benefits both animal and plant life in the ocean. Corals are animals, though, because they do not make their own food, as plants do. Corals have tiny, tentacle-like arms that they use to capture their food from the water and sweep into their inscrutable mouths.

Most structures that we call "coral" are, in fact, made up of hundreds to thousands of tiny coral creatures called polyps. Each soft-bodied polyp-most no thicker than a nickel-secretes a hard outer skeleton of limestone (calcium carbonate) that attaches either to rock or the dead skeletons of other polyps.

In the case of stony or hard corals, these polyp conglomerates grow, die, and endlessly repeat the cycle over time, slowly laying the limestone foundation for coral reefs and giving shape to the familiar corals that reside there. Because of this cycle of growth, death, and regeneration among individual polyps, many coral colonies can live for a very long time.

Most corals contain algae called zooxanthellae (pronounced zo-UH-zan-thuh-lay), which are plant-like organisms. Residing within the coral's tissues, the microscopic algae are well protected and make use of the coral's metabolic waste products for photosynthesis, the process by which plants make their own food.

The corals benefit, in turn, as the algae produce oxygen, remove wastes, and supply the organic products of photosynthesis that corals need to grow, thrive, and build up the reef.

More than merely a clever collaboration that has endured between some of the tiniest ocean animals and plants for some 25 million years, this mutual exchange is the reason why coral reefs are the largest structures of biological origin on Earth, and rival old-growth forests in the longevity of their ecological communities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
national oceanic and atmospheric administration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Corals are sessile, which means that they permanently attach themselves to the ocean floor, essentially "taking root" like most plants do. We certainly cannot recognize them by their faces or other distinct body parts, as we can most other animals. So what exactly are corals?

# data[].attributes.body
Cho, R. (2019, December 3). Losing Our Coral Reefs State of the Planet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Losing Our Coral Reefs
Editor's Note (01/26/2018): This post was updated with the latest statistics on coral reefs and climate change impacts.
Coral reefs, the "rainforests of the sea," are some of the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on earth. They occupy less than one percent of the ocean floor, yet are home to more than a quarter of all marine species: crustaceans, reptiles, seaweeds, bacteria, fungi, and over 4000 species of fish make their home in coral reefs. With a global economic value of $375 billion a year, coral reefs provide food and resources for more than 500 million people in over 100 countries and territories. But tragically, coral reefs are in crisis.

Coral reefs are endangered by a variety of factors, including: natural phenomena such as hurricanes, El Niño, and diseases; local threats such as overfishing, destructive fishing techniques, coastal development, pollution, and careless tourism; and the global effects of climate change-warming seas and increasing levels of CO2 in the water. According to Reefs at Risk Revisited, a report by the World Resources Institute, 75 percent of the world's coral reefs are at risk from local and global stresses. About a quarter of them have already been damaged beyond repair. If we continue with business as usual, 90 percent of coral reefs will be in danger by 2030, and nearly all of them by 2050.
What is coral?
Coral reefs are colonies of individual animals called polyps, which are related to sea anemones. The polyps, which have tentacles to feed on plankton at night, play host to zooxanthellae, symbiotic algae that live within their tissues and give the coral its color. The coral provides CO2 and waste products that the algae need for photosynthesis. In turn, the algae nourish the coral with oxygen and the organic products of photosynthesis. The coral uses these compounds to synthesize calcium carbonate (limestone) with which it constructs its skeleton-the coral reef.

The symbiotic relationship between corals and zooxanthellae can only exist within the narrow band of environmental conditions found in tropical and subtropical waters. The water must be clear and shallow so that the light algae need for photosynthesis can penetrate, and water temperatures must ideally remain between 23˚ and 29˚ C (77˚ to 84˚ F).

The number of coral species in each reef varies: the Great Barrier Reef off Australia has over 600 species of coral while a Caribbean reef has about 65. Today many reefs have 40 to 50 percent less coral than they did just 30 years ago.
Threats to coral reefs
Of local threats to coral reefs, overfishing and damaging fishing techniques such as deep water trawling and the use of explosives and cyanide, are the most destructive. When herbivorous fish that eat seaweed are overfished, uncontrolled seaweed growth can smother coral.

Coastal development results in erosion, and runoff containing the excess sediment can block the light zooxanthellae need. Nutrient-rich fertilizer runoff and sewage effluent can boost algae growth, which starves the water of oxygen, causing eutrophication. Pollution from land, including hot water releases from power plants, pathogens, and trash, and from marine activities, such as fuel leaks and oil spills, also endangers coral reefs. Tourism, while relying on the appeal of coral reefs, can be damaging when careless divers trample on corals or break off pieces as souvenirs. In addition, more and more coral and tropical fish are being harvested for the aquarium trade.

A recent study of 159 reefs in the Pacific found that plastic pollution is killing coral, too. When coral reefs come into contact with plastic waste, the incidence of disease rises 20-fold. The scientists do not know exactly how the plastic causes disease, but they speculate that bacteria on the plastic can infect the coral and plastic can block the needed sunlight. By 2025, they project that 15.7 billion plastic pieces could come into contact with coral reefs.

Natural phenomena that stress coral reefs include predators such as parrotfish, barnacles, crabs and crown-of-thorns starfish, and diseases. Hurricanes or prolonged cold and rainy weather can harm coral reefs. The El Niño weather pattern, which can result in lower sea level, altered salinity due to too much rainfall, and elevated sea-surface temperatures, can also damage coral ( oceans absorb 93 percent of climate change heat). When corals overheat, they react to the stress by expelling their algae, which results in coral bleaching.

Bleaching leaves corals vulnerable to disease, stunts their growth, affects their reproduction, and can impact other species that depend on the coral communities. Severe bleaching kills them.

The average temperature of tropical oceans has increased by 0.1˚ C over the past century. This, combined with natural fluctuations of warmer ocean temperatures, has resulted in extensive coral bleaching around the globe, involving thousands of square miles of reefs. During the 1997-1998 El Niño, widespread and severe coral reef bleaching occurred in the Indo-Pacific region and the Caribbean, killing 16 percent of the world's coral reefs in 12 months.

The 2010 El Niño also resulted in massive bleaching around the world. Another coral bleaching event in October 2015 extended into 2017, becoming the longest and most damaging ever recorded. More than 80 percent of the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef has now suffered severe bleaching.

"Coral bleaching is caused by global warming, full stop," said Terry Hughes, lead author of a new study on coral bleaching. The researchers found that bleaching events have increased from one every 25 to 30 years in the early 1980s to an average of one every six years since 2010. While coral reefs can recover from bleaching if given 10 to 15 years for their algae communities to recover, the increasing frequency of bleaching events means that many reefs may never be able to.

In addition, the 22 million tons of carbon dioxide our oceans absorb every day are changing the chemistry of seawater and increasing acidification. Today, coral reefs are experiencing more acidity than they have at any time in the last 400,000 years. Acidification reduces the water's carrying capacity for calcium carbonate that corals need to build their skeletons. Even a small decrease in the coral's ability to construct its skeleton can leave it vulnerable to erosion. Some reefs have already begun to dissolve and it's estimated that by 2050, only 15 percent of coral reefs will have enough calcium carbonate for adequate growth.

One study showed that ocean acidification profoundly alters coral reef ecosystems. As C02 levels rise and acidification increases, the biodiversity of coral reefs drops, resulting in the elimination of key species needed for healthy reef formation. "The decline of the structurally complex corals means the reef will be much simpler and there will be less habitat for the hundreds of thousands of species we associate with today's coral reefs," said Katherina Fabricius, a scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

All of these factors act in concert on coral reefs, and complex interactions between the threats leave coral reefs even more vulnerable. Climate change will also bring sea level rise that may result in drowned coral reefs, and more intense storms that produce excessive nutrient or sediment runoff. The overfishing of herbivorous fish and excess nutrients decrease coral's resilience in the face of increased CO2. Rising ocean acidity lowers the threshold at which corals bleach.
An uncertain future
According to the IPCC's Global Warming of 1.5˚ C report, if ocean temperatures rise 1.5˚ C, coral reefs are projected to decline 70 to 90 percent more; at 2˚C, we would largely destroy all our coral reefs.

Coral reefs provide us with food, construction materials (limestone) and new medicines-more than half of new cancer drug research is focused on marine organisms. Reefs offer shoreline protection and maintain water quality. And they are a draw for tourists, sometimes providing up to 80 percent of a country's total income. Losing the coral reefs would have profound social and economic impacts on many countries, especially small island nations like Haiti, Fiji, Indonesia, and the Philippines that depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods.

What can be done to save these precious and beautiful ecosystems? Reefs at Risk Revisited called for the expansion of Marine Protected Areas where fishing and fishing methods are regulated.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest and richest coral reef in the world because it has been protected since the early 1970s. After the creation of a marine sanctuary for Apo Island in the Philippines in 1982, the fish population tripled. Reefs at Risk Revisited also recommended curbing unsustainable fishing, managing coastal development better, and reducing both land and marine-based pollution. It also stressed the importance of comprehensive ecosystem management that includes all stakeholders, and the need to educate the public about the importance of coral reefs and investing in scientific research.

Some scientists are studying types of coral that can adapt to warmer ocean temperatures and survive bleaching, and using that information to "train" corals to adjust to warmer acidic water. Their goal is to eventually transplant these more resilient corals into the reefs.

The Coral Restoration Foundation protects and restores coral reefs through creating coral nurseries and transplanting corals into reef restoration sites. Concerned individuals can become citizen scientists and monitor corals at restoration sites, or volunteer to monitor marine sanctuaries, protect marine wildlife or clear ocean debris. Everyone can help coral reefs by practicing sustainable fishing, and eating only sustainably caught fish. When vacationing near coral reefs, be careful not to touch them and don't buy souvenirs of coral or other marine species.

And it is crucial, of course, for national and international bodies, and for all of us to address the threats of climate change by curbing carbon emissions.

Students in Columbia's Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability (EICES) who want to learn more about coral reefs can take EICES' spring break Coral Reef Ecology course in Bermuda in March 2018. It deals with the biology of corals, reef biodiversity, factors that impact coral reefs, and coral reef conservation and preservation.
Correction: This post was updated on 12/7/19 to correct an error about ocean temperatures reaching 2˚C.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editor's Note (01/26/2018): This post was updated with the latest statistics on coral reefs and climate change impacts. Coral reefs, the "rainforests of the sea," are some of the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on earth.

# data[].attributes.headline
Possible solution to save the coral reefs

# data[].attributes.subject
Possible solution to save the coral reefs

# data[].attributes.body
BBC (2020, October 7). Great barrier reef: Can tech help the coral survive? BBC news.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth measuring over 1,400 miles (2,300km) long.

But rising water temperatures and a changing environment is causing the coral to bleach (turn white) and become more stressed.

In March 2020 the reef suffered a third mass bleaching event in five years.

BBC Click's Nick Kwek looks at how science and technology could help give the reef a greater chance of survival.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Great Barrier Reef: Can tech help it survive?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth measuring over 1,400 miles (2,300km) long. But rising water temperatures and a changing environment is causing the coral to bleach (turn white) and become more stressed. In March 2020 the reef suffered a third mass bleaching event in five years.

# data[].attributes.body
Mei, R. (2019, January 12). What If Earth Lost All Its Coral Reefs INSH.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How many sea animals would face extinction? Could the corals rebuild themselves from scratch? How would this massive die-off affect humanity?

Corals are not rocks. They are huge colonies of a distant relative of the jellyfish - coral polyps. And like all living things, they die.

The warmer our oceans get, the faster coral reefs die out. It only takes a water temperature spike of 1°C (1.8°F) above average to upset corals and make them turn white. This process is called bleaching. It makes corals more vulnerable to hot temperatures, and causes their death if the water doesn't cool down.

Climate change has already killed half of the Great Barrier Reef's coral in just two years. You can now see them bleaching from vibrant colors to bland and lifeless ones. It's only a matter of time until the last coral vanishes from the oceans.

But what if an abrupt heatwave destroyed all of the reefs overnight? Coral reefs take up just 1% of the world's marine environment. So, no big deal, right? Wrong. Just that 1% is enough to sustain a quarter of all marine animals in the ocean. Two million species live in, on, and around the reefs. For them, corals have been providing food and shelter for 50 million years.

The day the reefs disappeared, marine biodiversity would suffer huge losses. The ocean bottom would be taken over by forests of seaweed. Maybe it's time to give jellyfish soup a try, since there would be plenty of them in the ocean.

But for many unique species of fish in the ocean, corals are their only safe habitat. A lot of them would be lost for good. Same goes for sea turtles.

Since coral are filter feeders, they clean the water. Remaining species, including dolphins, would be left to survive in very murky waters. They might soon disappear as well, since when the corals disappear, there would be very little fish for them to feed on.

What about us? Would humans on land be affected too? Absolutely. Since reefs support fish, they also support the fisheries, feeding and giving jobs to 500 million people in tropical countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Of course, the local tourism industries would crash. No one wants to dive into a forest of seaweed. With no corals left, coastal countries would lose $375 billion of annual income.

Coastlines would no longer be protected from flooding in extreme storms. Coral provides a natural breakwater, and a buffer against erosion. Without it, water would push local residents out of their homes.

As the ocean spread out, the residents of these densely populated islands would have nowhere to go. The countries might vanish from the planet together with the reefs. Without seafood there would be increased pressure on farms to make up for the shortfall in protein. This might turn into a global food crisis.

