“To better understand how to help corals become more resilient, researchers in Japan studied how quickly corals return to artificial structures compared to natural reefs after bleaching.

Previous studies have explored the same question, typically over one to 10 years. The Japanese study used 29 years of field data.

Using government data, the researchers compared coral cover on vertical breakwaters — grooved structures built to protect the shore from waves — with coral recovery on natural reefs in Naha Port, Japan, from 1989 to 2018.

A bleaching event in 1998 affected both types of substrates, but ‘corals on artificial structures recovered faster from [the] mass bleaching event than the natural coral reef ecosystems,’ Toko Tanaya, lead author of the study and senior researcher with the Port and Airport Research Institute in Japan, told Mongabay in a phone call.

Within six years, the breakwaters recovered to near pre-bleaching levels, while ‘the coral cover on natural reefs barely recovered from bleaching,’ the authors write.”

From Mongabay.