Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

e360.yale.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#81

Post by antonvs »

bix6 wrote: post #46
xandrius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should give some names if you personally know them.

I work with Hybrid Reefs out of Scripps in San Diego. Daniel is an amazing dude, Moore fellow, and prolific inventor. If you can help, there’s contact info on the website. https://www.hybridreefs.com/ Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co https://coral.org is a 501c3. One of my friends is on the board. Other fun st…

> coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value.

Chatgpt’s assessment of this claim: “not well supported by the mainstream literature and is likely misleading.”

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#82

Post by markdown »

bix6 wrote: post #34
Aboutplants wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.

Here’s one successful example that only worked because of human intervention: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.h... They can only survive short duration events. At some point the temp and time is too much and they die. The only way they come back is reintroduction. We’ve lost over 50% of the reefs and are expected to lose 90% by 2050. There are many amazing solutions. Some use corals more re…

Don't they just sprout in deeper (cooler) water?

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#83

Post by redeeman »

frollogaston wrote: post #68
parineum wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence for sunscreen killing coral is pretty thin and the evidence that so-called mineral sunscreen _not_ killing coral is non-existent.

The mineral sunscreen comes off way more easily in water. For that reason, so did a few layers of my skin in the Bahamas.

i have a zinc/beeswax sunscreen, the thing is damn near impossible to get off, definitely WAY more water resistant than normal so called waterproof sunscreen

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#84

Post by askonomm »

dlcarrier wrote: post #29
slibhb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, only publish stories about coral bleaching, animals going extinct, and forest fires. Censor any good news at all costs!

You don't even need to actively censor it; it's human nature to not only solely pay attention to bad news, but also to amplify it. It's generally true for all mammals, but they scale of things we're conscious of is orders of magnitude larger than any other mammal species.

Pretty sure they meant it sarcastically …

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#85

Post by pcrh »

Related, I recently read an article about staghorn corals surviving in Miami of all places [1]. They resisted bleaching, pollution and inundations with fresh water. The origin of this resistance is apparently colonization by a different species of algae that is otherwise native to the western Pacific and Indian Oceans.

[1] https://www.biographic.com/the-corals-that-shouldnt-exist/

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#86

Post by ljf »

foxglacier wrote: post #80
bix6 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you say that without experiencing the other world? If people didn’t need to work to live the creativity unleashed would be insane.

No. Plenty of people are in that boat - look at youth unemployment in many countries - or housewives. And yet somehow workers seem to do the most creative work.

This is so off-topic to corals, but I feel I need to address your two comments - one you are saying housewives don't do any labour? My wife isn't currently in paid employment but likely puts in more hours per day supporting our family in a multitude of different ways, thank I do at work/commuting. Despite this unseen labour, I know many housewives who do find time for creativity a multitude of different ways.

Re unemployment - back when basic necessities were met, the KLF wrote a book about about going on the dole and unleashing your creativity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#87

Post by bix6 »

antonvs wrote: post #81
bix6 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work with Hybrid Reefs out of Scripps in San Diego. Daniel is an amazing dude, Moore fellow, and prolific inventor. If you can help, there’s contact info on the website. https://www.hybridreefs.com/ Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co https://coral.org is a 501c3. One of my friends is on the board. Other fun st…

> coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value. Chatgpt’s assessment of this claim: “not well supported by the mainstream literature and is likely misleading.”

Congratulations on your comprehensive research! I researched this prior and found sources for all my numbers. What’s your counterclaim if not $10T?

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#88

Post by bix6 »

markdown wrote: post #82
bix6 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s one successful example that only worked because of human intervention: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.h... They can only survive short duration events. At some point the temp and time is too much and they die. The only way they come back is reintroduction. We’ve lost over 50% of the reefs and are expected to lose 90% by 2050. There are many amazing solutions. Some use corals more re…

Don't they just sprout in deeper (cooler) water?

Only the deep water corals. The photosynthesizing type that most people are familiar with need light.

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#89

Post by bix6 »

foxglacier wrote: post #80
bix6 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you say that without experiencing the other world? If people didn’t need to work to live the creativity unleashed would be insane.

No. Plenty of people are in that boat - look at youth unemployment in many countries - or housewives. And yet somehow workers seem to do the most creative work.

Lmao some people just don’t get it.

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#90

Post by aboardRat4 »

bix6 wrote: post #74
aboardRat4 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Glyphosate has made forest fires worse. How? How does this work? >Bleaching happens when the symbiosis breaks down due to elevated temps. The first part is correct, the second is unknown. In 2016, 84% of corals bleached, the highest number. Did global warming peak in 2016? I admit, saying "prosperity" was provocative. It's probably not a sign of prosperity. But what exactly it is a sign of, we have little idea.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/glyphosate-spraying-w... It changes the composition of the forest to make it more flammable. I don’t understand your coral comment. The coral expels the algae because the temp causes it to expel harmful toxins. There are other triggers besides heat.

But... basically any human activity changes forest composition.

Only 30% of the forests are primeval, and those 30% are not in Europe.

Forests are not "natural" for thousands of years.

>There are other triggers besides heat.

The amount of studies (or corals and algae) seems to be insufficient. I clearly remember the alarmist wave of the 2016, which turned out to be, well, not entirely unjustified, but clearly exaggerated.

Post reply on HN