It's hard to predict what else the disruption to the food chain and biodiversity of the oceans would lead to. Sure enough, that wouldn't be pretty.

The truth is, this hypothetical scenario is getting very real. The corals of the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching quickly and are unlikely to recover. Can humans help their survival? Well, we aren't able to regrow 500-year-old corals in just 15 years. But we can at least try to pollute our air and oceans less. That way, the coral reefs might be around to give enjoyment, and life to future generations of fish - and humans!

The next time you're looking for a place to go on vacation, think about the impact you're making and try to support local communities that protect the oceans and ecosystems they depend on. And if you must go diving or snorkeling, don't stand on corals. Always marvel at the incredible beauty from a distance.

Subscribe to What-If on Youtube or follow the show on Facebook Watch.

Sources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How many sea animals would face extinction? Could the corals rebuild themselves from scratch? How would this massive die-off affect humanity? Corals are not rocks. They are huge colonies of a distant relative of the jellyfish - coral polyps. And like all living things, they die.

# data[].attributes.body
Saving the World's Coral Reefs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) is an environmental NGO that is on a mission to save the world's coral reefs. We work collaboratively with communities to reduce direct threats to reefs in ways that provide lasting benefits to people and wildlife. In parallel, CORAL is actively expanding the scientific understanding of how corals adapt to climate change and applying this information to give reefs the best chance to thrive for generations to come. This combined expertise uniquely positions us to achieve our mission by rallying the conservation community around scalable and effective solutions for coral reefs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) is an environmental NGO that is on a mission to save the world's coral reefs. We work collaboratively with communities to reduce direct threats to reefs in ways that provide lasting benefits to people and wildlife. In parallel, CORAL is actively expanding the scientif

# data[].attributes.body
Each product you buy pulls one pound of plastic out of the ocean

# data[].attributes.body
National Geographic (2017, November 7) Coral Reefs 101 | National Geographic YouTube.

# data[].attributes.body
Time (2016, September 16) What Is Coral Bleaching? | TIME YouTube.

# data[].attributes.body
Life Noggin (2017, January 17) What Happens If All The Coral Dies? YouTube.

# data[].attributes.body
climate changes, plastic pollution and ocean conservation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Located at the ocean's edge on historic Cannery Row, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is your window to marine life. Visit sea otters, penguins, sharks, jellies and thousands of other marine animals and plants.

# data[].attributes.body
endangered species conservation

# data[].attributes.body
National Geographic (2016, November 22)  Coral Bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef | Years of Living Dangerously YouTube

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coral Bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef | Years of Living Dangerously

# data[].attributes.body
Atlas Pro (2018, June 4) What's Killing The Coral Reefs? YouTube

# data[].attributes.body
save the wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Saving Wildlife and Wild Places - WCS.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature.

# data[].attributes.body
save the wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
America's experience with cherished landscapes and wildlife has helped define and shape our national character and identity for generations. Protecting these natural resources is a cause that has long united Americans from all walks of life and political stripes. To hunters, anglers, hikers, birders, wildlife watchers, boaters, climbers, campers, cyclists, gardeners, farmers, forest stewards, and other outdoor enthusiasts, this conservation ethic represents a sacred duty and obligation to protect and build upon our conservation heritage for the sake of wildlife, ourselves, our neighbors, and-most of all-for future generations.

Sign Up for Updates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
America's experience with cherished landscapes and wildlife has helped define and shape our national character and identity for generations. Protecting these natural resources is a cause that has long united Americans from all walks of life and political stripes.

# data[].attributes.body
climate changes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EDF protects the Earth's resources using smart economics, practical partnerships and rigorous science. Our members help us tackle urgent problems.

# data[].attributes.headline
Status and trends of coral reefs of the Pacific Islands

# data[].attributes.subject
Status and trends of coral reefs of the Pacific Islands

# data[].attributes.body
Mortiz, C., VII, J., Long, W. L., Tamelander, J., Thomassin, A., & Planes, S. (Eds.). (2018). Status and trends of coral reefs of the Pacific Islands. Retrieved March 05, 2021

# data[].attributes.body
Maynard, J., Tracey, D., & Kimball, J. (Autor). (2018). US Coral Reef Monitoring. Retrieved March 05, 2021

# data[].attributes.headline
The effectiveness of coral reefs for coastal hazardrisk reduction and adaptation

# data[].attributes.subject
The effectiveness of coral reefs for coastal hazardrisk reduction and adaptation

# data[].attributes.body
Ferrario, F., Beck, M. W., Storlazzi, C. D., Micheli, F., Shepard, C. C., & Airoldi, L. (Autor.). (13/05/2014) The effectiveness of coral reefs for coastal hazardrisk reduction and adaptation. Retrieved March 05, 2021

# data[].attributes.headline
Le phénomène du blanchiment et ses conséquences sur les récifs maldiviens

# data[].attributes.subject
Le phénomène du blanchiment et ses conséquences sur les récifs maldiviens

# data[].attributes.body
Rufin-Soler, C., & Laborel, J. (Autors). (2007). LE PHÉNOMÈNE DU BLANCHIMENT ET SES CONSÉQUENCES SUR LES RÉCIFS MALDIVIENS. Retrieved March 05, 2021

# data[].attributes.headline
What are the different types of corals and reefs?

# data[].attributes.subject
What are the different types of corals and reefs?

# data[].attributes.body
The section to the right contains all of the sources that were used in the making of this website and some interesting links related to the coral reefs.

# data[].attributes.body
Refer to the glossary for the definition of the words in purple in the columns named "Answers" and  "Solutions"

# data[].attributes.body
Reef Resilience (n.d.) Reefs Are At Risk.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Coral reefs worldwide are facing severe threats that jeopardize their survival and have already led to degradation and destruction in many places. New management actions are desperately needed to ensure reefs continue to exist and recover their structure and function where that has been compromised. Fortunately, scientists, conservationists, and environmental managers across the globe are developing and implementing new strategies to protect and conserve these ecosystems against a suite of local and global threats.

In addition to understanding and communicating the importance of coral reefs, it is also critically important to understand the extent to which reefs are at risk.

Below are key findings from the 2011 Reefs at Risk Revisited report that quantified the current threats to coral reefs worldwide and projected the risk of future degradation.

Status of Coral Reefs Worldwide

Approximately 75% of coral reefs worldwide are currently threatened by a combination of local and global stressors.

Coral reefs are experiencing higher ocean temperatures and acidity than ever before in the last 400,000 years.

Over 60% of coral reefs worldwide are directly experiencing one or more local stresses.

Fishing threats (i.e., overfishing and destructive fishing) are considered the most significant non-climate related threat affecting coral reefs, and they affect more than 55% of all reefs worldwide.

By 2050, almost all reefs will be classified as threatened by the combination of global and local stressors.

Without actions taken to minimize local stressors, the percent of threatened coral reefs worldwide will rise to 90% by 2030 and close to 100% by 2050.

Threats in Different Coral Reef Regions

Almost 95% of coral reefs in Southeast Asia are threatened.

Indonesia has the largest area of threatened coral reefs, with fishing threats being the main stressor on coral reefs.

More than 75% of the coral reefs in the Atlantic are threatened. In over 20 countries and territories in this region, all coral reefs are rated as threatened.

Over 65% of the coral reefs in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East are under stress by local threats.

Nearly 50% of coral reefs in the Pacific are threatened.

Approximately 14% of Australia's coral reefs are threatened, though it is ranked as the least threatened coral reef region.

Increases in Threats to Coral Reefs

The percentage of threatened coral reefs has increased by 30% in the past 10 years.

Increases have occurred across all local threats and all regions of the world.

Fishing threats (overfishing and destructive fishing) have increased by 80% in the last 10 years, making it the greatest non-climate related stressor facing coral reefs worldwide.

Mass coral bleaching has now occurred in every region of the world.

It is projected that during most years in the 2050s, 95% of coral reefs will experience high thermal stress and potential bleaching.

Due to ocean acidification, it is projected that by 2050 only about 15% of coral reefs will be in areas where aragonite levels are adequate for coral growth.

27 countries and territories are identified as highly vulnerable to reef loss across the world's reef regions; 19 of these are small island states.

It is important to communicate the status of coral reefs on the local level. This information can often be difficult to find or access. For country level information on the threats to reefs you can access the Reefs At Risk website to find reports that include detailed global, regional, and local reef information.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Coral reefs worldwide are facing severe threats that jeopardize their survival and have already led to degradation and destruction in many places. New management actions are desperately needed to ensure reefs continue to exist and recover their structure and function where that has been compromised.

# data[].attributes.headline
How much time do we have to save the coral reefs?

# data[].attributes.subject
How much time do we have to save the coral reefs?

# data[].attributes.body
Nace, T. (2020, February 24)
Nearly All Coral Reefs Will Disappear Over The Next 20 Years, Scientists Say Forbes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Over the next 20 years, scientists estimate about 70 to 90% of all coral reefs will disappear primarily as a result of warming ocean waters, ocean acidity, and pollution.

Expand that out to 2100 and it's "looking quite grim," says Renee Setter, a marine scientist at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. By 2100 there will be nearly zero suitable coral habitats remaining, eliminating nearly all living coral reef habitats.

Recent research, presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2020, is focused on transplanting lab-grown corals into dying reef ecosystems in hopes that it will revive the reefs. While there have been promising results in the short term, by 2100 ocean environment will be too harsh for corals to survive.

In recent decades scientists have become increasingly alarmed at what looks like the inevitable fate of coral reefs. Scientists have tried to use underwater speakers to play continuous sounds of healthy coral reefs in hopes this entices marine life to return. While this, along with other artificial means to encourage coral reef growth has been successful to some degree, the increasingly harsh environment will lead to coral reef die-off.

Corals live in a mutually symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae. Corals make up the hard calcium carbonate structure of coral reefs and provide protection and a home for zooxanthellae. In return, the zooxanthellae provide nutrients to the coral.

When surface ocean temperatures warm beyond a narrow livable range, the coral kicks out the zooxanthellae, causing "coral bleaching" and often times the eventual death of the coral. A similar process occurs when corals are exposed to pollutants running off of the nearby land.

Ocean acidification also plays a role in the death of corals. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, causing the oceans to become slightly more acidic. This increased acidity makes it harder for corals to build their calcium carbonate skeleton and makes their skeletons more fragile and susceptible to breaking.

Warming ocean temperatures and ocean acidification are both a direct result of the increased CO2 emitted by humans, while the increased pollution runoff is primarily a result of expanding agricultural land and the use of fertilizers.

... Read More

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nearly All Coral Reefs Will Disappear Over The Next 20 Years, Scientists Say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over the next 20 years, scientists estimate about 70 to 90% of all coral reefs will disappear primarily as a result of warming ocean waters, ocean acidity, and pollution. Expand that out to 2100 and it's "looking quite grim," says Renee Setter, a marine scientist at the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

# data[].attributes.body
Yeung, J. (2020, February 20) Climate change could kill all of Earth's coral reefs by 2100, scientists warn CNN.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
climate change could kill all of earth's coral reefs  by 2100

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate change could kill all of Earth's coral reefs by 2100, scientists warn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Climate change could destroy almost all of Earth's coral reef habitats by 2100, according to new research.

# data[].attributes.body
Becatoros, E. (2017, March 13) More than 90 percent of coral reefs will die out by 2050 The Independent.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There were startling colours here just a year ago, a dazzling array of life beneath the waves. Now this Maldivian reef is dead, killed by the stress of rising ocean temperatures. What's left is a haunting expanse of grey, a scene repeated in reefs across the globe in what has fast become a full-blown ecological catastrophe.

The world has lost roughly half its coral reefs in the last 30 years. Scientists are now scrambling to ensure that at least a fraction of these unique ecosystems survives beyond the next three decades. The health of the planet depends on it: Coral reefs support a quarter of all marine species, as well as half a billion people around the world.

"This isn't something that's going to happen 100 years from now. We're losing them right now," said marine biologist Julia Baum of Canada's University of Victoria. "We're losing them really quickly, much more quickly than I think any of us ever could have imagined."

Even if the world could halt global warming now, scientists still expect that more than 90 percent of corals will die by 2050. Without drastic intervention, we risk losing them all.

"To lose coral reefs is to fundamentally undermine the health of a very large proportion of the human race," said Ruth Gates, director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

Coral reefs produce some of the oxygen we breathe. Often described as underwater rainforests, they populate a tiny fraction of the ocean but provide habitats for one in four marine species. Reefs also form crucial barriers protecting coastlines from the full force of storms.

They provide billions of dollars in revenue from tourism, fishing and other commerce, and are used in medical research for cures to diseases including cancer, arthritis and bacterial or viral infections.

"Whether you're living in North America or Europe or Australia, you should be concerned," said biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at Australia's University of Queensland. "This is not just some distant dive destination, a holiday destination. This is the fabric of the ecosystem that supports us."

And that fabric is being torn apart.

"You couldn't be more dumb... to erode the very thing that life depends on - the ecosystem - and hope that you'll get away with it," Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Corals are invertebrates, living mostly in tropical waters. They secrete calcium carbonate to build protective skeletons that grow and take on impressive colours, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with algae that live in their tissues and provide them with energy.

But corals are sensitive to temperature fluctuations, and are suffering from rising ocean temperatures and acidification, as well as from over-fishing, pollution, coastal development and agricultural runoff.

