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So over the last couple of decades
climate change has really loomed as an
imminent problem for coral reefs
corals in particular are really quite
suspectible to the change in climate.
All over the world there's been mass coral
bleaching events, and it's for this reason
that corals of the Kimberley are particularly
fascinating. As you can see
at low tide they are exposed
three or four metres out of the water
and normally at high tide the water
would be right above us. Yet
the corals of the Kimberley appear
to be very, very hardy and very
tolerant of these extreme conditions
so very high sea surface temperatures
very high daily temperatures
and very high light exposures
so it's clear that there's some special
biological adaptations that have occurred
in the corals of the Kimberley
that helps them to survive these extreme conditions.
So I'm particularly interested investigating
these biological adaptations.
And right here today we've found
something that gives us a little bit of a hint
into one of these possible adaptations.
See here is a porites micro-atoll
so ordinarily this coral will
be this yellow colour, but as you see
on the here where the coral is
exposed it is pink.
So what I'm proposing this is
this is an expression of
a fluorescent protein
have a photo-protective role.
So it's obviously able to reflect the
light better and it helps the exposed
part of the colony survive
these extreme conditions.
So presently nothing is known about the
pigments of corals of the Kimberley
but in other locations the pigments
have proven very, very interesting in that
they're used in biomedical imaging
and other types of cell biology
research.
Also what corals have is a sunscreen
a natural sunscreen in their mucus
so combined with
the fluorescent pigments and proteins
and the sunscreen properties, corals
really do seem to have worked out
how to cope with these conditions up here in the Kimberley.