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(music)
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- People think it's so alien,
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but this is stuff has been around
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for hundreds and thousands of years.
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- Right. It
definitely feels alien though!
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(dynamic electronic music)
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Coral are everywhere
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on the windward side of Oahu, Hawaii.
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Their reefs dot the turquoise
waters of Kaneohe Bay,
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where the Hawai‘i Institute
of Marine Biology's
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Gates Coral Lab is stationed,
right on Coconut Island.
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On a recent cool summer
night, beneath a new moon,
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researchers were busy
capturing little coral babies.
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They want to learn more about
these mysterious creatures
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in hopes of finding the secret to breeding
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a sort of super coral that will survive
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the drastically changing climate.
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Predictions from one study
suggest nearly all coral reefs
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will be threatened by 2050
due to climate change.
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Warming waters can cause coral to bleach.
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This means that the coral expels
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all of its algae and turns white.
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Eventually, the coral can die.
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Scientists at the Gates Coral
Lab are studying coral species
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that have survived bleaching
beside other dying colonies
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in an effort to create super coral.
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Kira Hughes is the manager for the
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Coral Assisted Evolution project.
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She mostly investigates
how to breed super coral.
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- That's our big question,
is why would one bleach
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right next to one that didn't bleach?
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So what we're doing is identifying those
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more resilient colonies,
the ones that don't bleach,
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and then trying to reproduce those
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or condition those further
to create super corals.
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So we're doing human assisted evolution,
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which just means that we're
trying to speed up the process.
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Warming events are coming too frequently
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and lasting for too long for
them to be able to survive.
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For selective breeding,
we're actually identifying
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ones that are already more resilient—
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ones that did not bleach
previously—and mating those.
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And then we're hoping that their offspring
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will be even stronger than they are.
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- Situated in
the middle of Kaneohe Bay,
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the lab is the perfect place to dive
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into the science of coral.
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Crawford Drury is a postdoctoral researcher
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at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology.
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He looks for genetic markers that could be
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behind the resilient coral.
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- During a bleaching event, we can go out
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and tag a bunch of corals.
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We're already here. We can watch
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what's happening and monitor it.
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Kaneohe Bay is a really special place
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in the context of resistant corals.
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So having that as a resource to study
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and branch off from is
a great opportunity.
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- The bay is
rich with tough coral,
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and researchers wonder if its history
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has contributed to the
resilience of the creatures.
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The bay's been through a lot:
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runoff, pollution, invasive algae.
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After all that bad luck, perhaps only
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the strongest coral have survived.
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- So we're taking advantage of the fact
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that we already have these stress-
resistant corals in the bay
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and trying to see what's going to happen
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as we project this into the future,
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as we reach another generation
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that is having to deal with
perhaps even worse conditions.
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Because they're right next to each other,
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we think that all of the
other environmental variables
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that go into kind of
dictating coral health
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are probably the same.
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So that's a really strong indicator
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that the difference is
inside the coral animal.
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- As rough and
rocky as coral's exterior
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might seem, they're actually
quite delicate organisms.
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Their survival relies
on a fine dance between
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the different creatures
that make up the coral.
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Polyps and a form of algae
live inside the rocky exterior
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of the Montipora Capitata coral.
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The algae share a symbiotic
relationship with the coral
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by producing the energy
it needs to survive.
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If the coral is stressed by warming,
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it will expel the algae
and is left bleached.
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This makes the coral vulnerable,
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as the animal has lost
a major food source.
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The coral might die,
though not immediately.
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Scientists use sophisticated microscopes
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to observe this process with precision.
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Ariana Huffmyer is a PhD
candidate with the institute,
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where much of her work involves
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this advanced laser microscope.
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- So one of the things that
we can do with this microscope
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is put a coral underneath the scope
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and raise the temperature
on the scope itself,
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and we can simulate a bleaching event
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and watch how they respond.
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So this is a healthy
Montipora here on the right.
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You can see all the symbionts
in red, and the coral tissue
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is really bright and healthy.
And then over here on the left,
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you can see that most of the symbionts–
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there are still a few left–
but most of the symbionts
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are missing from that tissue.
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- It's just dark.
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- Exactly.
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So, you can't understand a coral reef
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without understanding
individual coral colonies,
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and you can't really
understand how a coral colony
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is behaving unless you
look at the individual
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animals that make up that colony.
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So to understand how an entire
reef, all across Hawaii
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or across the Great Barrier
Reef, is responding to stress,
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we have to start at the level
of the animal themselves.
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- A Montipora Capitata
coral is a hermaphrodite.
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It begins its life by popping out of
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a wiggling polyp's mouth in the form
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of a small bundle,
packed with sperm and egg.
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The bundle eventually breaks
to activate fertilization.
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From there, a larvae forms,
resembling a swimming maggot.
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This larvae swims around, until it matures.
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It finds a place to settle,
squish down, and metamorphosize
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into a new polyp that forms the
rocky exterior of the coral.
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After hundreds of years of this
cycle, coral form colonies.
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In thousands of years,
colonies become reefs.
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But it's not just about
understanding a reef,
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or a colony, or a coral, or
even individual polyps.
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Breeding super coral is
also about understanding
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the youngest of corals and what influences
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the way they become majestic reefs.
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What factors affect how they
grow, mature, and survive?
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That's why this lab is gathering coral egg
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and sperm by the boatload.
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In order to understand
what's going on with coral,
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you need thousands of coral samples.
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And this lab is up for the task.
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Even if it means sleepless
nights under dark skies.
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- This project is really
looking at whether it's possible
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to scale up this type
of sexual reproduction
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and propagation of corals
through sexual reproduction.
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So we've gathered a ton
of bundles from the field,
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more than we would do for
a normal lab experiment,
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and we're trying to rear them
in these much larger tanks,
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so that we can get a
higher number of embryos.
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And then we'll settle all
of those, once they develop,
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into swimming larvae, and then from there,
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practice some rearing techniques to see
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if we can get them to survive
for a longer period of time,
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after they've been settled.
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- If climate change
continues on its current path,
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the world's coral reefs
will all probably die off.
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If they're going to be saved,
the innovative research
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done on Coconut Island could
be part of the solution.
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The future might be uncertain,
but for the tireless
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researchers at the Gates Lab,
the fight's not over yet.