Scientists ‘blown away’ seeing bleached corals fully recover

We found almost by accident that a healthy coral can help a bleached coral recover. Bleached corals called bleached because it's starving and heat stressed. In the lab we had some bleached corals and some not bleached corals. The healthy ones had fallen over and just hit the bleached one. We were blown away to see the healthy coral actually sending over the beneficial algae, recovering the bleached coral almost in front of her eyes. We found complete recovery in four to eight weeks. The next steps, how can we take these ideas of recovering bleached corals, with the help of healthy corals, to test it out in the field. People have used the bleaching as one of the primary signatures that climate change is really affecting ecosystems. So to see the remarkable potential in recovery, almost in front of our eyes, was quite exciting and really hopeful. So you know what's especially wild about this is that it seems that this only works for corals that are genetically related So when they put corals of different genetic backgrounds together, the corals rejected each other.