dr. ruth gates is director of the hawaii institute of marine biology. she spends most of her time here in these waters - studying what's happening under the surface. >> ok ruth where are we headed today? >> today what i'm going to show you is corals that are different in color; white brown or dead. >> different levels of health then? >> exactly. >> it's a small crew. dr. gates and myself... team members jen davidson and beth lenz, and the boat's captain. john 'lj' benson. this won't be leisurely... we're racing the elements. in the mountains overlooking the bay, a storm is threatening. it's an ominous day to go scuba diving, but science doesn't wait for perfect weather. near our dive site, beth and jen jump in with snorkel gear to help us zero in on the reef below. the event that brought us here is called bleaching. higher than normal water temperatures cause corals to expel the symbiotic plant cells which provide them food. without the algae the corals begin to starve...turning healthy brown coral, ghostly white. this year's bleaching has been so perva

dr. ruth gates is director of the hawaii institutes of marine biology. she spends most of her time here in these waters, studying what's happening under the surface. >> if we don't have coral reefs. we will have people who don't have food. who will have to move. whose lands and their entire islands will be eroded and the tourist economy of many of these places will be completely obliterated. >> and from her lab in oahu, dr. gates is working on a creative if somewhat controversialing scoousk controversial scientific experiment. >> it's like you're training them withstand the the condition the future might hold. >> and what the future might hold in the eyes of dr. gates and her team is the ability to breed what they call super-corals, these are essentially corals that are conditioned literally from birth to withstand rising sea surface temperatures, ocean acidification, and hold up to climate change and other pressing trends. >> so marita, how dire is the situation for corals? >> john it's pretty dire. the projection he state that if we do nothing, that 10