The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Ruth Gates, coral reef scientist and marine conservationist, dies at 56

She advocated the breeding of a ‘super coral’ that could resist the effects of global warming

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November 1, 2018 at 6:04 p.m. EDT

Adapted from a story by Christie Wilcox for The Washington Post.

Ruth Gates was captivated by coral reef. She grew up in England and was exposed to coral through the color TV films of sea explorer Jacques Cousteau.

“Even though Cousteau was coming through the television, he unveiled the oceans in a way that nobody else had been able to,” she told the New Yorker in 2016.

By 11, she said she knew she wanted to be a marine biologist. She went on to obtain a doctorate in marine biology, publish dozens of scientific papers and, in 2015, become the first woman elected president of the International Society for Reef Studies. She also appeared in the Emmy Award-winning Netflix documentary “Chasing Coral” (2017) and became a frequent commentator in the media on reef conservation as well as the effects of climate change.

Gates died Oct. 25 at a hospital in Kailua, Hawaii. She’s best remembered for advocating the breeding of a “super coral” that could resist the effects of global warming and replenish rapidly deteriorating reefs worldwide.

The Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, which she directed and is part of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, announced the death. Gates was 56. The cause was complications related to treatment for brain cancer, said her wife, Robin Burton-Gates.

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Context about corals

Like all coral biologists, Dr. Gates studied a vanishing organism. Over the course of her career, she witnessed the death of roughly one-third to one-half of the world’s reefs as the species was battered by pollution, acidifying oceans and rising temperatures, according to scientific estimates.

Corals are tiny, anemone-like animals that often live in huge colonies made from thousands of genetically identical individuals or polyps. Like their kin, coral polyps have tentacles armed with stinging cells that can capture microscopic bits of food from the water.

Most corals have a symbiotic relationship with tiny algae that live inside their tissues. And like plants, these algae are able to use the energy from sunlight to build sugars that they share with their animal hosts. It was this intimate relationship between such different species that perplexed and fascinated Dr. Gates, so she decided to study corals specifically to try to understand the symbiosis at the molecular level.

A storied career

Dr. Gates arrived in Jamaica for graduate fieldwork in 1985, just in time to witness this symbiotic relationship break down. In 1987, the Caribbean had one of the first major coral bleaching events, where the normally colorful animals suddenly lose their algal partners, and their white calcium carbonate skeletons become visible through their relatively clear tissues. Dr. Gates’s early work on the animals helped biologists understand that such bleaching was a severe version of a normal temperature-driven process.

She held academic positions at the University of California at Los Angeles before moving in 2003 to the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), where she became director in 2015. In Hawaii, having a living coral reef right in her backyard meant immediate access for research experimentation.

The boldest of her endeavors involved “super corals,” ones that have been specifically selected and bred for their abilities to withstand the warmer, more acidic waters predicted to occur in the future because of climate change. It’s an idea that stemmed from Dr. Gates’s early work on coral bleaching, and her observations that no matter how bad a bleaching event was, some individual corals always survived.

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In 2013, she won a $10,000 essay competition sponsored by a foundation run by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to develop innovative ideas to mitigate rapidly acidifying oceans.

Buoyed by the win, she later submitted a detailed plan with Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science that in 2015 garnered them a $4 million grant from the foundation.

“Knowing that time is short to save corals and humanity, Ruth saw opportunity in breeding corals that have not only survived prior hardships, but thrived under tough conditions,” said Brian Taylor, dean of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, which oversees HIMB. “Her lab is determining what traits make some corals better survivors than others, and reinforcing those traits through selective breeding.”

‘Accelerating natural selection’

Dr. Gates referred to breedin corals as “accelerating natural selection.” “The rates of change in the environment have essentially outpaced the capacity of the corals themselves to adapt,” she said in the 2018 UH Foundation video.

She identified the toughest coral by choosing ones that survived hotter waters in the lab and was working on breeding those to create corals that are even more resilient. It’s much like the process by which farmers bred hardier crops. Ultimately, she said, these “super corals” could be used to replenish reefs after mass die-offs, like the ones experienced in recent years by the Great Barrier Reef off northeastern Australia.

The project is in its fourth year and had led to several scientific publications but, according to HIMB colleagues, it was just getting off the ground. The work is now in the hands of her students and colleagues.

Dr. Gates was driven but did not consider her plan the only viable option, friends told publications. “I don’t really care about the ‘me’ in this,” she told the New Yorker. “I care about what happens to corals. If I can do something that will help preserve them and perpetuate them into the future, I’m going to do everything I can.”