Climate Solutions

Giving ‘Mother Nature a little bit of a boost’ on the Great Barrier Reef

Underwater gardens, where coral fragments are grown, are among the efforts to help protect reefs from climate change

By
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November 22, 2022 at 12:30 a.m. EST
A school of fish swim through a break in the coral along Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Bleaching events caused by warming seas have done significant damage to the reef. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
6 min

The world off Australia’s northeast coast is magical yet besieged, a place of stunning colors in good times but ghostly white in bad ones. The bad have happened repeatedly in recent years as warming seas tied to climate change have bleached the vast coral ecosystem below.

But through a symbiotic collaboration between five tourism companies and marine scientists at the University of Technology Sydney, “coral gardening” in underwater nurseries is trying to help preserve the country’s famed Great Barrier Reef.