Stanford Universituy researchers reversed coral bleaching in just seven weeks, the fastest recovery ever documented.
The discovery started by accident when a professor noticed a bleached coral fragment regaining color where it had tipped over and touched a healthy clone.
When genetically identical corals make contact, their tissues fuse and allow beneficial algae and nutrients to flow into the bleached coral.
In lab tests, bleached fragments that touched healthy ones fully recovered, while those left just millimeters apart died.
*Just five days to a week of contact was enough to kickstart recovery, after which algae inside the bleached corals multiplied about 10 times faster than in the wild*.
Published in Science Advances, the findings give researchers new hope for restoring reefs damaged by ocean heat.
