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RE: New research has found that certain parts of the Great Barrier Reef might offer opportunities for regeneration of most of the reef
There's also some interesting nascent research in the states looking at lab growing strains of coral that are resistant to higher temperatures and using these to seed the reefs. If it took off on a larger scale it could be quite exciting for recuperating reefs. There are two interesting youtubes on this here and here.
Wow, that's really interesting. I still think we are at a point where we should be very careful before we release any modified organisms back to the wild like this, but projects like this is certainly very interesting to keep an eye on!
Well it's interesting that they're simply selecting the strains that survive exposure to the warmer water, so they're not drastically modified!
While that is a good point, putting out modified organisms can have very unexpected consequences despite the changes not being that big. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to put these things back into nature in order to regrow the lost coral reefs, but if they are much better adapted to surviving, then it's too late to change our mind once it's done, and there might not be anything we can do about potential negative consequences.
I'm being a bit silly now but I just got a visual flash of that 1980s film "The Blob", but mentally replacing it with coral polyps...