Slashdot has reported:

Bleached corals recovered in eight weeks when placed in contact with healthy neighbours, according to a new study by marine ecologists at Stanford. The research was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances and found that healthy coral can share photosynthetic symbiotic algae, known as Symbiodiniaceae, with bleached neighbours.

About 84.4 per cent of the world’s coral reefs experienced bleaching-level heat stress during the major marine heat wave that ran from January 2023 to September 2025. More than half of the world’s coral coverage has already been lost compared with levels in the 1950s. The study’s controls did not recover as quickly as the corals in contact with healthy coral.

“This incredible new result - that fast and full recovery is possible in bleached coral - can inspire solutions that eventually may be scalable,” Fiorenza Micheli, a marine ecologist with Stanford’s Center for Ocean Solutions and a co-author of the study, told the journal Nature.

The contact method could complement other conservation work, including selective breeding of heat-tolerant corals and the cultivation of protected coral nurseries. Conservationists are also pursuing the deep-freezing and revival of at-risk coral sampled from Hawaii, a method that has been successful. Researchers say combining approaches could help threatened reefs recover.