[Aboutplants]

I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.

[bix6]

Here’s one successful example that only worked because of human intervention: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.h...

They can only survive short duration events. At some point the temp and time is too much and they die. The only way they come back is reintroduction.

We’ve lost over 50% of the reefs and are expected to lose 90% by 2050.

There are many amazing solutions. Some use corals more resistant to heat stress. Australia has seen some promising results with seed boxes. I know of a few other amazing solutions currently in the lab.

We have already gotten in natures way. So now we need to help nature with our technology.

[lukan]

"So now we need to help nature with our technology."

I guess the best help, would be stop getting into natures way so brutally, but since transforming the whole industry takes time and making people aware and care is even harder, some technical solutions to offset some damage is of course welcome.

[bix6]

Unless we change the incentives, people will continue strip mining everything. I do have hope though as there is a lot that can still be done.

[markdown]

Don't they just sprout in deeper (cooler) water?

[bix6]

Only the deep water corals. The photosynthesizing type that most people are familiar with need light.

[phkahler]

I recall reading that the corals can reproduce both sexually and by cloning, with most in nature using cloning. The researchers brought them back to a lab and bred a bunch of them and found a lot of offspring could thrive in the warmer more acidic water, so they wanted to reintroduce them to a reef (or maybe they had). Been a while but it was interesting. Not sure what it takes to shift away from cloning in nature, but waiting for most the reef to die off seems backwards ;-)

[bix6]

One major issue though is diversity. Many coral gardeners use fragments to clone one type over and over.

[nothercastle]

Also pests aquariums have some of the toughest pests imaginable

[bix6]

Algae is prolific!

[nothercastle]

Not just invasive algae all sorts of bugs worms and bacteria too

[bamboozled]

Homeostasis, that was probably an option for most of nature in the 1950s or something, I think the damage is too great to just leave the reefs, forrests and other habitats to "fend for themselves". Even if what you say is true from an environmental perspective, we also have to fight to protect these areas from exploitation from fisherman, mining etc.

[bix6]

Yep you’ll see most stats base off ~1950. This is when we started noticing and especially in the ensuing decades as SCUBA equipment got good.

[parineum]

Homeostasis is unnatural.

[bamboozled]

It is natural.

[bryanrasmussen]

I would suppose getting out of nature's way happens in one of two ways - infrequently because there is nothing of value in an area left to extract so people leave it alone, or infrequently because there is regulation forcing people to leave it alone.