A temperature change of just 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) can force coral to expel the algae, leaving their white skeletons visible in a process known as " bleaching."

Bleached coral can recover if the water cools, but if high temperatures persist for months, the coral will die. Eventually the reef will degrade, leaving fish without habitats and coastlines less protected from storm surges.

The first global bleaching event occurred in 1998, when 16 percent of corals died. The problem spiralled dramatically in 2015-2016 amid an extended El Nino natural weather phenomenon that warmed Pacific waters near the equator and triggered the most widespread bleaching ever documented. This third global bleaching event, as it is known, continues today even after El Nino ended.

Headlines have focused on damage to Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef, but other reefs have fared just as badly or worse across the world, from Japan to Hawaii to Florida.

Around the islands of the Maldives, an idyllic Indian Ocean tourism destination, some 73 percent of surveyed reefs suffered bleaching between March and May 2016, according to the country's Marine Research Center.

"This bleaching episode seems to have impacted the entire Maldives, but the severity of bleaching varies" between reefs, according to local conditions, said Nizam Ibrahim, the centre's senior research officer.

Worst hit have been areas in the central Pacific, where the University of Victoria's Baum has been conducting research on Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, in the Republic of Kiribati. Warmer water temperatures lasted there for 10 months in 2015-2016, killing a staggering 90 percent of the reef.

Baum had never seen anything like it.

"As scientists, we were all on brand new territory," Baum said, "as were the corals in terms of the thermal stress they were subjected to."

To make matters worse, scientists are predicting another wave of elevated ocean temperatures starting next month.

"The models indicate that we will see the return of bleaching in the South Pacific soon, along with a possibility of bleaching in both the eastern and western parts of the Indian Ocean," said Mark Eakin, coral reef specialist and coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch, which uses satellites to monitor environmental conditions around reefs. It may not be as bad as last year, but could further stress "reefs that are still hurting from the last two years."

The speed of the destruction is what alarms scientists and conservationists, as damaged coral might not have time to recover before it is hit again by warmer temperatures.

But some may have a chance.

Last month, Hoegh-Guldberg helped launch an initiative called 50 Reefs, aiming to identify those reefs with the best chance of survival in warming oceans and raise public awareness. His project partner is Richard Vevers, who heads the XL Caitlin Seaview Survey, which has been documenting coral reefs worldwide.

"For the reefs that are least vulnerable to climate change, the key will be to protect them from all the other issues they are facing - pollution, over-fishing, coastal development," said Vevers, who founded The Ocean Agency, an Australian organisation seeking new technologies to help mitigate some of the ocean's greatest challenges. If the reefs remain healthy and resilient, "they can hopefully become the vital seed-centres that can repopulate surrounding reefs."

Nature itself is providing small glimmers of hope. Some of Kiritimati's corals, for example, are showing tentative signs of a comeback.

But scientists don't want to leave it to chance, and are racing ahead with experiments they hope might stave off extinction.

"We've lost 50 percent of the reefs, but that means we still have 50 percent left," said Gates, who is working in Hawaii to breed corals that can better withstand increasing temperatures. "We definitely don't want to get to the point where we don't intervene until we have 2 percent left."

Going a step further, she is also trying to "train" corals to survive rising temperatures, exposing them to sub-lethal heat stress in the hope they can "somehow fix that in their memory" and survive similar stress in the future.

"It's probably time that we start thinking outside the box," Gates said. "It's sort of a no-win game if we do nothing."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
More than 90 percent of coral reefs will die out by 2050

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There were startling colours here just a year ago, a dazzling array of life beneath the waves. Now this Maldivian reef is dead, killed by the stress of rising ocean temperatures. What's left is a haunting expanse of grey, a scene repeated in reefs across the globe in what has fast become a full-blown ecological catastrophe.

# data[].attributes.headline
How much time do we have left to save the coral reefs?

# data[].attributes.subject
How much time do we have left to save the coral reefs?

# data[].attributes.body
Hancok, L. (n.d.) Everything You Need to Know about Coral Bleaching-And How We Can Stop It WWF.

# data[].attributes.body
EPA (2018, May 4) Threats to Coral Reefs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
ERROR: The request could not be satisfied

# data[].attributes.headline
Possible solution to save the coral reefs

# data[].attributes.subject
Possible solution to save the coral reefs

# data[].attributes.body
Griffiths, A. (2019, July 30). Iceberg-making submarine aims to tackle global warming by re-freezing the Arctic Dezeen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A team of designers led by Faris Rajak Kotahatuhaha proposes re-freezing sea water in the Arctic to create miniature modular icebergs using a submarine-like vessel, in a bid to combat climate change.

The Indonesian designer worked on the prototype with collaborators Denny Lesmana Budi and Fiera Alifa for an international competition organised by the Association of Siamese Architects.

The team was awarded second prize in the contest for its geoengineering proposal to re-freeze the Arctic and transform sea water into new ice fields.

Kotahatuhaha's team set out to create a prototype for the "re-iceberg-isation" of parts of the Arctic by freezing seawater into hexagonal blocks of ice that nest together to form new ice floes.

"The main goal of this idea is to restore the polar ecosystem, which has a direct effect on the balance of the global climate," said the designer, adding that in this scenario "it is better to prevent than cure".

MIT's Self-Assembly Lab proposes new way of growing islands and coastlines

The concept is a proactive response to issues related to the melting of the earth's polar ice. The designers felt that too much emphasis is currently being placed on protecting cities from rising sea-levels rather than tackling the problem at its source.

In New York City, architecture firm BIG is working on a large-scale flood defence system to protect Lower Manhattan from tidal surges, while Hassell and MVRDV have proposed a series of measures designed to protect San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area from the encroaching ocean.

The submarine-like vessel would submerge to collect sea water in a central hexagonal tank. Turbines would then be used to blast the tank with cold air and accelerate the freezing process.

During this process, the vessel would return to the surface of the sea and the tank would be covered to protect it from sunlight. A system of reverse osmosis would be used to filter some of the salt from the water in order to speed up the process.

Once the water is frozen, the vessel would submerge again, leaving behind an "ice baby" with a volume of 2,027 cubic-metres. These miniature icebergs would then cluster together in a honeycomb pattern to form a larger ice floe.

Multiple vessels could be used to continuously repeat the process and gradually rebuild the ice caps.

The submarines would be large enough to accommodate additional functions like polar research centres and underwater hotels that Kotahatuhaha suggested could help to fund the project.

Other radical proposals developed in response to rising sea levels include a series of giant floating umbrellas that could also help to replenish Arctic ice shelves, and a method for aiding the growth of beaches and islands in vulnerable coastal regions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Iceberg-making submarine aims to tackle global warming by re-freezing the Arctic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A team of designers led by Faris Rajak Kotahatuhaha proposes re-freezing sea water in the Arctic to create miniature modular icebergs using a submarine-like vessel, in a bid to combat climate change. The Indonesian designer worked on the prototype with collaborators Denny Lesmana Budi and Fiera Alifa for an international competition organised by the Association of Siamese Architects.

# data[].attributes.body
Jenkins, M. (2018, September 01). Carbon capture The Nature Conservancy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
×

Earth Month Match

Stand up for nature with a gift that will go 2x as far.

NATURE'S LUNGS Forests like these in Chapada dos Guimarães, Brazil, absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. © Carlos Goulart

Magazine Articles

Cutting forests contributes to climate change. But restoring nature-in all kinds of landscapes-is a powerful tool in the race to stop climate change.

Fall 2018

Matt Jenkins Freelance Writer

More

The forests of Brazil's Serra da Mantiqueira-or at least what's left of them- can invite hasty judgment. Stretching for 200 miles near the border of Sao Paulo state, the Mantiqueira region is part of the once-vast Atlantic Forest. Centuries ago, this tropical forest famous for its diversity covered an area twice the size of Texas, in a north-south strip parallel to the coast. Today, the Mantiqueira's mountain slopes stand largely stripped of trees, covered instead with cattle pastures and farm fields. "We have only 12 percent of the original Atlantic Forest left," says Rubens Benini, a Nature Conservancy scientist who has worked for 22 years to restore Brazil's forests. "And it is very fragmented."

The history of the Mantiqueira region is a classic tale of widespread environmental destruction in the name of economic progress. But the story of the region's tropical forests may not be over, yet.

More than a decade ago, the government of Extrema, a municipality at the Mantiqueira region's edge, began a tree-planting program as part of an effort to help secure its water supply. The name Mantiqueira comes from an indigenous word meaning "where the clouds lie." The mountain peaks harbor thousands of springs and streams, waterways that supply Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Forests help hold water in soils and slow the runoff of rainfall into streams and rivers. Without forests, the Mantiqueira's streams now shift dramatically from high flows in the rainy season to low flows in dry times. After the work in Extrema helped moderate some stream flows, local farmers and ranchers joined in the reforestation effort-as did TNC. Since 2005, the project has replanted nearly 5,000 acres of forest, and the planting continues.

In 2016, Brazil signed the Paris Agreement and promised to slash its emissions to 43 percent below its 2005 level by 2030. For Benini, that commitment put Extrema's effort in a new light. Extrema had replanted trees to protect its water, but those same trees were also absorbing carbon dioxide every day. What if there were dozens more Extremas? Hundreds? Brazil could meet part of its climate commitment and better withstand future droughts by putting trees back on marginal lands that had once been forest.

Brazil has since set a target of reforesting 30 million acres across its territory, part of a growing global recognition that nature itself can help nations meet their climate commitments. Managed intelligently, forests, wetlands and soils all have the ability to store carbon. The Conservancy's own researchers were the first to take a comprehensive look at just how much good conservation and land management changes could do, not just in forests but in all kinds of landscapes.

The answer, it turns out, is a lot.

Benini now leads TNC's forest-restoration strategy for Latin America. He remains at the forefront of an ambitious initiative to help Brazil take the Extrema model to another 283 municipalities and thereby restore nearly 3 million acres of forest. Doing so will require help from international funders, but such investment will be well worth the price, says Benini. The initiative will take approximately 280 million tons of excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over 30 years-the equivalent of the emissions of more than 55 million cars-and fulfill 10 percent of Brazil's reforestation goal.

"This is a new way to look at the landscape," Benini says. "When we are talking about restoration, we're not just talking about bringing the forest back. We're talking about tackling climate change."

On a walk on an early spring day near his home in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Bronson Griscom talks about his team's research findings in the manner of someone still waking from a profound dream. A tropical forest ecologist by training, TNC's director of forest carbon science had long had a hunch that nature was a big part of the solution to climate change.

Griscom found a substantial body of published research assessing one or another specific way to use nature to fight climate change, whether it be restoring forests or farming in ways that more closely mimic nature. But, he says, "I was sifting through this [research], thinking, 'Everybody's looking at this from different angles, but nobody is really nailing the question: How does it all add up?' That question hadn't really been answered at a comprehensive level."

In 2014, Justin Adams, TNC's global managing director for lands, asked the same question in a meeting. Griscom approached him afterward. "I was like, 'We should totally do a little review paper on this,'" says Griscom. He remembers thinking, "It'll be fun. No big deal. Just run some numbers."

Adams urged him on-but counseled, as Griscom puts it, "This is a big deal, and we need to do this right."

The quest to get the numbers right quickly assumed the feel of a scientific expedition. Natural systems are far messier than engineered ones. Calculating just how much carbon, say, an acre of dry steppe grassland can absorb, Griscom learned, "is way more complicated than calculating the climate benefits of a wind turbine."

It took hiring a team of additional staff and two years of late hours and weekends-plus a dive into esoteric statistical techniques like Monte Carlo simulations, marginal abatement cost curves and the Delphi method for expert elicitation-to finally get an answer.

In 2017, Griscom and his team calculated in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that natural climate solutions can provide 37 percent of the carbon reductions needed to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement-while also providing clean air, water and habitat for wildlife.

"We tend to think of nature as a victim," says Griscom. "But there's been less attention to the phenomenal resilience and power of nature to heal. The ability of nature to solve problems just doesn't get enough attention."

The findings put a spotlight on actions along three broad lines ("The Green Path to a Stable Climate," opposite). One embraces what many conservationists intuitively guessed: In most places, simply keeping nature intact helps absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Let tropical forests stand, leave coastal marshes undeveloped, and the vegetation in those places will keep on growing and storing carbon.

A second, intriguing strategy centers on managing working lands-such as farms, ranches and timberlands-with carbon in mind. The contribution in terms of carbon is smaller than that of restoration, but the strategy can be applied across large areas without taking lands out of production or harming local economies. The trick is finding the right combination of incentives to persuade agricultural producers and landowners to change how they manage the properties under their care.

The third strategy is to restore natural systems that have been damaged or destroyed, just as Benini and his colleagues hope to do in Brazil. Replanting forests offers enormous potential to capture carbon. But restoring other lands-grasslands, wetlands, coastal mangroves, even sea grasses-also significantly helps the climate picture.

In addition, the paper gets at an overlooked truth about the Paris climate agreement goals: Eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels is all-important, but cutting emissions alone won't be enough to keep the temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius by 2030. Humankind needs to figure out how to absorb a lot of carbon that's already in the atmosphere, and Griscom believes his findings offer a clear path for action.

"Nothing," he says, "is as good as life at sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. There's no machine we have that's as good as life."

One need go no further than upstate New York to find an example of how Griscom's analysis can be turned into practice. Here, TNC is helping the Albany Water Board find a way to profitably dial up the carbon storage capacity on about 6,500 acres of city-owned forest whose only moneymaking potential in the past was as timber.

