Coral reefs cover 1% of the ocean, but are home to 25% of marine life. Like Puerto Rico's tropical rain forest, the reefs are also teeming with life and biodiversity.

Step inside the underwater world of coral and read about the threats facing it below.

Coral Reefs

Get Involved!

Want to help? Join a group near you to clean up a beach, learn more about this problem, or maybe suggest an idea of your own! Check out this list of organization and ways you can help and get connected within the community.

Video by Savannah Allen

Coral Bleaching

Snorkel along the coasts of Puerto Rico and you'll find a whole world of coral and fish that live in it. And you'll see white.

This phenomena is called coral bleaching, and it’s endangering coral reefs globally. Due to the growing trend of coral bleaching, there has been an influx of innovative coral conservation. One example of this is SECORE, a conservation organization dedicated to the protection and restoration of coral reefs.

“There is a research interest in the proactive approach of enhancing corals resilience to these changes,” Miller said. “However, for now, we use the baseline approach of giving them the best chance to adapt naturally in their own process.”

Although coral reef bleaching has increased for the last 50 years, conservation programs, research and innovation has bloomed along with it.

“We know how to fix climate change and we know how to solve this issue,” Miller said. “We just need to do it.”

SECORE partners with researchers, coastal locals and aquariums including the Scott Aquarium at the Omaha Zoo. It educates on protecting coral reefs while researching and testing new techniques to grow and reestablish coral.

For many visitors of the aquarium, coral is just the backdrop for the fish. However, coral reefs are arguably one of the most important ecosystems for fish and humans. They cover less than 1 percent of the ocean, but support 25 percent of all marine life.

“People always say that coral reefs are the marine equivalent of a tropical rainforest,” said Troy Solberg, the volunteer coordinator at the Omaha Zoo. “But they have even more biodiversity.”

Not only does coral provide a necessary ecosystem for fish populations, but it also provides services to humans.Coral reefs provide fisheries $5.7 billion annually. In local coastal

Relatively new research shows that coral reefs also serve as security to coastal land. As a large mass, reefs protect against hurricanes and other natural disasters. Studies show that coastal protections by reefs provides $9 billion in avoided damages annually.

“Coral is critical for many reasons,” Solberg said. “Many people come into the aquarium and they think it’s just a rock or plant.”

Coral is actually a stationary marine invertebrate that typically lives in a colony of tiny, identical polyps. Polyps resemble a small sac. Each polyp creates a small exoskeleton that once they join together hundreds strong, make coral reefs.

When polyps die, the next generation can settle on top of their predecessors. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, coral reefs can take 10,000 years to form, making them living history.

Coral polyps use energy from algae that lives within their skeleton. The algae gets energy through photosynthesis which it “shares” with the coral. This is called a symbiotic relationship.

Economically, coral reefs bring $9.6 billion in tourism every year. This doesn’t take into account the indirect ecotourism that it causes.

communities, coral reefs offer the fish that serves as the primary food source.

Brian Beck with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believes that collaboration is the key to conservation.

The NOAA is a scientific agency within the government that focuses on the conditions of the ocean and atmosphere. One component of it is its coral conservation program. They have partnerships with governments, academics and nonprofits to save coral.

“We make sure we are always working together towards the same goal,” Beck said. “It seems sort of common sense, but if there’s a slight deviation, we won’t make as much progress.

The NOAA has a coral reef monitoring system which watches global sea temperatures and through algorithms, can give warnings when there’s a high risk of a bleaching event. They also work to reduce local stressors like pollution.

They then combine gametes from different site to increase genetic diversity. If offspring are more genetically diverse, they are more likely to survive and evolve.

“We know from conservation biology that when you have a very rapidly changing environment, the best hope for an organism to adapt it to have a high level of genetic diversity,” Miller said.

There’s then four to eight days of microscopic baby coral swimming around in water.

“It takes a lot of work and a lot of babysitting,” Miller said.

Then comes the most important decision: where to settle. Once coral settles, it does not move from that spot for the rest of its life.

Researchers designed small ceramic, tiles called substrates for the coral to land on until they can resettle them into the ocean.

“After those substrates, we put them back into the big bad world,” said Miller. “But we’ve improved their survival-ship.

At the Omaha Aquarium, researchers help collect the gametes and bring them behind the scenes to raise them. Tim Morrissey gets to dive for the coral and works in the Omaha Zoo to raise them.

“It took a long time to learn how to raise them in the lab,” Morrissey said. “Now we can apply it in the field.”

SECORE also puts much emphasis on educational outreach. It holds workshops in the communities near the coral to teach locals about what they do, and help them become citizen scientists. This means they can collect data on spawning times of coral to assist with research.

“It’s a matter of helping people understand that this issue is solvable and we just need the will to make changes,” Miller said.

Another part of SECORE’s outreach is through zoos and aquariums. Eight zoos and aquariums all over the world help educate and work with this organization.

“We have cool partnerships and roots in zoos and aquariums,” Miller said. “It’s a network with so much collective experience and knowledge.

However, since the ‘80s, this relationship has begun to deteriorate.

Climate change causes the ocean temperatures to raise while the sensitive coral is not able to adapt quick enough. Human disturbance like overfishing and pollution can stress coral. All of this causes coral to reject the algae inside of it and turn white.

“Without the algae supplying most of its food,” Solberg said. “The coral will slowly starve to death.”

Since the 1970s, the central Caribbean has seen an 80 percent decline in coral cover. Over the last 50 years, scientists says that 50 percent of all coral reefs died.

This is where SECORE comes in. Founded in 2002, SECORE (SExual COral REproduction) developed new techniques to reproduce, out-plant and monitor coral.

Through research started in the early ‘80s, scientists are able to accurately predict when coral will spawn within a few hours. They go diving at night, place little tents over a colony of gametes and bring them back to their lab.

“Our approach is to come along and sort of assist with these steps that usually have to happen by chance,” said Margaret Miller, the research director at SECORE.

“Obviously, one country can’t do everything to save coral,” Beck said. “It won’t make a difference.”

Instead, Beck has seen a trend in the growing number of coral conservation programs like SECORE. He’s also noticed a growth in coral restorations and reproduction.

Beck said that in the future, some researchers are looking for corals that are more resistant to higher ocean temperatures and breeding those to get the most resistant coral. They call them “stress hardening coral”.

“It’s like GMOs in food but instead, it’s coral,” Beck said.

Miller with SECORE said that researchers with their program have looked into selective breeding in the future. However, they won’t try it until they are sure of the genetic repercussions.