Inside Australia's National Sea Simulator, scientists are cross-breeding coral species and using CRISPR to genetically engineer heat-resistant corals to withstand warming reefs worldwide.

Through coral IVF, researchers have collected coral eggs and sperm from healthy reefs, grown baby corals in lab pools, and then released them to help repopulate damaged or lost reefs.

Synthetic pheromones may protect coral reefs by attracting their predators

Researchers in Australia and Japan have developed these nontoxic chemicals to attract crown-of-thorns starfish, which consume corals that make up the Great Barrier Reef. As of 2026, synthetic pheromones have been shown to be effective in lab trials, and future field trials will attempt to lure starfish into areas for mass removal.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

As immobile animals, corals and the organisms that live on them have evolved a suite of chemical compounds to prevent disease and ward off predators they cannot outrun.

From 2023 to 2025, coral reefs experienced their fourth global bleaching event and the largest such event through 2025.

Can coral live in cold water?

Dive deep beyond the sunlit coral reefs, and you'll discover a world of deep-sea corals. This article from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explores the ecosystems of deep-sea corals found way below the water's surface....

Advances in agriculture are being powered by CRISPR to boost carbon capture

Researchers are using CRISPR to test thousands of plant gene edits, aiming to speed up breeding and maximize carbon retention in soil. By engineering drought tolerance, they also aim to increase crop yields and expand the environments where crops can grow.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.

As of 2025, scientists at B2 study the heat tolerance of cacao and coffee trees

The research at Biosphere 2 has led to the development of low-cost plant monitors, which can be provided to farmers worldwide to enable more precise monitoring of crops. Geodesic domes built within the ocean biome are used to investigate the best architectural structures for repopulating degraded reefs.

The world's largest coral, as seen from space

The world’s largest individual coral colony—measuring over 100 feet wide and 100 feet long—was discovered in the Solomon Islands. This coral is so large it can be seen from space, and is estimated to be between 300 and 500 years old. The coral's size and health provide hope amidst a global coral bleaching crisis, wherein three-quarters of coral reefs have experienced significant bleaching in recent decades. See the photos from space and learn more here.

Climate change threatens coral reefs by disrupting the symbiotic relationship between corals and algae due to rising ocean temperatures.

Take an interactive tour through Australia's Great Barrier Reef, featuring spherical panoramas of marine wildlife, including manta rays, loggerhead turtles, and bottlenose dolphins.

De-extinction techniques create new species from existing organisms

Rather than recovering a genetic sample of a lost species and editing it with that of living creature—as has been depicted in science fiction—scientists begin with living cells from close genetic relatives and use tools like CRISPR to swap in extinct versions of specific traits to create new hybrid species.

During coral bleaching, corals sacrifice their food source and expel colorful microorganisms to protect themselves, a phenomenon that resembles an organism's immune system attacking itself.

Some corals absorb harmful ultraviolet radiation and re-emit it as visible light, thereby protecting symbiotic algae within their tissues and providing them with energy for photosynthesis.

Watch a time-lapse of staghorn coral polyps—a type of hard coral—over several weeks in an aquarium, slowly forming the foundational component of a coral reef.

Research has found that when their symbiotic algae are not producing oxygen via photosynthesis, corals twirl hairlike structures to circulate water and draw oxygen into their outer tissues.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Scientists have demonstrated IVF to help critically endangered rhinos

Scientists have used the technique to create embryos from eggs harvested from captive southern white rhinos and implanted into a southern white rhino. They hope to use this proof of concept to eventually use IVF to revive the population of northern white rhinos, which are extinct in the wild and have no living males left, using a precious reserve of frozen embryos and a surrogate southern white rhino mother.

Coral reefs get their colors from zooxanthellae—photosynthetic algae that line corals' digestive tracts and provide them with sugars in exchange for a home within this protective tissue.

While humans have been genetically modifying plants for millennia by selectively breeding organisms with certain traits, gene-editing tools like CRISPR have further enhanced plants, conferring resistance to drought, pests, and diseases.

Deep water corals—located throughout the world's ocean basins at depths beyond 200 meters (660 feet)—slowly build small coral gardens in the dark with the help of underwater worms.

Scientists have found that the Great Barrier Reef's microbiome includes an estimated 362,802 distinct viruses and 876 distinct bacterial and archaeal species—584 of which had never been documented before 2026.

Researchers are breeding genetically modified mosquitoes to be malaria-resistant.

View a collection of glass sculptures of corals threatened by fishing and deep-sea mining.

The first coral reefs formed hundreds of millions of years ago from the carbonate skeletons deposited by hard corals.