"Historically, the forest was used to fill fiscal holes," says Troy Weldy, TNC's senior conservation manager in New York. Albany is hardly alone in such practice, he notes. Many towns log their land holdings for cash to supplement their budgets.

After the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in 2017, however, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan committed to taking on a part of the pledge that the U.S. government had just abandoned. At the same time, TNC was looking for partners to help it forge a new model for how owners of timberlands manage their forest holdings.

Under a new, carbon-focused plan developed by TNC, Albany's forest began to look less like standing timber and a lot more like carbon credits. "We keep the trees in the ground for a longer period of time, so we're growing bigger trees," Weldy says. "And as the forest matures, it's then sucking in and storing more carbon." Using third-party certification and existing carbon markets, such as those in California and Quebec, Albany can earn credits for the extra carbon it is storing and sell those credits to buyers seeking to offset their own emissions.

In addition to earning credits, the bigger trees also mean larger profits from the carefully planned timber sales that do happen. The bigger trees can be put to much better use as lumber for construction. "If you log a tree and it gets milled and put into a house, the carbon's still stored," Weldy says. "The life cycle of a house is going to be 100 to 200 years, and that carbon's still locked up over that period." By contrast, the harvesting of smaller trees is usually for firewood, which immediately returns stored carbon to the atmosphere when burned.

It's shaping up to be a switch that makes financial sense. When TNC figured the potential revenues for the water authority, says Weldy, "our conservative estimate was half a million dollars in 10 years by allowing the trees to grow longer." Now, with a more detailed forest inventory in hand and Albany's decision to include more land, Weldy believes that the new management scheme may actually deliver closer to
$1 million to the city's coffers.

Looking at conservation efforts through a climate lens can push projects in new directions, depending on the economic drivers that affect land-use decisions.

In places with extensive forests, keeping trees standing becomes enormously important-and that has put renewed attention on empowering indigenous communities to manage their traditional lands. In British Columbia, for example, the Great Bear Rainforest holds one of the world's largest stores of carbon. Here TNC worked with 27 First Nations to help them gain rights to manage much of their traditional territories and train a new generation of leaders and entrepreneurs in sustainable forest management. These indigenous communities finalized an agreement with the Canadian and provincial governments in 2016, after more than a decade of planning and negotiation. The agreement places 9 million acres of rainforest off-limits to logging and puts millions more acres under strict forest management guidelines.

In Indonesia, where forestry has played a large part in economic growth over the past five decades, TNC's Griscom helped develop techniques to minimize the amount of carbon emitted during legal logging operations. Simple changes, most notably ensuring that only commercially valuable trees are cut, can reduce emissions by as much as half. This year, the Indonesian government adopted the system for use throughout the entire country, and TNC is adapting it for use in Mexico, Peru, Gabon and Suriname.

Farmlands and ranchlands offer a lot of potential, too. "This does not require fundamentally rethinking what is being produced on working lands," says Griscom. "But we do need to rethink our practices on those lands."

For example, practices such as planting cover crops between growing seasons increase the amount of carbon stored in soils. By far the biggest low-cost gains in agriculture could come simply from using fertilizers correctly. Plants can take up only a certain amount of nitrogen, so when farmers apply too much nitrogen-based fertilizer, it needlessly costs them time and money. Worse, the fertilizer reacts with the air and forms nitrous oxides, which are a potent greenhouse gas.

Likewise, pragmatic changes to the management of pastures-for example, letting grass recuperate between episodes of grazing-can help. In Kenya, TNC has been working with the Northern Rangeland Trust for a decade to create community-supported norms around how communal grasslands are managed. By giving pastures more time to recover, cattle owners build up the amount of grass on the ground-an outcome that is good for the herd, good for the pastures and measurably good for storing more carbon.

The carbon equation has given many conservationists a renewed zeal for habitat protection. Coastal wetlands, for example-mangroves, saltmarshes and sea grasses-store carbon in soils, where the water seals it in. Drain or develop these areas, and "that's thousands of years of carbon being released into the atmosphere," says Emily Landis, TNC's coastal wetlands strategy lead.

By contrast, keeping the same habitat intact makes climate sense. Mangrove forests can store up to four times more carbon per hectare than terrestrial forests. Mangroves also help shield coastal communities from storms.

In that respect, protecting mangroves-just like using less fertilizer on farm fields-improves the lives of people.

In Brazil, Rubens Benini has seen that dynamic. Just four years after beginning on-the-ground restoration work in the Mantiqueira Mountains, Benini began to see evidence of large mammals like pumas returning to the reforested areas.

"I have spent almost an entire lifetime working on this," he says. "When we see animals that we imagined had completely disappeared from this region come back, it's a very nice feeling. But when you get inside of a restored forest and see the animals and the clean water and the rivers-the whole picture-the feeling is completely amazing."

Matt Jenkins is a freelance writer and former Nature Conservancy magazine editor who has written for The New York Times, Smithsonian and High Country News.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
× Stand up for nature with a gift that will go 2x as far. Magazine Articles Fall 2018 Matt Jenkins Freelance Writer More The forests of Brazil's Serra da Mantiqueira-or at least what's left of them- can invite hasty judgment.

# data[].attributes.body
Biello, D. (2007, November 26). 10 solutions for climate change scientific american.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ten possibilities for staving off catastrophic climate change

# data[].attributes.body
Schiffman, R. (2016, May 25). The controversial race to Breed Climate-Adapted SUPER CORAL Wired.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ruth Gates hops off the launch and gestures toward a mass of submerged coral shimmering darkly in the crystalline waters a few feet offshore. "That whitish coral and the one covered with algae over there are dead," she says. "The brown coral that you see growing in the gaps is still alive."

It's time to think about solutions. We don't have a lot of time.

Ruth Gates

We have arrived at Moku o Loʻe (Coconut Island), the site of the University of Hawaii's state-of-the-art marine laboratory, where Gates and her team are attempting to learn why some coral animals survive bleaching -when an environmental trigger like warm water causes corals to turn completely white and stop growing-while others, often just inches away, perish.

It is not just an academic question. Gates intends to use the results to breed-and eventually introduce- climate-adapted "super coral" to the ocean to help bring the world's ailing reefs back to life. "So much of our field has been simply watching the demise of reefs," she says. "It's time to think about solutions. We don't have a lot of time."

This urgency led Gates to team up with marine ecologist Madeleine van Oppen in Australia on a five-year project, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (whose company Vulcan supports projects to promote ocean health and conservation), to engage in "human-assisted evolution." It is not so different from what people have done for millennia with food crops, crossbreeding the best performers to create the fruits, grains and vegetables that we eat today. However, the idea of breeding coral, as one would wheat or tomatoes, has sparked controversy.

"This is not [genetically modified organisms], people!" Gates assured a well-heeled audience at the Punahou School in Honolulu, to a smattering of chuckles. She was there to garner public support for an approach that alarms those who believe humans should never interfere with nature, especially when that manipulation involves genes, the very building blocks of life. The coral biologist counters that our carbon-spewing civilization has already interfered big time, so why not use our best science to help repair the damage? "Should we act now? I say yes," Gates exclaimed as she paced the stage. "The pace of environmental change is faster than the organism's capacity to adapt. It's as simple as that!"

Yet there is nothing simple about the Noah-like ambition of reseeding the globe's imperiled reefs, where things have just gone from bad to much worse. In only the past few months, 93 percent of Australia's vast Great Barrier Reef has been damaged by coral bleaching, according to researchers at Australia's James Cook University. In some areas, the destruction is perhaps irreparable. The culprit is the current El Niño weather system, which has generated a peripatetic mass of warm water-nicknamed "the blob"-that has advanced steadily across the Pacific slow-cooking untold billions of delicate coral animals as it passes.

Coral has been in decline for a long time due to shoreline development, industrial pollution and even the suntan lotion swimmers slather on their bodies. Gates had her road to Damascus moment in 1985, when a reef she was studying in Jamaica was run over by a ship. It was an "emotionally horrific experience" she recalls, "a vibrant and spectacularly beautiful cathedral-like structure created over thousands of years reduced to rubble." She resolved then and there to find a way to rescue reefs.

I hate it when this enormously complex story gets translated as 'all coral will be dead in 50 years.' There is so much that we don't yet understand about their capacity for resilience.

Ruth Gates

Gates's testing grounds is Kaneʻohe Bay, where Coconut Island is located. Encircled by the corrugated green cliffs of Oahu's Koʻolau Mountain Range and the seaward sweep of the Mokapu Peninsula to the north, the waters of the bay are a postcard-perfect turquoise. But the coral colonies, which cover 70 percent of the bay's shallows, are reeling from a series of successive bleaching events in each of the past three years.

That coral still lives in Kaneʻohe Bay is nearly miraculous. For decades, a Honolulu bedroom community on its shores allowed sewage and storm runoff to foul the ocean, triggering the growth of bubble algae that all but smothered colonies under stinky green mats. When a public outcry ended this destructive practice in the late 1970s, the coral gradually came back, illustrating Gates's core idea that reefs can recover, if they are given half a chance. "There is this incredible diversity in coral, how they feed, how they reproduce, how they respond to water temperature and acidity," says Gates. "I hate it when this enormously complex story gets translated as 'all coral will be dead in 50 years.' There is so much that we don't yet understand about their capacity for resilience."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Controversial Race to Breed Climate-Adapted Super Coral

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ruth Gates hops off the launch and gestures toward a mass of submerged coral shimmering darkly in the crystalline waters a few feet offshore. "That whitish coral and the one covered with algae over there are dead," she says. "The brown coral that you see growing in the gaps is still alive."

# data[].attributes.body
EPA (September 26, 2018) What You Can Do to Help Protect Coral Reefs US EPA.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
No matter where you live, near the coast or hundreds of miles away, there are several things that you can do to keep coral reefs healthy. Many dangers to coral reefs occur directly on the water but many also come from activities that occur on land, even those far from the coast. Below are lifestyle changes that anyone can adopt that can make a difference for the health of our coral reefs.

When Visiting Coral Reefs

Practice safe and responsible diving and snorkeling. Avoid touching reefs or anchoring your boat on the reef. Contact with the reef will damage the delicate coral animals, and anchoring on the reef can kill corals, so look for sandy bottom or use moorings, if available.

Take a reef-friendly approach to sun protection. Some ingredients in sunscreen can be harmful to or even kill corals. Inform yourself of safer choices for coral. Better yet, cut down on sunscreen use by wearing a long-sleeved shirt or rash guard to prevent sunburn.

Every Day

Recycle and dispose of trash properly. Marine debris can be harmful to coral reefs. Recycle your trash at home and on the go (especially plastic), and remember the three R's (reduce, reuse, and recycle). When disposing of trash, do it properly in bins, to avoid trash being blown or washed away into waterways and oceans. On beaches, make sure you leave no trash behind, and never throw or leave any cigarette butts in the sand. You can help keep your rivers and streams clean by volunteering to pick up trash in your community. Check with your local environmental organizations for annual trash clean ups and make sure to check the annual International Coastal Cleanup.

Minimize use of fertilizers. The overuse of fertilizers on lawns harm water quality because nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) from the fertilizer are washed into waterways and eventually end up in oceans. These nutrients pollute the water and can harm coral reefs.

Use environmentally-friendly modes of transportation. Instead of driving a car, try to walk, bike, or use public transport (like buses and trains) more often. If you are planning to buy a car, choose a fuel-efficient vehicle like a hybrid or electric car. Using these cleaner transportation methods can help reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses that are emitted into the atmosphere. These emissions contribute to ocean acidification and increased ocean temperature. More acidic ocean waters impede coral growth and warmer waters cause coral bleaching.

Reduce stormwater runoff. Reducing stormwater runoff can help prevent water pollution, reduce flooding, and protect our water resources. Homeowners can install water catchments or rain gardens and use rain barrels to collect rainwater that would otherwise be diverted to storm drain. Visit EPA's Green Infrastructure page to learn more and see Green Infrastructure for Coral Conservation (pdf) for more information on the connection between land and coral reefs, examples of green infrastructure to implement, and online resources.

Save energy at home and at work. You can save energy at home by turning off lights and electronic devices when not using them and opting to buy energy-efficient appliances such as Energy Star-certified appliances. At work, try to turn the lights and your computer off when you leave.

Be conscious when buying aquarium fish. Avoid purchasing living coral and if you buy a marine aquarium fish, make sure that it has been collected in a sustainable manner.

Spread the word! Learn more about coral reefs and educate your community. You can share this information with your family, your friends, your local schools and businesses, and you can always contact your local representatives to see what your state is doing to protect water quality and coral reefs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What You Can Do to Help Protect Coral Reefs | US EPA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. This web site describes the importance of coral reefs, threats to them, and ongoing efforts to protect them.

# data[].attributes.body
US Department of Commerce NO and AA (August 10, 2009) What can I do to protect coral reefs? NOAA.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Here are some things YOU can do:

Corals are already a gift, don't give them as presents.

Conserve water. The less water you use, the less runoff and wastewater that will eventually find its way back into the ocean.

Volunteer in local beach or reef cleanups. If you don't live near the coast, get involved in protecting your watershed.

Become an informed consumer and learn how your daily choices such as water use, recycling, seafood, vacation spots, fertilizer use, and driving times can positively (or negatively) impact the health of coral reefs.

