EcoZone/Green Florida

Coral Reef Study At UM Could Save World's Reefs

KEY BISCAYNE (CBS4) ― It can be likened to a coral reef hospital – an outdoor laboratory at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School in Key Biscayne, where a pioneering scientist, Dr. Andrew Baker, is trying to keep corals alive and in good health. In fact, it's in the hands and head of Dr. Baker that the fate of the world's coral reefs may lie, in their fight to survive global warming.

"My feeling is if we don't attempt anything, then we're so surely doomed," Baker told the CBS4 I-Team's Chief Investigator Michele Gillen. "What we're trying to do is get the live tissue to grow over the whole colony again."

Baker discovered that corals that have survived some of the ocean's hottest temperatures contain a unique algae.

"We'll take [a sick coral], actually inject or introduce the algae to these corals, and then watch under a microscope to see what happens to these algae. Do they get spat out again or do they get taken up and actually form associations with this coral that help it survive climate change?" Baker said.

"If we end up with seaweed-dominated reefs rather than Coral-dominated reefs, that physical structure, that barrier that breaks waves, is gone," he said.

It's a first-of-its-kind experiment driven by one man's passion.

"I've had to come to terms, I suppose, with my own demons. Is this a good idea? Does it sound foolish? But I think the thing that pushed me over the edge was that we are in crisis mode. We're losing corals left, right and center. Unless we do something very fast, it's going to be a moot point whether or not we should have tried something because there aren't going to be any corals left to do it with.

Within weeks, under the shroud of darkness, the actual laboratory experiment of injecting the corals with perhaps lifesaving algae will take place.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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