The biodiversity in West Africa in general is completely underrated. I mean, Darwin solidified his trajectory in life a few short days after the Beagle anchored off of Cape Verde (a place he initially detested then fell in love with).
I'm hoping that Cape Verde's World Cup success story translates to more eye balls on stories like this (with the mere mention of the country landing it in search results). Which means more attention, money and research to West Africa's relatively fragile but diverse ecosystem.
I work with Hybrid Reefs out of Scripps in San Diego. Daniel is an amazing dude, Moore fellow, and prolific inventor. If you can help, there’s contact info on the website. https://www.hybridreefs.com/
Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co
Reefstarter was backed by my friends at SOSV. They design coastal barriers. Great team. East coast for any of you Floridians. https://www.reefstarter.net/
There’s more but there’s a few off the top.
In general the US is primarily focused on erosion control since the beaches are disappearing. Coral is more an afterthought especially with the gutting of all our science. Australia is really leading the way here with AIMS and Saudi has KAUST. Big ups to the Paul Allen Foundation though, they gave Scripps $10M a few years back.
Fun stat to end with: coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value. They get less than $1B a year to ensure they stick around. We’re gonna change that.
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.
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.
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 ;-)
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.
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.
> Zinzindohoué agrees: “We don’t need to wait for others to come to our country to show us what is under our sea. We are the ones who must take responsibility.
And for those commenting about risk from tourism, this is mesophotic coral at 175 feet. It’s out of range of recreational scuba much less shallow-reef snorkelers. Only technical divers can reach this reef. That’s why it hadn’t even been explored for all this time.
vaguely related I read a fascinating story the other day about basically garbage dumping of leftover oyster/clam shells being used to re-seed a marine ecosystem off the Florida Keys
And to be clear, in GP's link, living oysters do show up, but they weren't put there deliberately (the shells and every other development provided the larvae with places to grow and establish themselves). The NY project started with oyster larvae placed on discarded shells to deliberately create the new environment with an oyster population.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Very few people travel to visit the Amazon especially in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. In the absence of tourist money these amazing ecosystems are being turned into agriculture and logged. In the protected areas supported by eco tourism the sound of the insects is deafening. But a few miles away in the banana plantations the area is completely silent. Even on “organic” banana plantations every insect is killed.
I walk an old logging trail near my house. 5 years or so ago I was walking and came across a lady slipper. Then another and another. I stopped counting at around 100. I've never seen so many in one place. It was incredible. I stopped taking people there when they've bloomed to help preserve them. It's a free and public place, but on a lightly travelled road so it doesn't actually get much traffic. Anyone that takes that walk at the right time of year will see them, but I've no interest in helping the inevitable happen if word gets out.
You don't even need to actively censor it; it's human nature to not only solely pay attention to bad news, but also to amplify it. It's generally true for all mammals, but they scale of things we're conscious of is orders of magnitude larger than any other mammal species.
Not in developing countries. Especially not when in the commons (e.g. territorial waters). Awareness + western tourism is often the only way these things get protected.
I'm hoping that Cape Verde's World Cup success story translates to more eye balls on stories like this (with the mere mention of the country landing it in search results). Which means more attention, money and research to West Africa's relatively fragile but diverse ecosystem.
Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co
https://coral.org is a 501c3. One of my friends is on the board.
Other fun stuff.
Mars runs one of the most prolific programs: https://www.buildingcoral.com/
Reefstarter was backed by my friends at SOSV. They design coastal barriers. Great team. East coast for any of you Floridians. https://www.reefstarter.net/
There’s more but there’s a few off the top.
In general the US is primarily focused on erosion control since the beaches are disappearing. Coral is more an afterthought especially with the gutting of all our science. Australia is really leading the way here with AIMS and Saudi has KAUST. Big ups to the Paul Allen Foundation though, they gave Scripps $10M a few years back.
Fun stat to end with: coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value. They get less than $1B a year to ensure they stick around. We’re gonna change that.
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.
And for those commenting about risk from tourism, this is mesophotic coral at 175 feet. It’s out of range of recreational scuba much less shallow-reef snorkelers. Only technical divers can reach this reef. That’s why it hadn’t even been explored for all this time.
* https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/florida-dumped-h...
And to be clear, in GP's link, living oysters do show up, but they weren't put there deliberately (the shells and every other development provided the larvae with places to grow and establish themselves). The NY project started with oyster larvae placed on discarded shells to deliberately create the new environment with an oyster population.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Here's a link from the USDA Forest Service:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/cyprip...
try botany:
Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CBOpT2-NRvoc2ecFMDCsA
Coral bleaching seems too actually be a sign of prosperity, not suffering.
Bleaching happens when the symbiosis breaks down due to elevated temps. That is due to suffering and causes suffering.
I'm aware that lots of people can be destructive, but there's a balance.
Some dermatologists have noted that sunscreen is little used in Africa. [1]
I’m not saying that is the only explanation for the reef’s preservation, but it’s likely a significant contributing factor.
[1] https://theconversation.com/sunscreen-wouldnt-have-saved-bob...