China News Service, Beijing, December 8th (Liu Huan) In the past 30 years, the global coral ecosystem has continued to degrade, and large areas of corals have been bleached or even died. It is even predicted that more than 90% of corals will die before 2050. This problem It has aroused common attention at home and abroad.

　　But someone said, he wants to plant a million corals on the bottom of the sea, can it be done?

How to do it?

Only accounts for 0.2%, but can protect 25% of marine life

　　Chen Hong, director of Hainan Nanhai Institute of Tropical Oceanography (hereinafter referred to as "Atami"), has been engaged in coral research for more than 30 years.

In 2003, he established the Atami Research Institute, focusing on environmental monitoring and protection of marine ecology and coral reefs.

　　He told Chinanews.com that when he first started his research in Sanya, most of the local people didn't know coral and called it "Sea Stone Flower".

　　"It's the stones that bloom in the sea. The local people don't know them. When they encounter waves hitting the shore at the beach, they pick them up and take them home to make building materials and handicrafts." Chen Hong said.

　　In fact, corals are not plants, but are composed of tens of thousands of coral polyps only a few millimeters in size. They are one of the oldest marine organisms on earth.

According to whether coral polyps can form hard reefs, they are divided into two categories: "reef-building" and "non-reef-building".

　　Reef-building coral polyps can secrete calcium carbonate to form "skeletons". After the coral polyps die, the "skeletons" become biological reefs and finally form coral reefs.

In the South China Sea, the oldest coral reefs are more than 20 million years old.

　　The area of ​​coral reefs in the world is 600,000 square kilometers, accounting for about 0.2% of the world's ocean area.

It is like a forest where birds, beasts, insects and other animals can gather on land. It provides a place for 25% of marine life to feed and breed. At the same time, it can also weaken wind and waves and protect coasts and islands. Rainforest".

Corals on the seabed Photo courtesy of respondents

　　Chinanews.com learned that the growth of coral reefs mainly depends on the zooxanthellae that live in symbiosis with corals.

Zooxanthellae can provide photosynthetic products to corals, and corals provide metabolic wastes such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and phosphorus to zooxanthellae as nutrients.

　　Desertification occurs in forests on land and, in fact, in oceans as well.

Due to the dual effects of climate change and human activities, problems such as rising sea temperature can lead to coral bleaching and even death.

　　"Zooxanthellae are like human coats for corals. Different seasons allow corals to change into different shades of clothes. But when the water temperature changes and exceeds its physiological adaptation temperature, the 'coat' of zooxanthellae It will be taken off, and the coral will be bleached." Chen Hong introduced to Chinanews.com.

　　Over the past 30 years, coral ecosystems around the world have continued to degrade.

Julia Baum, an associate professor at the School of Biology at the University of Victoria in Canada, predicted that without intervention, more than 90% of corals will die before 2050.

How to "plant trees" under the sea?

　　"Sanya at that time was not what it is now." Chen Hong said that when the research was first carried out, the local corals had already degraded. There is no master to teach."

　　Chen Hong led his team to explore for nearly 20 years from self-study in the sea, to investigating the causes of coral disease and death on the seabed, the growth law of coral communities, and gradually figuring out coral restoration and protection technologies.

　　Coral seedlings are required to grow corals.

Every year from March to May is the coral spawning period. Chen Hong will go to relevant sea areas to bring the fertilized coral eggs to the shore for artificial incubation in the laboratory.

　　The hatched coral larvae are attached to the "coral core" independently invented by Chen Hong. When they grow to a certain size, Chen Hong will take them to the sea to "settle down".

Photo courtesy of Chen Hong working under the sea

　　The situation under the deep sea is complicated, and it is not easy to plant corals.

　　The researchers tie the corals together with the coral frame to the net, dive into the bottom of the water with the net, and cover the net on the reef.

　　In 2011, the Atami Institute began to use pyramid-shaped medium-sized concrete artificial coral reefs as carriers to transplant coral seedlings.

It is reported that they were the first team in China to use this method at that time.

　　One week after the transplantation, the researchers will go to the sea regularly to observe.

The transplanting is not successful until the coral seedlings are firmly combined with the reef and are strong enough to resist the impact of sea water.

　　In order to keep abreast of the growth of corals, Chen Hong often has to float and sink in the sea, staying for several hours at a time, encountering emergencies in the sea and being scratched by reefs is common.

He often came ashore to find blood oozing from his wetsuit from his wound.

　　Wang Peizheng, a professor of Hainan Institute of Tropical Oceanography, has cooperated with Chen Hong's Atami Institute for five years, and the two have gone to sea together many times.

　　"Diving is strenuous and dangerous. It is easy to get dizzy underwater. He is almost 57 years old and swims very fast. We can't catch up with him." There are really not many scientists who can go to the sea to make corals in the front line."

"My wish is to plant a million corals under the sea"

　　Chen Hong was one of the earliest experts who did coral planting research in Hainan. He is known as "Coral Dad".

　　In 2016, Atami Institute launched the "Millions of Coral Cultivation" program.

"My wish is to plant a million corals on the seabed, and now the progress has reached one-third." Chen Hong said.

　　In 2019, he established the country's first coral germplasm bank, and has collected more than 150 coral species.

His Atami Institute has broken through the main mechanism of coral bleaching in the South China Sea, the large-scale cultivation of coral seedlings, and large-scale coral reef restoration. It is also making continuous progress in the fields of detecting the age of coral molecules and using upwelling in the South China Sea to solve bleaching problems make a progress.

Photo provided by the interviewee of the coral seedlings cultivated by Atami

　　In addition to the Atami Institute, in recent years, researchers from many teams in my country have also been working on "planting trees" on the seabed, exploring different restoration techniques for different coral reef environments.

　　Huang Hui, a researcher at the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the Coral Reef Branch of the China Pacific Society, said in an interview with the media that my country's coral research has reached the forefront of the world.

　　"The overall quality of the seawater environment in the South China Sea continues to improve," added Wang Youshao, a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Environment at the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

　　He pointed out that my country has made progress in the research of the three typical marine ecosystems of coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds, which has promoted the restoration and protection of marine ecology, and is of great significance to maintaining my country's homeland security and marine biodiversity protection.

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