There are also many things you can do to ensure that you are environmentally conscious when you visit coral reefs or coastal areas. These include things such as hiring local guides to support the economy, removing all trash from an area, never touching or harassing wildlife in reef areas, and avoiding dropping your boat anchor or chain nearby a coral reef.

Finally, stay informed and spread the word! Educate yourself about why healthy coral reefs are valuable to the people, fish, plants, and animals that depend on them. Your excitement will help others get involved.

Infographic Text

10 ways to protect CORAL REEFS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
national oceanic and atmospheric administration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Even if you live far from coral reefs, you can still have an impact on reef health and conservation

# data[].attributes.body
Sustainabilityforall. (n.d.) Destructive vs sustainable fishing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When we speak about destructive fishing techniques, we refer to seabed devastation, species overexploitation and non-selective fishing. This past 8th June was the World Oceans Day, on which the aim was to raise awareness and remedy the current situation. Its 2014 Theme was "Together we have the power to protect the ocean."
Oceans acidification is increasing at a dramatic pace, contributing to the extinction of vegetal and animal species which, together with overexploitation and destructive fishing methods, is undermining our seas health.

According to FAO, "Fisheries management should promote the maintenance of the quality, diversity and availability of fishery resources in sufficient quantities for present and future generations in the context of food security, poverty alleviation and sustainable development (...)States should prevent overfishing (...)" Despite these recommendations, the real situation is very different.

Types of destructive fishing:

Trawling: It consists of Blast fishing: In this kind of fishing when a school of fish is sighted, an explosive is fired stunning the fish, and then are collected by divers. This kind of fishing throwing big nets into the seabed, which are ballasted and then pulled for their collection, so they capture everything in their path. This includes species which will be of no use, coral destruction, etc. It is one of the least selective fishing methods, and very harmful to sea bottoms. It is a typical Western type of fishing. Many species, even those endangered, are captured without a reason and then thrown back into the sea when many times are already dead. is not selective either and destroys the seabed, something terrible if we consider that coral reefs take decades to regenerate fully. These "collateral" losses -the so-called bycatch -reach in some cases 80% or even 90% of the volume in each capture discarded, though a recent study by WWF estimates this at a 40% on average. These nets can work up to 2,000 metres deep and in theory, they should carry an escape device to let out those fishes that are too young.

Cyanide fishing: It is performed mainly in south-east Asia, in countries such as the Philippines or Indonesia. The main problem arose when those vegetal substances used at the beginning were replaced by chemical pesticides and cyanide. This does not rule out the death of other species and, of course, the coral.

Seine fishing: This kind of fishing consists of surrounding schools of fish with nets, but it does not involve discarding among species, neither if they are young or smaller.

Longline fishing: A line is dropped -which by law cannot exceed 2,000 metres long - with several baited hooks. It is a bit more selective than the other kinds of fishing, but it also poses a danger to turtles and other species.

Drift netting: They are also known as "death curtains", as the nets were cast adrift and caught every single living thing that came across them. They could measure up to 50 km long and in the 90s -when its use became more widespread -around 10,000 cetaceans died every year inside the nets (according to the International Whaling Commission). It also used to catch seals, turtles... For this reason, in 1992 the United Nations forbade those drifting nets exceeding 2.5 km long.

Ghost fishing: It is not a fishing method per se, but it continues capturing species (even large cetaceans or mammals) as the term is used for abandoned nets and other sea-fishing gear. These go adrift and continue catching species, and also because they are made with highly resistant materials.

Which is the sustainable fishing technique?

It is especially artisan fishing, or that which meets certain requirements:

Species selection: It does not use indiscriminate fishing methods with fish species or capturing young ones or overexploited species.

It does not get rid of any dead or dying sea living creature: They are used (at least for making fishmeal) or thrown back into the sea if they are still alive.

It includes not more than 10% of discards in each capture.

It does not use destructive methods such as explosives, trawls or poisons, not even toxic products aboard. This includes not using coolants which are CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs, which contribute to the ozone depletion.

Sustainable fishing models:

A fishing line that measures deepness correctly according to the species to be captured, and round types of hook which do not catch turtles or other species.

Traditional fishing

Fish traps: These are more selective and have the right measures to capture, for instance, lobsters, octopuses, etc.
Hook and rod: Less stress on fish and more selective.

While in methods like trawling, up to 42% of the fish fished are thrown back dead into the sea, the percentage drops to 3% with artisan fishing. Artisan fishing needs more aid.

Will you keep ignoring your purchases labels? Ask at your regular fish market; the sea will thank you for it!

Would you like to know how much dead fish is thrown overboard into the sea? Consume responsibly!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When we speak about destructive fishing techniques, we refer to seabed devastation, species overexploitation and non-selective fishing. This past 8th June was the World Oceans Day, on which the aim was to raise awareness and remedy the current situation. Its 2014 Theme was "Together we have the power to protect the ocean."

# data[].attributes.body
Ludacer, R. (2018, June 11) The world is running out of sand - and there's a black market for it now Business insider.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you're planning a beach vacation, you'd better get to it soon. An alarming statistic for you: 67% of Southern California beaches? GONE by 2100. All because of sand. Even if you don't think about the grainy stuff, you use it daily. You're reading this off something made with sand, looking at it through a screen made with sand, surrounded by buildings made with concrete. I could let you guess what's in concrete, but I suspect you're already catching onto a theme here. The following is a transcript of the video.

I'll try to make this quick since we don't have a lot of time. The world is running out of sand.

Crazy right? We literally have tons of it on beaches, deserts, and under the ocean, but we're using it up faster than the planet can make it.

We use sand way more than you'd expect. Worldwide, we go through 50 billion tons of sand every year. That is twice the amount produced by every river in the world.

After air and water, sand is our most used natural resource. We use it even more than oil.

It's used to make food, wine, toothpaste, glass, computer chips, breast implants, cosmetics, paper, paint, plastics.

So where does it all come from? Well, let's ask Vince Beiser! He wrote a book on the subject, called The World in a Grain.

Vince Beiser: "So the sand that we use, is what you call 'marine sand.' It's the sand that you find at the bottom of rivers, and on beaches and at the bottom of lakes and oceans."

I know what you're thinking, and no, we can't use sand from the desert. Wind erosion makes the grains too round for most purposes. We need angular sand that interlocks like pieces to a puzzle. Like the sand generated from mountain rocks, pelted by rain, wind, and rivers for over 25 thousand years.

The major player for sand usage is concrete. Okay, just to clarify: cement is the lime and clay based glue that holds everything together, and concrete is the finished product that you walk on, drive on, and live inside.

Concrete is made of 10% cement (lime and Clay) 15% water and -yup: 75% sand. The concrete required to build a house takes on average 200 tons of sand, a hospital uses 3,000 tons, and a mile of a highway requires 15,000 tons.

It makes sense that the world makes over 4 billion tons of concrete annually. We need more every year. The number and size of our cities is exploding, especially in the developing world.

This change is most noticeable in China, now home to the largest urban area in the world, the Pearl River Delta. Between 42 and 60 million people call the delta home. China now has 102 cities with a population of over a million. Europe has 38. For all those new cities, they need a lot of concrete.

Between 2011 and 2013, China used more concrete than the US did in the entire 20th century. Again: in Three years, China built the equivalent to every highway, road bridge in the US. And the Hoover Dam

So it's not outrageous to hear that China also outpaces the world in cement production. By a LOT: 2500 metric tons a year.

All that cement is going to need a lot of sand to make concrete. Most of it comes from dredging Poyang Lake. An estimated 236 cubic metes of sand are taken from it every year, making it the largest single sand mine in the world.

But concrete isn't the only use for sand. China is also using tons of sand to build up islands in the South China Sea, expanding its foothold in the region.

And China's not the only nation building islands from nothing. You've seen these before. The Palm Islands and The World were major island building projects in Dubai, and required 186.5 million meters of sand. This depleted the sea floor around the United Arab Emirates, leaving importing sand from Australia as the only option when constructing the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.

It's no surprise then that the sand extraction is a $70 billion industry.

Vince Beiser: "The easiest, cheapest and best quality sand actually comes from riverbeds. It's very easy to get, you just send a boat out into the middle of a river, with a big suction pump on it. Its basically like a big straw that you drop down to the bottom of the river, suck all that sand up off the bottom."

Problem Solved? Nope! The ocean floor isn't miles of sand deep. It's a thin layer over rock, and that layer is home to microorganisms, which feed the base of the food chain. Collecting that sand disrupts fishing in the area and the landscape on shore. When removing sand from the seabed, the shore above water slides into the valley to even itself out. This still leaves shore communities open to flooding and erosion.

Vince Beiser: "The recent floods in Houston were actually made worse by sand mining in the San Jacinto River. The San Jacinto is one of the rivers that borders Houston. It's also an excellent source of sand. It has been mined very heavily for sand for the past ten, twenty years."

Up to 90% of the world's beaches have shrunk an average of 40 meters since 2008. If you haven't noticed a change in your favorite beach, you're not alone. Popular shores replenish their dying beaches with even more sand, imported from elsewhere. And if we keep it up: Almost 70% of Southern California's spectacular beaches could be completely eroded by 2100.

Governments worldwide have begun to regulate and restrict sand mining and concrete production. Now Problem solved, right? Actually, It's caused an entirely new problem: The Black Market of Sand Illegal sand mining has lead to the rise of the Sand Mafia, India's strongest criminal organization.

This interconnected group of businessmen, drivers and criminals use their influence, and if that fails, violence and murder to keep the sand flowing illegal sand generates $2.3 billion a year, employing 75,000 of India's impoverished to dive for sand in rivers. Divers work 12-hour days, diving up to 200 times and making only $15 a boatload. Many suffer from bleeding ears and headaches. Deaths and drownings go unreported.

Worldwide, illegal sand mining has destroyed entire islands. Two dozen Indonesian islands have disappeared around the same time Singapore imported 17 million tons for it's massive 50-mile land expansion. It wasn't until 2010 that dozens of Malaysian officials were charged with accepting bribes and sexual favors for importing the illegal sand.

Vince Beiser: "The first thing that we're going to see in this country, the sort-of canary in the coal mine, that will really let us know that things are starting to get bad, is prices. I believe this is one of the reasons that housing prices have gone up so much, in pretty much all of America's big cities, because the price of sand has about quintupled in the past 30-40 years. And that's one of the critical inputs whenever you're building a house, of course, is sand for the concrete."

We do have some alternatives. While crushing rocks and recycled concrete is expensive, it can be used to create concrete-quality sand. Glass bottles can be ground to make 'recycled glass sand' to replenish beaches. Yes, it's totally safe, and no, it won't cut you.

Finally, UN Environmental Program suggests better pricing and taxing on sand mining to encourage these alternatives. They also recommend an immediate need for creating regulations in all countries, as well as international waters.

Vince Beiser: "The questions isn't 'how can we use less sand?', it's 'How can we use less everything?' Trees, water, fish, we're overusing all of those things, and sand is just another thing we should be adding to the list. Well, we're on track to be a planet of at least 9 billion people in the next 20 years. Most of them are going to want to consume resources the way we do in the Western world, and that is just physically impossible."

If we want to enjoy these things, while still enjoying this thing, we need to protect this thing, before we run out of time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The world is running out of sand - and there's a black market for it now

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Do you like beaches? Who doesn't!? Well, enjoy them now, because we're using up sand at such an alarming rate, that your favorite shore won't be around much longer. We may see most of California's beaches disappear in our lifetime!

# data[].attributes.body
Solarimpulse (n.d.) Climate change-solution to solve climate change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate Change - Solutions to solve climate change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Climate Change is one of the most important threats in the world today. How to avoid climate change? Find out the causes and effects of climate change, but most importantly the ways and solutions to prevent, control and reduce its impact.

# data[].attributes.body
NOAA (2014, March 1) What does coral have to do with medicine? NOAA's National Ocean Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Coral reefs are often considered the medicine cabinets of the 21st century.

Coral reefs are sometimes considered the medicine cabinets of the 21st century. Coral reef plants and animals are important sources of new medicines being developed to treat cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, viruses, and other diseases.

Since corals are stationary animals, many have evolved chemical defenses to protect themselves from predators. Scientists continue to research the medicinal potential of these substances. In the future, coral reef ecosystems could represent an increasingly important source of medical treatments, nutritional supplements, pesticides, cosmetics, and other commercial products.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
national oceanic and atmospheric administration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What does coral have to do with medicine?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Coral reefs are sometimes considered the medicine cabinets of the 21st century. Coral reef plants and animals are important sources of new medicines being developed to treat cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, viruses, and other diseases. Since corals are stationary animals, many have evolved chemical defenses to protect themselves from predators.

# data[].attributes.body
Bruckner, A. W. (2021, March 18) Life-saving Products from Coral Reefs Issues in Science and Technology.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
During the past decade, marine biotechnology has been applied to the areas of public health and human disease, seafood safety, development of new materials and processes, and marine ecosystem restoration and remediation. Dozens of promising products from marine organisms are being advanced, including a cancer therapy made from algae and a painkiller taken from the venom in cone snails. The antiviral drugs Ara-A and AZT and the anticancer agent Ara-C, developed from extracts of sponges found on a Caribbean reef, were among the earliest modern medicines obtained from coral reefs. Other products, such as Dolostatin 10, isolated from a sea hare found in the Indian Ocean, are under clinical trials for use in the treatment of breast and liver cancers, tumors, and leukemia. Indeed, coral reefs represent an important and as yet largely untapped source of natural products with enormous potential as pharmaceuticals, nutritional supplements, enzymes, pesticides, cosmetics, and other novel commercial products. The potential importance of coral reefs as a source of life-saving and life-enhancing products, however, is still not well understood by the public or policymakers. But it is a powerful reason for bolstering efforts to protect reefs from degradation and overexploitation and for managing them in sustainable ways.