Take a 3D underwater trip near the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, comprising more than 900 islands and almost 3,000 individual reefs. This video lets you tag along with divers as they explore the reef off the southern coast of Lady Elliot Island in full 3D (use the direction buttons in the upper left of the video, or your keypad).

About 76% of global coral species are found in the Coral Triangle—a region spanning the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste.

An analysis of fossilized reefs from northern Africa and Germany suggests that shallow water corals and photosynthetic algae formed the mutualistic partnership seen today between 419 and 359 million years ago.

Synthetic biology can prevent extinction by creating create disease-resilient plants and animals

Through gene editing and the deployment of artificial cells, scientists can leverage learnings from the genetic sequencing of animals with known resistances to protect endangered species. Gene editing of certain species, such as mosquitoes, can also reduce their ability to spread diseases like malaria between humans.

Watch a diving expedition through the world's longest coral colony, which spans more than a football field and whose exact location is kept secret for its protection.

Over 1 million fish, marine mammals, and invertebrate species depend on coral reefs for habitats, camouflage, and food.

Some invasive species' populations have been controlled by turning them into cash crops that can be harvested and sold to produce useful materials.

Explore coral reefs in Google's "street view"

Expanding its mission to map the world, Google Maps partnered with The Catlin Seaview Survey to introduce the first-ever underwater panoramas, making oceanic marvels like the Great Barrier Reef accessible to everyone. With Google Maps, the public...

Explore a map of coral reefs around the world and the extent of coral bleaching.

Climate resilience strategies, which help communities mitigate the effects of climate change, include painting roofs white, building clam gardens, harvesting fog, and feeding cows seaweed.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Studying the circadian clock of a tiny swimming polar creature may help forecast polar ecosystem health

A 2025 study found that Antarctic krill, a food chain staple in the Southern Ocean, have an internal biological clock that helps regulate its swimming patterns and helps the tiny shrimp-like animals adapt to daily and seasonal environmental changes. Better understanding of how the clock and light cues interact may help scientists understand how well the species will respond to pronounced climate change in the polar region.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that US commercial and recreational fisheries valued at $200M depend on coral reefs, which provide up to $1.8B in flood protection by absorbing 97% of wave energy.

CRISPR allows scientists to cut out and replace faulty or unwanted DNA, which can help treat genetic disorders, such as sickle cell disease, and create genetically modified organisms, such as allergen-free foods.

While invasive species typically harm ecosystems by outcompeting native organisms for resources, some provide unexpected benefits, including new shelters, nesting habitats, and reduced environmental heat stress.

Malaria mosquitoes in a lab were wiped out using CRISPR

Scientists at Imperial College London disabled a gene in female Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes to make them infertile and propagated the infertility mutation at unnaturally high rates using a gene drive. The entire population collapsed within a dozen generations, showing promise for subsequent with mosquitoes in mimicked tropical environments.

A simple infographic explaining how coral bleaching works

When corals are stressed by changes in conditions such as temperature, light, or nutrients, they expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing them to turn completely white.

CRISPR is a gene-editing tool that lets scientists cut out and replace damaged DNA.

Restoring vision in impaired patients via CRISPR

Since CRISPR was revealed as a gene editing tool in 2012, it has been on an accelerated track to real-world applications. Among other clinical demonstrations, doctors have now injected a CRISPR treatment directly into eye cells, helping vision-impaired patients see shapes and colors again.

Coral reefs are built by thousands of coral polyps—tiny animals whose mouths both consume food and expel waste.

How MIT researchers have used genetic mutations to improve photosynthesis efficiency

Recognizing that RuBisCO—a protein that binds carbon dioxide to other compounds to produce the building blocks of organic molecules—often mistakenly binds oxygen, scientists performed directed evolution experiments to modify the geometry of a bacterial version of the protein to cause it to preferentially interact with carbon dioxide over oxygen.

A Death Valley shrub optimizes its cells' organelles to photosynthesize in extreme heat

Examining the cellular structure of the plant under heat, scientists observed the formation of novel, cup-shaped chloroplasts and mitochondrial relocation, which shifted the plant's optimal photosynthesis temperature to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) as it tripled in mass over 10 days. Engineering these mechanisms in crops may help optimize them for hotter environments.

The ocean's ability to store carbon long-term is being hindered by marine heatwaves

More than 4,000 robotic floats with biogeochemical data sensors, including oxygen, pH, nitrate, suspended particles, chlorophyll, temperature, and conductivity, have been deployed as part of the Global Ocean Biogeochemical Array. They have identified changes to ecosystem structure affecting the ocean's ability to transport carbon from surface waters into the deep.