Coral Bleaching Awareness Month – From Crisis to Action
Over the past month, we’ve explored the science behind coral bleaching, the impact and the increasing scale, severity and frequency of global coral bleaching events (GCBEs). This week, we shift our focus towards action.
Around the world, dedicated individuals, communities and scientists are working tirelessly to protect and restore coral reefs. You can help by supporting the incredible efforts already underway. Change is still possible, and every action matters.
What YOU can do
Reduce your carbon footprint
Why – Cutting carbon emissions reduces the buildup of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane in our atmosphere. These gases trap heat through the enhanced greenhouse effect, driving climate change and ocean warming.
How – Opt for sustainable transport (walking, cycling, public transport), conserve energy at home, advocate for renewable energy and adopt a climate-conscious diet by reducing meat consumption.
Engage with and support marine conservation and restoration projects
Why – Supporting ongoing coral conservation, restoration and monitoring efforts builds awareness and creates a greater global community.
How – Join or support reef restoration or citizen science projects, beach clean-ups, or reef monitoring programmes (especially those that share their research openly). Share posts, talk about coral bleaching and support NGOs or local community-based organisations doing coral restoration work.
Support reef-friendly products
Why – Various chemical products enter the ocean via wastewater. Chemicals in sunscreens and cosmetics can directly impact coral reefs from snorkellers or divers. Research has shown that some of these chemicals (e.g. octinoxate and oxybenzone) are toxic to corals – increasing their bleaching susceptibility, causing DNA damage, and growth deformities (Downs et al., 2016)
How – Check product labels and avoid purchasing harmful products, and instead invest in reef-safe alternatives.
Reduce single-use plastics
Why – Plastics can become entangled in corals, damaging the coral and reducing light exposure. Over time, plastics break down into microplastics that introduce toxins into the environment. Together, these impacts decrease reproductive success, increase coral bleaching and disease susceptibility (Lamb et al., 2018).
How – Carry reusable bottles and bags, choose products made from sustainable materials, avoid unnecessary packaging and support plastic-free initiatives.
What POLICYMAKERS can do
Support climate action
Why – Climate action is the foundation of coral reef survival. Without global emission reductions, local coral reef conservation and restoration efforts will likely fail.
How – Advocate for greater emission reductions, renewable energy transitions and climate-resilient policies.
Reduce impacts and strengthen protection
Why – Coral reefs face mounting climate pressures. Stronger government-level interventions to reduce local stressors, such as overfishing and pollution, will give corals a better chance to recover naturally.
How – Mitigate local stressors, enforce sustainable fisheries management, expand marine protected area coverage and strengthen compliance.
Invest in coral reef restoration and research
Why – Adequate funding ensures that restoration projects can scale, innovate, and respond quickly to bleaching episodes.
How – Provide grants, support community-led initiatives, and prioritise reef restoration and conservation in national budgets
Promote environmental education and awareness
Why - Public understanding builds support for conservation and drives behavioural change.
How - Integrate environmental education into schools, fund outreach campaigns and support NGOs and citizen science programs.
What CORAL PRACTITIONERS & RESEARCHERS can do
Diversify resources
Why – With bleaching events becoming longer and more intense, mass mortality of corals is increasingly likely. Diversifying resources and spreading restoration efforts across multiple sites reduces the risk of catastrophic loss.
How – Increase and diversify restoration efforts across multiple sites, combining in-situ and ex-situ coral nurseries with varied methods to reduce the risk of catastrophic loss
Combine sexual and asexual coral propagation strategies
Why – Asexual propagation methods can quickly boost coral cover but limits genetic diversity. Sexual propagation methods are slower but supports diversity, and can be used to strengthen resilience to future stress.
How – Explore selective breeding, assisted evolution, and gamete cryopreservation.
Collaborate across disciplines
Why – Coral bleaching is a complex problem requiring integrated solutions. Collaborations between genetics, ecology, engineering and social sciences can drive innovation.
