School of Life Sciences

Dr Emma Camp, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences

Duration 3min 13sec

The Great Barrier Reef has been declining in live coral since the 1980s, but we're seeing an increased frequency in intensity with the rate of coral loss. So we're seeing less corals on the reef, less diversity, and we're also seeing less ability of the corals to reproduce. So collectively, this leaves a dire threat for the Great Barrier Reef into the future.

Knowing the immense stress that corals have to contend with in the future, as scientists, we have to think what can we do to support their survival? And for me, it was asking, are there corals that already live in naturally hostile conditions so warm, acidic, low oxygen environments, the environments that we're predicting the ocean to have in the future.

And some car was already survived that naturally because of an environment that exists that has those conditions. So I set off to look at different environments, measure the conditions and actually found that mangrove lagoons, which are common habitats adjacent to coral reefs, have hot, acidic and low oxygen conditions. But they also have thriving coral communities. This was really interesting because how are these corals surviving under conditions more extreme than we're predicting in the year 2100, when we're seeing coral reefs die from lesser stressors. Finding these corals living within these extreme mangrove environments has been a breakthrough, because it gives us hope that some corals have the capacity to tolerate stress.

We are looking at the genetics of the corals to try and understand which genes upgrade related at certain times, and how that contributes tolerance to the coral. We also looking at things like the lipids and the metabolites of the coral, to see if there are specific indicators of stress or indicators of tolerance that we can try to target as biomarkers for resilience.

We're also looking at developing technology. So how can we improve our phenotyping capacity to make it high throughput but also cheaper so that local communities can access this technology. Because ultimately that's the goal that we can transfer that knowledge to people on the ground making a difference. Being on the reef and seeing a mass bleaching event first hand is devastating.

You know, we spend our careers trying to work to conserve reefs, we know these threats are real. We know that it's happening but to see that and with corals, when they bleach, it's really in your face. You know, this colorful system that's normally brightly colored. Lots of different life going on then turn white is really confronting but it's also very frustrating because we know what the problems are.

We need to address climate change. We need to ensure that we're reducing the stresses on our reefs, but then also stepping back and feeling motivated because we haven't lost all of our reefs yet. We know reefs can be resilient, and that's ultimately what motivates me to try and ensure that we have reefs for future generations.