Between 40 and 50 percent of all drugs currently in use, including many of the anti-tumor and anti-infective agents introduced during the 1980s and 1990s, have their origins in natural products. Most of these were derived from terrestrial plants, animals, and microorganisms, but marine biotechnology is rapidly expanding. After all, 80 percent of all life forms on Earth are present only in the oceans. Unique medicinal properties of coral reef organisms were recognized by Eastern cultures as early as the 14th century, and some species continue to be in high demand for traditional medicines. In China, Japan, and Taiwan, tonics and medicines derived from seahorse extracts are used to treat a wide range of ailments, including sexual disorders, respiratory and circulatory problems, kidney and liver diseases, throat infections, skin ailments, and pain. In recent decades, scientists using new methods and techniques have intensified the search for valuable chemical compounds and genetic material found in wild marine organisms for the development of new commercial products. Until recently, however, the technology needed to reach remote and deepwater reefs and to commercially develop marine biotechnology products from organisms occurring in these environments was largely inadequate.

The prospect of finding a new drug in the sea, especially among coral reef species, may be 300 to 400 times more likely than isolating one from a terrestrial ecosystem. Although terrestrial organisms exhibit great species diversity, marine organisms have greater phylogenetic diversity, including several phyla and thousands of species found nowhere else. Coral reefs are home to sessile plants and fungi similar to those found on land, but coral reefs also contain a diverse assemblage of invertebrates such as corals, tunicates, molluscs, bryozoans, sponges, and echinoderms that are absent from terrestrial ecosystems. These animals spend most of their time firmly attached to the reef and cannot escape environmental perturbations, predators, or other stressors. Many engage in a form of chemical warfare, using bioactive compounds to deter predation, fight disease, and prevent overgrowth by fouling and competing organisms. In some animals, toxins are also used to catch their prey. These compounds may be synthesized by the organism or by the endosymbiotic microorganisms that inhabit its tissues, or they are sequestered from food that they eat. Because of their unique structures or properties, these compounds may yield life-saving medicines or other important industrial and agricultural products.

Despite these potential benefits, the United States and other countries are only beginning to invest in marine biotechnology. For the past decade, Japan has been the leader, spending $900 million to $1 billion each year, about 80 percent of which comes from industry. In 1992, the U.S. government invested $44 million in marine biotechnology research, which is less than 1 percent of its total biotechnology R&D budget; an additional $25 million was invested by industry. In 1996, the latest date for which figures are available, U.S. government marine biotechnology research investment was estimated at only $55 million. Even with limited funding, U.S. marine biotechnology efforts since 1983 have resulted in more than 170 U.S. patents, with close to 100 new compounds patented between 1996 and 1999. U.S. support for marine biotechnology research is likely to increase in the coming years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, marine biotechnology has become a multibillion industry worldwide, with a projected annual growth of 15 to 20 percent during the next five years.

Expanded efforts by the United States and other developed countries to evaluate the medical potential of coral reef species are urgently needed in particular because of the need for a new generation of specialized tools and processes for collection, identification, evaluation, and development of new bioproducts. The high cost and technical difficulties of identifying and obtaining marine samples, the need for novel screening technologies and techniques to maximize recovery of bioactive compounds, and difficulties in identifying a sustainable source or an organism for clinical development and commercial production are among the primary factors limiting marine bioprospecting activities.

The identification and extraction of natural products require major search and collection efforts. In the past, invertebrates were taken largely at random from reefs, often in huge quantities, but bioprospectors rarely provided an indication of the amount of organisms they were seeking, making it difficult to assess the impact associated with collection. Chemists homogenized hundreds of kilograms of an individual species in hopes of identifying a useful compound. This technique often yielded a suite of compounds, but each occurred in trace amounts that were insufficient for performing a wide range of targeted assays necessary to identify a compound of interest. For example, in one report a U.S. bioprospecting group collected 1,600 kg of a sea hare to isolate 10 mg of a compound used to fight melanoma. Another group collected 2,400 kg of an Indo-Pacific sponge to produce 1 mg of an anticancer compound. Yet, as much as 1 kg of a bioactive metabolite may ultimately be required for drug development.

Targeting a promising compound is only the first step; a renewable source for the compound must also be established before a new drug can be developed. Many suitable species occur at a low biomass or have a limited distribution, and in some cases a compound may occur only in species exposed to unusual environmental conditions or stressors. Because these compounds often come from rare or slow-growing organisms or are produced in minute quantities, collecting a target species in sufficient amounts for continued production of a new medicine may be unrealistic.

Sustainable management

It is estimated that less than 10 percent of coral reef biodiversity is known, and only a small fraction of the described species have been explored as a source of biomedical compounds. Even for known organisms, there is insufficient knowledge to promote their sustainable management. Unfortunately, a heavy reliance on coral reef resources worldwide has resulted in the overexploitation and degradation of many reefs, particularly those near major human populations. Managing these critical resources has become more difficult because of economic and environmental pressures, and human populations continue to grow.

Seahorses are a prime example of a resource that is rapidly collapsing. Demand for seahorses for use in traditional medicine increased 10-fold during the 1980s, and the trade continues to grow by 8 to 10 percent per year. With an estimated annual seahorse consumption of 50 tons in Asia alone, representing about 20 million animals supplied by 30 different countries, collection pressures on seahorses are causing rapid depletion of target populations. According to a study by Project Seahorse, seahorse populations declined worldwide by almost 50 percent between 1990 and 1995. In the absence of effective management of coral reefs and the resources they contain, many species that are promising as new sources of biochemical materials for pharmaceuticals and other products may be lost before scientists have the opportunity to evaluate them.

Expanded efforts to evaluate the medical potential of coral reef species are urgently needed.

Thus, as a first step in promoting continued biomedical research for marine natural products, countries must develop management plans for sustainable harvest of potentially valuable invertebrates. This must occur before large-scale extraction takes place. Because most of the desired species for biotechnology have little value as a food fishery, management strategies for sustainable harvest have been lacking, and much of the information needed on the population dynamics or the life history of the organisms is unknown. However, through joint efforts involving scientists, resource managers in the source country, and industry, it is possible to develop management plans that promote sustainable harvest, conservation, and equitable sharing of benefits for communities dependent on these resources.

For instance, researchers in the Bahamas identified a class of natural products, pseudopterosins, from a gorgonian coral (Pseudoterigorgia elisabethae) that have anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties. With help from the U.S.-funded National Sea Grant College Programs, the population biology of the species was examined in detail, with relevant information applied toward development of a management plan for sustainable harvest. This has allowed researchers to obtain sufficient supplies over a 15-year period without devastating local populations. By ensuring an adequate supply, this effort ultimately led to the purification of a product now used as a topical agent in an Estee Lauder skin care product, Resilience. In 1995, pseudopterosin was among the University of California's top 10 royalty-producing inventions; today it has a market value of $3 million to $4 million a year.

Commercialization

New avenues for the commercial development of compounds derived from coral reef species may enhance the use of these resources and contribute to the global economy. If properly regulated, bioprospecting activities within coral reef environments may fuel viable market-driven incentives to promote increased stewardship for coral reefs and tools to conserve and sustainably use coral reef resources. These activities may also promote beneficial socioeconomic changes in poor developing countries.

Unfortunately, the difficulty in finding new drugs among the millions of potential species, the large financial investment involved, and long lead times that often take place before drugs can be brought to market has meant that the resources themselves have relatively low values. The anticancer metabolite developed from a common bryozoan, Bugula spp., is currently worth up to $1 billion per year. But the value of one sample in its raw form is only a few dollars. This makes it difficult to add significant value to coral reefs for conservation strictly on economic terms.

When bioprospecting has resulted in significant funds for conservation, special circumstances have been involved. The most success has been achieved when bioprospecting is carried out through international partnerships that include universities, for-profit companies, government agencies, conservation organizations, and other groups. Partnerships allow organizations to take advantage of differential expertise and technology, thereby providing cost-effective mechanisms for collection, investigation, screening, and development of new products. Partnerships also facilitate access to coral reef species, promote arrangements for benefit sharing, and assist in improving understanding of the taxonomy and biogeography of species of interest.

Many of the marine natural products partnerships negotiated in recent years between private firms and research institutes in developing countries have involved outsourcing by large R&D firms. In this approach, large companies engaged in natural products R&D work with suppliers, brokers, and middlemen in developing countries to obtain specimens of interest and with specialized companies that conduct bioassays or chemical purification of natural products. Through the development of contracts with several large pharmaceutical companies, Costa Rica was able to ensure that substantial funds were directed toward conservation. This was successful primarily because Costa Rica developed tremendous capacity to provide up-front work in taxonomy and initial screening of samples, which may not be the case in other developing countries.

An alternative approach often undertaken in the United States and Europe involves in-licensing, in which large R&D companies acquire the rights to bioactive compounds that have been previously identified by other firms or by nonprofit research institutes. For example, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) provides government research grants that support marine collecting expeditions and preliminary extraction, isolation, and identification of a compound and its molecular structure and novel attributes. Once a potentially valuable compound is identified, NCI may patent it and license it to a pharmaceutical company to develop, test, and market. In this approach, the company is required to establish an agreement with the source country for royalties and other economic compensation. In addition, scientists in the host country are invited to assist in the development of a new product, and the U.S. government guarantees protection of biodiversity rights and provides provisions for in-country mariculture of organisms that contain the compound, in the event that it cannot be synthesized.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is leading an international effort to develop guidelines for access to coastal marine resources under jurisdictions of individual countries for marine biotechnology applications. The CBD is calling for conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of marine resources, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits that arise from these resources, including new technologies, with the source country. Ratification of this agreement, from the standpoint of expanded development in marine biotechnology, requires that coastal nations agree on a unified regime governing access to marine organisms. Countries with coral reefs must also establish an acceptable economic value for particular marine organisms relative to the R&D investment of the biotech firm involved in the collection of the organism and the development of a new bioproduct. Although this type of international agreement would significantly affect the operations of the U.S. marine biotechnology industry, the United States cannot play an effective role in the process because it is not a party to the convention.

Options for sustainable use

The development and marketing of novel marine bioproducts can be achieved without depleting the resource or disrupting the ecosystem, but it requires an approach that combines controlled, sustainable collection with novel screening technologies, along with alternative sources for compounds of value. Instead of the large-scale collections that were formerly commonplace, more systematic investigations are now being undertaken, in which certain groups are targeted and the isolated materials are tested in a wide variety of screening assays. These collection missions involve the selective harvest of a very limited number of species over a broad area, with a focus on soft-bodied invertebrates that rely on chemical defenses for survival and marine microorganisms that coexist with these organisms. Assays used in major pharmaceutical drug discovery programs are also beginning to consider the function of the bioactive compounds in nature and their mechanisms of action, which can provide models for the development of new commercial products.

The ability to partition collections into categories of greater and lesser potential has raised the value of these species. For instance, sponges are ideal candidates for bioprospecting, because a single sponge can be populated by dozens of different symbiotic bacteria that produce an extraordinary range of chemicals. In Japan, researchers have examined more than 100 species of coral reef sponges for biomedical use, and more than 20 percent of them have been found to contain unique bioactive compounds. With greater knowledge of appropriate types of organisms for screening, companies may be willing to pay a premium for exclusive access to promising research prospects, thus creating an incentive to conserve ecological resources in order to charge access fees.

Investment incentives are needed to encourage partnerships to engage in marine natural products research.

With the advent of genomic and genetic engineering technologies, bioprospectors now have environmentally friendly and economically viable alternative screening tools. For any given species, a suitable sample consists of as little as 1 to 1.5 kilograms wet weight. In one screening approach, scientists collect small samples of an organism, extract the DNA from that species and its symbiotic microbes, and clone it into a domesticated laboratory bacterium. Thus, the genetically engineered bacterium contains the blueprint necessary to synthesize the chemical of interest, and it can ultimately create large quantities of the chemical without additional reliance on the harvest of wild populations.

Although synthetic derivatives provide an alternative to wild harvest, sometimes synthesis proves impossible or uneconomical; for example, in the case of an anticancer compound extracted from a sea squirt (tunicate). Mass production of a target species through captive breeding or mariculture may provide a consistent alternative supply. Many coral reef organisms that are in demand for the aquarium trade and the live reef food fish trade, and several invertebrates that contain valuable bioactive compounds, such as the sponges, are promising new species for intensive farming, and there are already a number of success stories. For example, sponge mariculture capitalizes on the ability of sponges to regenerate from small clippings removed from adult colonies. To minimize harvest impacts, only a small portion of the sponge needs to be removed for aquaculture; the cut sponge heals quickly and over time will regrow over the injury.

Mariculture offers another benefit as well. Through the use of selective husbandry or other mariculture protocols, it may be possible to select for a particular genetic strain of a species that produces a higher concentration of a metabolite of interest, thereby reducing the number of individuals needed for biotechnology applications. Mariculture can also provide a source of organisms to restock wild populations, which provides additional incentive for participation by a developing country with coral reef resources.

