Stanford: Contact With Healthy Coral Speeds Bleached Reef Recovery

Marine ecologists at Stanford found that bleached corals can recover in just eight weeks through physical contact with a healthy neighbor of the same clone, which shares its symbiotic algae. The effect appears to work only between genetically identical corals.

• Bleached corals in contact with healthy ones recovered in 8 weeks
• Corals separated by a few millimeters did not recover
• The method works only between genetically identical corals
• 84.4% of the world's reefs suffered heat stress from 2023 to 2025