Recordings of healthy fish are being transmitted to attract heat-tolerant larvae back to degraded reefs in the Maldives
using a combination of “coral IVF” and recordings of fish noises could offer a “beacon of hope” to scientists who fear the fragile ecosystem is on the brink of collapse.
The first use of the combined techniques, to repair damaged atolls in the Maldives, will be shown on the BBC One TV series, co-presented by the naturalist Steve Backshall. The hope is that the technique could be replicated on a large scale to help preserve and revitalise dying reefs. “If you breed from heat-tolerant corals that can survive heat stress in the laboratory, the larvae of those corals also have higher heat tolerance than the larvae of other corals,” said Harrison.The gametes then merge together, fertilise and form coral larvae in floating “nursery” pools, which protect them from predators and prevent them getting lost at sea. “If we don’t support the process of natural selection by focusing on the survivors, we’re going to lose everything.
To attract the larvae to settle on a degraded reef, the scientists are broadcasting recordings of fish noises that were captured near a busy, healthy reef. “We’ve done this and restocked degraded reefs with fish,” said Steve Simpson, professor of marine biology and global change at the University of Bristol.
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