Four key steps

Coastal populations worldwide will continue to rely on coral reefs for traditional uses, subsistence, and commerce far into the future. In many cases, increased, unsustainable rates of collection coupled with pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change are threatening the vitality of these precious ecosystems. Coral reefs are vast storehouses of genetic resources with tremendous biomedical potential that can provide life-saving sources of new medicines and other important compounds, if these precious resources are properly cared for. To meet this challenge, research communities, government agencies, and the private sector must interact more effectively.

Through four key steps, the benefits of these activities can extend far beyond their medicinal potential to provide sustainable sources of income for developing countries and promote increased stewardship for the resources. First, there is a need for investment incentives to encourage partnerships among governments, local communities, academia, and industry to increase marine natural product research in coral reef environments. Second, those who stand to gain from the discovery of a new product must direct technical and financial assistance toward research and monitoring of the target species and the development and implementation of sustainable management approaches in exporting (developing) countries. Third, it is critical that biotech firms promote equitable sharing of benefits to include entire communities or source countries from which the raw materials come. Finally, expanded efforts are needed to reduce the demand for wild harvest and to improve the yield of bioactive compounds, including mariculture and selective husbandry and genomic and genetic engineering.

Without environmentally sound collection practices, only a few will benefit financially from new discoveries, and only over the short term. In the long term, communities may ultimately lose the resources on which they depend. Many species will perish, including those new to science, along with their unrealized biomedical potential. The ultimate objective of marine biotechnology should not be to harvest large volumes and numbers of species for short-term economic gains, but rather to obtain the biochemical information these species possess without causing negative consequences to the survival of the species and the ecosystems that support them. We must strive for a balance among the needs of human health, economics, and the health of our coral reefs, all of which are inextricably intertwined. This approach will ensure that marine resources that may prove valuable in the fight against disease will be available for generations to come.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life-Saving Products from Coral Reefs | Issues in Science and Technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the past decade, marine biotechnology has been applied to the areas of public health and human disease, seafood safety, development of new materials and processes, and marine ecosystem restoration and remediation. Dozens of promising products from marine organisms are being advanced, including a cancer therapy made from algae and a painkiller taken from the venom in cone snails.

# data[].attributes.body
Coral Reef History - Global Reef Project (n.d.) Coral Reef History.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Corals are 500 million years old, and date back to the late Cambrian period, during the Paleozoic era (Fig. 1). Evidence suggests that they started as simple, solitary organisms but, in response to changes in their environment, later evolved into the coral reefs we know today. It is also known that over the 500 million years, during which corals are known to have existed, they have experienced a number of extinction events. These extinction events were largely the result of dramatic changes in their environment, such as we are seeing today.

Ordovician-Silurian Extinction Event

About 435 million years ago, as the supercontinent, Pangaea, was beginning to form, and the circulation of the world's oceans was being affected by drifting land masses, an ice age began. Sea levels and ocean temperatures dropped significantly as glaciers grew. This period in Earth's history has been termed "the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction Event", which resulted in the disappearance of corals and as much as 60% of all marine life.

Devonian Period

Corals re-appeared during the Devonian period, around 410 million years ago and, for the first time, began to form extensive reef systems. These early coral reefs were predominantly composed of coral- like stromatoporoids (reef forming sponges), tabulate corals (mounds, branches and organ shapes), rugose corals (horn shaped), and predecessors of the modern-day coralline algae (encrusting multi-colored algae seen on rock surfaces). It was towards the end of this period that scleractinian or 'stony' corals first appeared that populate coral reefs today. Then, 350 million years ago corals again disappeared from the geological record. The reason for this is not clear but evidence points towards rapid fluctuations in sea levels and a rapid reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Permian-Triassic Extinction Event

It would take almost 100 million years before corals re-appeared around 260 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period (Fig. 1). This was followed by the Permian- Triassic Extinction Event of 251 million years ago. The Permian-Triassic Extinction was the greatest extinction event in Earth's history, during which 96% of marine species were wiped out. Evidence suggests a period of hypoxia (reduced oxygen) and hypercapnia (elevated carbon dioxide) in the world's oceans. These effects may have been caused by meteor impacts, dramatically reduced sea-levels, increased volcanic activity or gas hydrate venting from sedimented organic matter on the seabed. It is likely that a combination of some or all of these events triggered this extinction event.

Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods

Corals made a comeback, 230 million years ago. In this Triassic period, modern-day scleractinian corals once again began to emerge. The supercontinent, Pangaea, was however, now breaking up and around 205 million years ago, possibly due to continental drift again impacting oceanic circulation, corals disappeared. They come and go in the geological record several times between 190 million and 75 million years ago throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, probably as a result of continuously changing oceanic circulation.

Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction Event

Around 65 million years ago, the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction occurred, the last of the mass extinction events. Recent evidence seems to confirm that the cause was a large meteor impact which resulted in the formation of the Gulf of Mexico. It is likely that a short period (1-10 years) of significantly reduced sunlight occurred, during which time large numbers of organisms, including corals were wiped out. Corals rely, in part, on their ability to capture planktonic organisms, which are either photosynthetic or zooplankton, which themselves rely on photosynthetic prey as a food source. Photosynthetic organisms would have been severely impacted by the reduced levels of sunlight. To compound the problem for coral reefs, they are also reliant on energy, in the form of fixed carbon, from their endosymbiotic partners, zooxanthellae. These photosynthetic single-celled organisms would have suffered from the reduction in sunlight. Needless to say the fragile corals disappeared from the world's oceans once again, following the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction and only reappeared shortly before another minor extinction event, the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum, around 55 million years ago.

Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum Event

The Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is the most extreme global warming event (over 14 oF or 6 o C) in history. Rapid rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide are observed in the geological record, as well as rises in sea level and in the lysocline (Boxed text). The most likely cause of the PETM is the release of large quantities of gas hydrates as the earth gradually warmed during the preceding Paleocene period. These gas hydrates, including methane gas, are locked up in ice & sedimentary deposits and would have been released as the Earth warmed. They are potent greenhouse gases and would have rapidly accelerated global warming. Coral reefs suffered heavily during this 'mini-extinction' and most disappeared.

Mid-Eocene Period

Coral began to gain a foothold around 46 million years ago before disappearing for the last time in the Mid-Eocene period around 40 million years ago. Finally around 20 million years ago, the Great Barrier Reef, located off the west coast of Australia came into existence.

Modern Day

The climate of the globe is currently undergoing a rapid PETM-like event (a warming period), driven by greenhouse gases as in the PETM. Evidence now suggests that coral reefs will pass a point of no-return around 2040, and go into terminal decline, eventually disappearing at the end of this century. If so, based on past evidence, it is likely that many millions of years will pass before they return.

Examples of modern day Scleractinian or "Stony" corals from the Pacific.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Corals are 500 million years old, and date back to the late Cambrian period, during the Paleozoic era (Fig. 1). Evidence suggests that they started as simple, solitary organisms but, in response to changes in their environment, later evolved into the coral reefs we know today.

# data[].attributes.body
Classroom on the Reef (2018, December 6) The history of coral reef building YouTube.

# data[].attributes.body
EPA (2021, April 14) Overview of Greenhouse Gases US EPA.

# data[].attributes.body
Vox (2019, November 13) These uses of CO2 could cut emissions - and make trillions of dollars.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is part three of a four-part series on carbon capture and utilization (CCU), the growing industry dedicated to using carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere to fight climate change. Part one introduces CCU and its basic forms, and part two is about enhanced oil recovery, the largest current use of CO2. The fourth post considers how policymakers should approach CCU technologies.
It is well understood at this point that carbon dioxide is a deadly pollutant that is heating the atmosphere. What's less well understood is that CO2 is also a useful feedstock, an input into a variety of industrial processes. From plastics to concrete, CO2 is a basic industrial building block - a valuable commodity.

To many climate campaigners, this suggests that maybe we should use more of it. Maybe, if the industries that use CO2 could be incentivized to increase their use, we could use enough to substantially decrease the amount we emit into the atmosphere.

Use more; emit less. That is the basic idea behind carbon capture and utilization (CCU), one of the hottest topics in clean energy these days.

In my first post in this series, I introduced the concept of CCU and its basic forms. In the second, I took a close look at what is currently the most common industrial use of CO2, namely enhanced oil recovery (EOR), whereby CO2 is injected in spent wells to squeeze out more oil and gas. (It's complicated.)

In this post, we're going to take a look at the other industrial uses of CO2 to try to get a sense of how viable they are, what their total potential might be, and whether they might play a significant role in the fight against climate change. Fun times!

One important note: For the purposes of this post, I'm looking at industrial processes. They involve pulling CO2 out of the air - either out of the flue gases of industrial facilities, via traditional carbon capture, or out of the ambient air, via direct air capture (DAC) - concentrating it, and using it as industrial feedstock.

There are also a number of natural ways of gathering more CO2, from planting more forests to sequestering more carbon in the soil. They are interesting and of potentially significant scale, but they deserve their own post. This post is about machines.

Three important ways to assess CCU technologies

Before we get into the various forms of CCU, let's keep in mind three important questions we need to be asking about all of them as we take their measure.

The questions are drawn from a giant literature review on CCU, recently released in the journal Nature, which assessed over 11,000 papers and was accompanied by an expert opinion survey. It helps bring into clear focus the key metrics involved in appraising these technologies.

The first question is, does the CCU technology produce a climate benefit? Does it reduce carbon emissions, and if so, how much? Does it sequester carbon, and if so, for how long?

There are a few overlapping concepts here that are often conflated in popular dialogue, so it's worth distinguishing them. Here's how the Nature paper does it:

CO2u: utilization of CO2

CO2ρ: reduction in CO2 emissions relative to baseline

CO2r: removal of CO2 from the atmosphere

CO2s: storage of CO2

Different CCU technologies involve different mixes of these. Determining the net carbon impact of a CCU technology involves life-cycle analysis (LCA) that takes into account where the CO2 is sourced, how much energy is used in production, where the energy comes from, how much CO2 is released during production, whether any of the released CO2 is captured, how the product is eventually disposed of, and what would have taken place in the absence of the production. (LCA is devilishly complicated and there are currently no widely shared standards governing how it's done.)

Some uses of CO2 - say, making liquid fuels that substitute for gasoline and diesel fuel - only lock in carbon until the fuel is combusted, at which point it is re-released into the atmosphere. They don't remove CO2 from the atmosphere so much as recycle it once and then put it back; the Nature paper calls them "cycling" processes. But by substituting a carbon-neutral process for a carbon-intensive one, they reduce net emissions (CO2ρ) relative to what would have happened otherwise.

Other uses of CO2 - say, as part of the cement-production process - lock in carbon for much longer. Concrete won't permanently keep CO2 out of the atmosphere, but could plausibly store it for a century or longer, so for all intents and purposes it counts as carbon storage (CO2s). The Nature paper calls these "closed" processes.

LCA is complex, and the details matter, but one broad conclusion from the literature is that "the potential for net emission reductions is much larger than for net removals, which appears very modest." Overall, CCU probably won't result in a lot of CO2s, but it could produce considerable CO2ρ.

Assessing the climate benefit of different CCU options is paramount. Policymakers should always keep in mind that CCU is not a good in and of itself. It is only worth pursuing insofar as it makes a meaningful climate difference.

The second question is, what is the potential scale of the CCU technology? If it's a specialized or low volume product, it might not be worth the R&D effort to figure out how to make it work commercially with captured CO2. It stands to reason that policymakers and investors should prioritize their attention and resources based on the technologies with the largest total potential. (We'll look at a ranking of technologies by potential in a moment.)

And the third question is, how far along is the CCU technology on the learning curve?Is it a speculative technology that exists mostly in the lab and a few pilot projects, like synthetic liquid fuels, or is it an established technology with near-term potential for market growth, like CO2 in cement?

All these questions are important in assessing the potential of CCU technologies to provide practical climate solutions.

So what are those technologies? Let's take a look at a few.

(There are lots of different ways of dividing them up; my list is a bit of a mash-up of the Nature paper referenced above and this exhaustive 2016 roadmap conducted by Lux Research for the Global CO2 Initiative.)

1. Concrete building materials

There are several technologies here, all related to concrete, which is a mix of cement, water, and aggregates. The cement is a fine powder that, when activated by the water, binds the aggregates into a rigid mix.

First, aggregates - which are incorporated into concrete, asphalt, and construction fill - can be made by converting gaseous CO2 into solid mineral carbonates like calcium carbonate (CaCO3), a process known as "CO2 mineralization." (See Blue Planet.)

Second, CO2 can be substituted for water in "curing" concrete during its mixing, resulting in a similar mineralization. It turns out this actually makes the resulting concrete stronger, in addition to saving lots of water. (See, for example, Solidia and CarbonCure.)

Third, cement can be phased out in favor of new binding agents that absorb and mineralize CO2. (See CO2 Concrete.)

Fourth, and most speculative, is a promising tech being pushed by the EU's Low Emissions Intensity Lime & Cement (LEILAC) project. The production process for cement and lime involves chemical reactions (not fossil fuel combustion) that inevitably release CO2. LEILAC seeks to tweak the process so that it creates a purified CO2 waste stream that can easily be captured and either sequestered or reused.

At least in theory, one can imagine purified CO2 emissions from the cement manufacturing process captured and then re-injected into the process as a CO2-mineralizing bonding agent is mixed with CO2-based aggregates. If all those pieces could be lined up - and to be clear, that's not being done anywhere in the world yet - the resulting building materials might have a claim to being truly carbon negative, on a lifecycle basis. They would not only reduce net emissions (CO2ρ), they would semi-permanently store carbon (CO2s).