How– Build interdisciplinary partnerships. Contact Ocean Revive to explore collaborative opportunities.
Publish and share data openly
Why – Transparency in successes and failures accelerates learning and builds trust.
How – Make data open access, present both successes and failures and encourage knowledge exchange.
Global Efforts Already Underway
Across the world, individuals, communities, scientists, and conservation and restoration practitioners are pioneering solutions to help coral reefs withstand and recover from bleaching. Here are some of the most promising approaches:
Coral gardening
Asexually produced coral fragments are grown in ocean or land-based nurseries until they are strong enough to be transplanted onto degraded reefs. This boosts coral cover, stabilises sediments, and provides habitat for marine life. This method can be used to accelerate the natural recovery process and rehabilitate reef areas where coral cover has declined.
Assisted evolution & selective breeding
Scientists are experimenting with breeding corals that have shown higher tolerance to heat stress. By selecting resilient individuals for sexual reproduction, restoration projects can produce corals that have an increased likelihood of surviving future bleaching events whilst increasing the genetic diversity of the population.
Cryopreservation of coral gametes
Coral eggs and sperm are frozen and stored in biobanks to safeguard genetic diversity. This ensures that even if local populations are lost, their genetic material can be revived and reintroduced later. This method is especially important for rare or vulnerable species.
Biobanking of live coral
The biobanking of live coral involves storing live coral fragments and symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) in environmentally controlled facilities. These facilities aim to safeguard coral genetic diversity in a similar way to cryopreservation but instead act as ‘living libraries. This enables scientists to continue studying them in real-time while still protecting their material for future restoration, breeding and reintroduction.
Technology-driven monitoring & modelling
Advancements in technology are transforming coral restoration efforts. Tools such as photogrammetry, drones, satellite imagery, digital clones and AI-powered modelling allow scientists to track coral health over time, better predict and monitor future stress events and their impact and measure the success of restoration projects.
Ocean Revive’s Role
At Ocean Revive, we play an active role in coral reef preservation and restoration through:
Innovative technology
Our team has developed a smart, modular nurseries with enhanced data tracking. This enables us to monitor coral growth and health more effectively and provides us with the flexibility to adapt our systems to different environments.
Safeguarding genetic diversity
Our nurseries support both asexual and sexual propagation, boosting coral cover whilst maintaining and enhancing the genetic diversity needed for long-term resilience.
Collaborative partnerships
We work with experts from multiple disciplines to integrate diverse knowledge into developing more holistic coral restoration strategies.
Increasing awareness and ocean literacy
We translate complex marine science into accessible blogs, infographics and social media campaigns to help more people understand both the threats coral reefs face and the solutions available to protect them.
Our mission is to restore, revive and protect corals through science, creativity and collaboration.
Final Thoughts
Coral bleaching events are no longer rare occurrences – they have become more frequent and impactful because of our changing climate. We need to take action. Across the world scientists, communities and everyday ocean advocates are proving that change is possible.
By taking action, whether through personal choices, professional innovation, or policy leadership, we can help coral reefs recover and thrive.
References
Downs, C.A., Kramarsky-Winter, E., Segal, R., Fauth, J., Knutson, S., Bronstein, O., Ciner, F.R., Jeger, R., Lichtenfeld, Y., Woodley, C.M. and Pennington, P., 2016. Toxicopathological effects of the sunscreen UV filter, oxybenzone (benzophenone-3), on coral planulae and cultured primary cells and its environmental contamination in Hawaii and the US Virgin Islands. Archives of environmental contamination and toxicology, 70(2), pp.265-288.
Lamb, J.B., Willis, B.L., Fiorenza, E.A., Couch, C.S., Howard, R., Rader, D.N., True, J.D., Kelly, L.A., Ahmad, A., Jompa, J. and Harvell, C.D., 2018. Plastic waste associated with disease on coral reefs. Science, 359(6374), pp.460-462.
