The Red Sea is one of the warmest seas on Earth, which makes it both a warning and a laboratory: a preview of conditions other reefs will face, and a test bed for interventions. A KAUST Discovery feature surveys four research programmes confronting the same question from different angles: how to keep reef ecosystems functioning as marine heatwaves intensify.
Raquel Peixoto's Marine Microbiomes Lab isolates beneficial bacteria from healthy corals and reintroduces them to stressed reefs ahead of heatwaves. After five years of field experimentation, treated reefs retained 60 per cent of their baseline cryptobenthic biodiversity through a heatwave, against 20 per cent on untreated reefs. Maggie Johnson's group studies crustose coralline algae, the pink crusts that cement reefs together; after the 2023 and 2024 heatwaves her team documented bleaching and disease in these algae at a scale not previously recorded in the region.
Meanwhile David Suggett's Coral Restoration Initiative is building a real-time digital twin of a living reef across a 100-hectare restoration site, fusing underwater photogrammetry, sensor networks and machine-learning ecological models to test what-if scenarios before intervening. And fisheries scientist Jessica Zamborain-Mason argues that reef fisheries, over 60 per cent of which are overfished globally, should be managed for nutrition as well as catch. None of these tools saves reefs alone; together, the researchers argue, they buy time.