Have you ever wondered what the smell of a coral reef can tell us about its well-being under heat stress?
Do vibrant and healthy coral reefs emit a scent?
If they do, what does it smell like?
Smell plays an interesting as well as important role in our lives. It has a huge impact on our food preferences and social lives. We even use our smell to subconsciously pick up on the stress levels in others.
Despite the importance of smell, we may not often think about the scent of a vibrant and diverse coral reef, or how the scent might change when the reef is under pressure from changes in our climate. Stress makes humans sick, and even smelly, and stressed-out corals smell different, too.
Coral reefs are hotspots of biodiversity and reefs mostly in tropical waters around the world are home to a vast number of organisms. Corals are tiny animals called ‘polyps’, that typically live in large colonies. During the last decades, coral reefs have been under relentless stress from a wide range of global as well as local issues, for example, climate change, declining water quality, overfishing, pollution, plastic pollution, coastal development, and ocean acidification.
Studies have found that reefs are affected by coral bleaching driven by heat stress dramatically decreases the chemical diversity and quantity of gases produced by reef corals. So it looks like by measuring the mix of and the number of chemicals produced by corals we can learn more about the health of the reef. Some gases were also only found in stressed corals. The diversity as well as the levels of volatiles plummeted when corals experienced heat stress in the lab.
It would be fantastic if we could design a smell test to determine the health of a coral reef.
Coral reefs are important ecosystems for life underwater and the protection of coastal areas. The stunning animals have provided inspiration for several interesting biomimicry inventions such as cement making and dying clothes.
Biomimicry for Young Children 