Coral spawning season brings hope for the Great Barrier Reef

CAIRNS, AU (CNN) —  Warming oceans are considered the greatest threat to the world’s coral reefs. but, parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are showing some resiliency with coral now starting to regenerate.

Scientists are welcoming the news as they lobby the Australian government to do more to protect this natural wonder.

At nighttime on Australia’s great barrier reef, the sea explodes in an otherworldly spectacle: coral spawning.

One of the world’s greatest natural wonders is made up of billions of living creatures that reproduce like this each year.

This season has scientists excited.

“We were out diving until about eleven o’clock last night looking at the corals spawning and we were lucky enough to see some of the species spawning,” recalled Abbi Scott, the Cairns-Port Douglas Reef Hub Coordinator. “Not all of them, but we saw the soft corals, and they filled up the water with bundles of eggs and sperm, which was really spectacular,”

The spectacular sight is a type of synchronized breeding. Coral polyps release millions of sperm and egg bundles into the water, all at once. When two bundles from the same species collide, new life is born

It’s a display of nature’s resilience, repeated around this time of year across the reef’s nearly 133,000 square miles.

But, while some parts of the reef remain healthy, other parts are bleaching and dying, killed by temperature rise due to global warming.

“They’re a little bit like Goldilocks,” described Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Chief Scientist, Dr. Roger Beeden. “They need the temperature and other conditions to be just right, and if if they go outside of those boundaries, then we have this phenomenon called coral bleaching.”

Scientists in Australia are studying ways to boost the chances for successful reproduction. Right now, it is nature that holds the key to the reef’s survival.

“This process of sexual reproduction – which is what’s going on – is also one of the ways in which you get natural adaptation to changing conditions,” explained Beedan. “Now, one of the big challenges with climate change is happening so fast that it might mean that the genetic variability isn’t able to keep up with it. But, nonetheless, it’s really important that the process is happening.”

The coral spawning at Moore reef near the city of Cairns gives hope that this wonder of the world might still be rescued.