But short of that, even if cement achieves only CO2ρ, not CO2s, the opportunity here is large and immediate. These technologies (at least the first two) are established and relatively low energy; they could potentially result in carbon sequestration on the scale of billions of tons.

2. Liquid fuels

Today, liquid fuels - gasoline, diesel, and more rare variants like jet fuel - are made by refining hydrocarbons drilled from underground. They can be made with carbon from the air instead.

" Synthetic fuels " can be made in many different ways, through many different processes and chemistries, resulting in a variety of fuels. There are synthetic fuels that can substitute for any liquid fuel.

The simplest way to think about them is as a mix of three things: a carbon-based molecule (usually CO2), hydrogen, and energy. The energy is used to pry the oxygen off the carbon and stick the carbon onto the hydrogen. Thus "hydrocarbons."

The carbon intensity of the resulting fuels depends on the source of all three components: the CO2, the electricity, and the hydrogen.

If the CO2 comes from underground deposits, the electricity comes from fossil fuels, and the hydrogen comes from steam reforming of natural gas (as roughly 95 percent of hydrogen does today), the resulting fuel is extremely carbon intensive.

If the CO2 comes from the ambient air, the electricity comes from renewables, and the hydrogen comes from solar-powered electrolysis (which pulls hydrogen directly out of water), the resulting fuel is extremely low carbon.

Carbon-neutral liquid fuels are almost certainly the largest potential market for CO2. There are lots of liquid fuels in the world, and there are existing markets for cleaner alternatives, including in states like California and Oregon with a low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS).

Reducing the cost of carbon capture would help with synthetic fuels, but it's the other two ingredients, hydrogen and energy, that represent a larger portion of the costs. It takes a lot of energy to electrolyze hydrogen and it takes even more to pry CO2 apart. (CO2 is tightly bonded; it doesn't want to come apart.) All that energy costs money.

Extremely cheap renewable energy is the key to making carbon-neutral synthetic fuels work because it is the key to cheap hydrogen, and producing synthetic fuels at scale is going to require a lot of hydrogen. In a special report on difficult-to-decarbonize sectors like industry and air travel, the Energy Transitions Commission emphasized the need for synthetic fuels, and thus the need for hydrogen: "Achieving a net-zero-CO2-emissions economy will require an increase in global hydrogen production from 60 [megatons] per annum today to something like 425-650 Mt by mid-century."

Even if hydrogen doesn't play a big direct role in transportation ( it probably won't), it will still be needed for synthetic fuels, which are themselves needed to decarbonize hard-to-reach sectors like industry. To make electrolysis of "green hydrogen" possible, renewable energy needs to get real cheap.

There are plenty of analysts who think that utility-scale solar power in good locations will be producing the cheapest electricity in the world soon, down to $20 or even $10 per megawatt-hour. And there will be periods of surplus solar energy that need to be soaked up, energy that might otherwise have gone wasted.

"Although the production of more complex hydrocarbons is energetically and therefore economically expensive," says the Nature paper, "rapid cost-reductions could potentially occur if renewable energy-which represents a large proportion of total cost-continues to become cheaper, and if policy stimulates other cost reductions."

Synthetic fuels effectively don't exist today on any kind of market scale ("current flows are near-zero," as the Nature paper says), but if everything comes together to support them, they could conceivably capture a substantial chunk of the global fuels market, which is no small thing. It's not CO2s, but it's a whole lot of CO2ρ.

To be clear: the future is electrification. When it comes to decarbonization, it is always better to electrify the end uses of energy - to use the electricity directly, rather than losing a large fraction of it to conversions - but even under optimistic scenarios, there are going to be sectors that are difficult to electrify.

Carbon-neutral liquid fuels for sectors that are difficult to decarbonize are both a large market and a key piece of the decarbonization puzzle.

3. Chemicals and plastics

Using various catalysts, CO2 can be made into a variety of chemical intermediaries - materials that then serve as feedstocks in other industrial processes, like methanol, syngas, and formic acid.

CO2 can also be transformed by catalysts into polymers, the precursors for plastics, adhesives, and pharmaceuticals. For now, CO2 derived polymers are quite expensive, but plastics are another potentially substantial market - they represent a growing fraction of demand for liquid fossil fuels. And they have a lifespan of decades to centuries, so they present some potential for CO2s.

Currently, only a few chemical applications of CO2 are commercialized at scale, including the production of urea and polycarbonate polyols.

4. Algae

Captured CO2 can be used to accelerate the growth of algae, which has the capacity to absorb much more of it, much faster, than any other source of biomass. And algae is uniquely useful. It can serve as feedstock for food, biofuels, plastics, and even carbon fiber (see No. 5). It's worth noting that around five years ago, algae was seen as a kind of wonder-plant, but the sector hasn't really taken off and a lot of the early companies have gone under.

5. Novel materials

Here's where we find more speculative, cutting edge, but potentially momentous markets. CO2 can be be made into high-performance materials - carbon composites, carbon fiber, graphene - that could conceivably substitute for a whole range of materials, from metals to concrete.

For instance, the team at C2CNT is using "molten electrolysis" to transform CO2 directly into carbon nanotubes, which are stronger than steel and highly conductive. They are already used in high-end applications like the Boeing Dreamliner and some sports cars. But as they become cheaper, there is almost no ceiling to the market.

To take just one example, think of substituting carbon nanotubes for copper in electricity wiring. (Thanks to Adam Siegel for pointing out this idea.) Virtually every application of electricity, from the space station to electric vehicles to household appliances, would benefit from lighter-weight wiring that conducts better.

And then there's steel, the most commonly used metal in the world, responsible for between 7 and 9 percent of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. If carbon-based materials could be substituted for steel on any real scale, it could mean billions of tons of reduced emissions, not to mention effectively permanent carbon sequestration.

Of course, this kind of materials research is still in its early stages and will take some technological breakthroughs to bring down costs enough to begin displacing other materials at scale. For now, carbon materials are getting a foothold in boutique markets.

Comparing CCU technologies on cost and potential

The Nature paper compared 10 different CCU pathways, including the natural ones, which I've excluded here, and EOR, which I covered in my last post. So the chart below contains some extraneous information for our purposes. Nonetheless, it's worth examining closely, as it shows the pathways by costs, potential for CO2 use, and by technological readiness (TRL). There are two scenarios, reflecting the low end and high end of projections.

Zero on the vertical axis is the present day "breakeven cost" (in 2015 dollars), the point at which a technology is competitive with incumbents. Those below that line are already competitive. Those above the line would need a commensurate subsidy of some kind to compete.

The width of the bars indicate the amount of CO2 the technology could utilize annually by 2050 (based on projections and expert opinion). And the color of a bar indicates its TRL.

Based on the optimistic high scenario, a few of the chemical pathways (polyol, urea, and methanol) are already cost-competitive, though their potential for CO2 use is relatively small, close to a gigaton cumulatively.

The concrete pathways (aggregates and curing) are fairly close to cost-competitive and curing in particular has fairly large potential, especially when you consider that its CO2 counts twice, once as emission reductions, once as permanent storage.

Troublingly, the industrial CCU technology pathways with the most total potential to use CO2 are the most expensive relative to incumbents.

Together, synthetic liquid fuels (methanol, methane, dimethyl ether, and Fischer-Tropsch fuels) could use over 4 gigatons of CO2 a year by 2050. (By way of comparison, global CO2 emissions in 2018 were about 37 gigatons.) But they currently need something like a $500 per ton of CO2 subsidy to compete.

Nevertheless, as the Nature paper says, "many technologies are in the very early stages of development, and cost optimization via research and development could substantially change these estimates." If there's one target for concerted R&D that seems obvious, it's synthetic fuels.

Here's the same information in table form, if that's your thing:

One thing the table makes clear is that the ranges on some of these projections are extremely wide ($0 to $670?), reflecting the enormous degree of uncertainty involved.

How these CCU technologies develop will depend on the price curve of renewable energy, the price curve of green hydrogen, developments in a range of markets, and the level of R&D and policy support they receive from lawmakers. All those are individually difficult to predict; sussing out how they might interact through 2050 is a game of educated guessing.

CCU can do more if there's policy to support it

The Nature paper's conclusions reflect the average of a huge number of studies and experts, attempting to determine current costs and what will happen.

But it's worth taking at least a quick glance at some more optimistic estimates of what could happen with supportive policy.

In 2016, the Global CO2 Initiative commissioned a comprehensive roadmap for CCU from Lux Research. It not only projected how CCU technologies might scale under business as usual, but also how they might scale if the policy recommendations in the roadmap are followed.

Here's how the roadmap assesses the CO reduction potential of various CCU technologies:

As you can see, following the "strategic actions" recommended by the report could radically expand the CO2 absorption potential of both aggregates and synthetic fuels. The roadmap estimates that, at the upper bound, "over 10% of annual [global] CO2 emissions can be captured in these products."

Here's the total revenue potential of the CCU markets:

Again, fuels and aggregates show enormous potential, growing ten- or twenty-fold more under good policy. The roadmap estimates that overall, annual revenue of the combined markets could hit between $800 billion and $1.1 trillion by 2030.

As I said, all of these are tenuous estimates, but still, if CCU technologies could potentially develop into a $1 trillion-plus business that cuts global emissions by 10 percent, they seem worth serious investment of attention and resources. The more we can use, the less we will emit.

How should policymakers approach CCU technologies? What's the right way to support them and, more broadly, the right way to think about them in the context of the larger climate fight? I will address those questions in my next post.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
These uses of CO2 could cut emissions - and make trillions of dollars

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is part three of a four-part series on carbon capture and utilization (CCU), the growing industry dedicated to using carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere to fight climate change. Part one introduces CCU and its basic forms, and part two is about enhanced oil recovery , the largest current use of CO2.

# data[].attributes.body
MIT Climate Portal (2021, May 9) Carbon Capture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) refers to a collection of technologies that can combat climate change by reducing carbon dioxide (CO ₂) emissions. The idea behind CCS is to capture the CO ₂ generated by burning fossil fuels before it is released to the atmosphere. The question is then: What to do with the captured CO ₂? Most current CCS strategies call for the injection of CO ₂ deep underground. This forms a "closed loop", where the carbon is extracted from the Earth as fossil fuels and then is returned to the Earth as CO ₂.

How does CCS work?

Today, CCS projects are storing over 30 million tons of CO ₂ every year, which is about the amount of CO ₂ emissions created by 6.5 million passenger cars. Capture generally takes place at large stationary sources of CO ₂, like power plants or industrial plants that make cement, steel, and chemicals. Most current carbon capture projects use a liquid to chemically remove the CO ₂ before it goes out the smokestack, but several new types of capture processes are under development. The captured CO ₂ gas is then compressed so it becomes liquid-like and transported to a storage site, generally through a pipeline. Ship transport is more expensive than using pipelines, but it is being considered in both Europe and Japan. Once at the storage site, the CO ₂ is pumped more than 2,500 feet down wells into geological formations like used-up oil and gas reservoirs, as well as formations that contain unusable, salty water.

Using the CO2

CCS is sometimes referred to as CCUS, where the "U" stands for utilization. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is the major use of CO ₂ today. EOR is where CO ₂ is injected into active oil reservoirs in order to recover more oil. Other possible uses of CO ₂ include making chemicals or fuels, but they require large amounts of carbon-free energy, making the costs too high to be competitive today. For large-scale implementation of CCS, utilization is projected to use less than 10% of the captured CO ₂.
Utilization
We emit so much CO ₂ into the atmosphere that, if carbon capture is going to play any significant part in the fight against climate change, we will have to store most of the captured CO ₂ underground. But "utilization"-selling the CO ₂ as a valuable product-could help create markets for carbon capture, and make it cheaper for companies to invest in capturing their CO ₂ emissions.

The main use for CO₂ today is enhanced oil recovery: pumping CO ₂ into oil wells to help flush out hard-to-extract oil. Pure CO ₂ is also used in greenhouses to grow plants. Most CO ₂ used for these purposes today is extracted from the earth, but captured CO ₂ works just as well.

CO₂ could also be made into useful products. Companies and labs are working on turning CO ₂ into plastics, building materials like cement and concrete, fuels, futuristic materials like carbon fibers and graphene, and even household products like baking soda, bleach, antifreeze, inks and paints. Some of these products are already being sold, but none in very large amounts.

Or we could use the CO₂ to grow algae or bacteria. This can then be the basis for making biofuels, fertilizers, or animal feed.

Capturing CO₂ from the air

There has also been considerable interest recently in using CCS technologies to remove CO ₂ from the atmosphere. One option is bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), where biomass (like wood or grasses) removes CO ₂ from the air through photosynthesis. The biomass is then harvested and burned in a power plant to produce energy, with the CO ₂ being captured and stored. This creates what is called "negative emissions" because it takes CO ₂ from the atmosphere and stores it. Another negative emission option is called direct air capture (DAC), where CO ₂ is removed from the air using a chemical process. However, the concentration of CO ₂ in the air is about 300 times less than in the smokestacks of power plants or industrial plants, making it much less efficient to capture. Because of this, DAC is quite expensive today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) refers to a collection of technologies that can combat climate change by reducing carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions. The idea behind CCS is to capture the CO 2 generated by burning fossil fuels before it is released to the atmosphere.