Just like the animals on Noah's Ark, the corals arrived in a pair. On Monday, divers with gloved hands gently nestled the self-bred corals from the World Coral Conservatory project among their cousins in Europe's largest coral reef at the Burgers' Zoo in the Netherlands. "This is the first project where we started to keep these corals with a known origin. As we know exactly where they're coming from, they have the potential to be placed back into the wild. … So it is very important to keep these corals, as it's going not very well in the wild," Nienke Klerks, a biologist at the Royal Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem, told The Associated Press. It's among several projects worldwide seeking to address the decline of coral reef populations, which are suffering from bleaching caused by rising sea temperatures. Corals are central to marine ecosystems, and while these projects won't stem the tide of damage from human-caused climate change, they are seen as part of broader solutions. The World Coral Conservatory hopes to create a bank of corals in aquariums across Europe that could be used to repopulate wild coral reefs if they succumb to the stress of climate change or pollution. Along with two zoos in France and the originator of the project - the Monaco Scientific Center - the zoo in the east of the Netherlands took in more than a dozen coral fragments from off the coast of Seychelles in east Africa. The Dutch zoo has been propagating the corals since 2022, allowing them to grow in a highly regulated environment before they were large enough to join the rest of the reef. "We test it behind the scenes … what works for these corals. In that way, we know where to place them and how to keep them," zookeeper Pascal Kik said. Each diver held up a coral - one that resembled a large mushroom, the other a decorative cookie - to be photographed by reporters before placing them on a ledge near the center of the 8-million-liter... |