Transcript of Caring for Coral — What Hawai‘iʻs Reefs Are Really Saying | HIKI NŌ - PBS HAWAIʻI

[Music] how can we add a little bit of speed to the adaptation or evolution of species so they can adapt to it as [Music] well in a world where temperatures are rising at an alarming rate coral reefs are facing a critical threat with 30 to 50% of coral reefs already lost due to climate change the urgency to act has never been greater data shows that without significant action 90% of the world's coral reefs will be threatened by 20150 we interviewed Justin umholtz who's an educator at the mup papa Discovery Center in downtown Hilo to find more about coral bleaching and the damage is doing to the environment coral reefs one are a huge barrier to storms so they're protecting our shorelines from big storm surge they're like the center of the ecosystem here so they're um they're that source of of food of shelter nutrients cycling uh without them we wouldn't have a lot of the Nearshore that we do it's the coral reef that even is building the islands out there it's this incredibly amazing place it's full of abundance Coral you know reacts to a lot of different stressors but ocean temperature thermal stress is a huge one climate change is really the the Big Driver as we see ocean temperatures Spike beyond what corals are used to the symbiotic microalgae that's in their tissues that gives them these beautiful colors gets expelled and so they go through a process of what's called bleaching they lose that algae and unfortunately they lose a lot of the food energy that they get climate change is driving more frequent kind of heat stress events in the ocean and causing bleaching more frequently and even sometimes if it stays hot long enough just straight up mortality death of the coral polyps so what can we do here locally how can we add a little bit of speed to the adaptation or evolution of species so they can adapt to it as well Coral farming is one of the current terms that we're talking about corals that are much more resilient on that can handle the heat stress and then figuring out what are the best ways to grow them out in aquaculture setting and then ways to reintroduce them to the reef so that they have a high success in in surviving and establishing new reef take corals that are doing the best and help them grow out and spread fastest and then add them back into the coral reef so that we have much more kind of genetically resilient corals regardless of what we do at this point we're going to see that that heat stress last for a while because even if we make dramatic changes the ocean is such a buffer now that it's showing those heat stresses it's just going to take longer for it to change again here in Hawaii our coil reath have been more resilient compared to other areas due to limited rainfall and fresh water replenishment into our soils and oceans this is Sophia lbell from K high school for heo on PBS Hawaii [Music] w