[njb311]

I’d echo some of the other comments that the first priority should be to find ways to stop further damage rather than adding another human impact that attempts to mitigate previous ones.

As you have pointed out, this proposal carries significant risks. Ignoring the GMO aspect, introducing foreign species into the coral ecosystem could superficially appear to be successful in that some of the corals on the reefs might be revived. But what exactly is the measure of success here? Reefs are richly biodiverse so which corals will be affected and what other species might be affected? This might be impossible to predict until the experiment is released into nature and in a marine environment I doubt containment is possible. Humans have some form when it comes to translocating species and the costs incurred trying to revert can be significant.

There are lots of potential unintended consequences some of which might be foreseeable and others which are not. For example, what if the causes of bleaching in a locality do reverse? Will the GMO species out-compete the natural ones and prevent re-establishing the ecosystem?

Plus, of course, the worst aspect of layering more human interference into ecosystems is that it supports (and is often financially supported by) those who want to continue with all the damaging processes that have got us to this point – hey, we don’t have to worry about fertiliser run-off/ocean acidification/ocean warming because look, we ‘fixed’ the coral reef!

I’m not saying that we can’t do both things – reduce future impacts and try to fix past ones – but history has shown that solutions for a genuinely more sustainable future (for humans and the ecosystem that supports us) are harder so they get watered down or kicked down the road, when we actually need them to work even better than originally envisaged and be implemented faster.

You should not lose your passion for nature but perhaps direct it at solving problematic human activities, replacing current systems, processes and products with better ones. People are convinced we can’t do without all the things/choices we have today, so if consumers don’t want to change then we have to focus on transforming products and production. And we have to do it in a world where population has doubled in the last 50 years and is still growing, and if we expect per capita GDP also to grow – apparently our principal measure of success as a species – then overall human consumption will have to grow even faster.

Plenty to get yours and the best minds of your generation working on!