10/15/2026
Coral bleaching due to our warming oceans is one of the largest ecological disasters facing our planet today, writes scholar Danny Collins, a PhD candidate at Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He's exploring what can be done to reverse the process.
“We cannot afford to lose coral reefs,” explains Danny of the role these ecosystems have in supporting marine species and providing food and livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people.
A simple experiment with Danny’s PhD advisers led to “stunning” results for the recovery of bleached coral, and he reflects on their promising findings in the latest Scholar Insight. “We hope this work inspires a new set of interventions that treat bleached corals not as lost causes, but as organisms with remarkable potential for recovery,” writes Danny.
Bleached corals can rapidly recover after brief contact with healthy corals, offering new promise for dying reefs, writes Danny Collins (2024 cohort).
