KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. — A group of researchers from the University of Miami, the Florida Aquarium, and Tela Marine in Honduras are collaborating to restore a reef off the coast of Miami that was severely damaged by coral bleaching two years ago by replanting fragments of crossbred coral.
They’re searching for strategies to assist reefs withstand rising sea temperatures brought on by climate change and global warming.
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As divers planted the corals off Miami on Tuesday, Andrew Baker, director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab and professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School, remarked, “It’s the end of a very long process.”
Over the past few years, the strategy to introduce corals from the Caribbean has changed.
“We realized that some of the biggest threats to corals, like climate change, are really global phenomena, and if you try to have Florida’s reefs save themselves on their own, we could give them some outside help,” Baker explained. “We had this idea that we really needed to try to help Florida’s coral reef by introducing more diversity from around the Caribbean,” Baker said.
has also been carried out in Hawaii, where researchers were trying to accelerate the coral’s evolutionary clock in 2021 in order to produce super corals that would be more resilient to the effects of global warming.
Why would you crossbreed with Honduran corals?
In collaboration with Tela Marine and the Florida Aquarium, Baker’s team brought in pieces of coral from a warm reef off the coast of Tela, Honduras, which spawned in aquarium tanks.
We were able to create offspring by crossing the sperm and eggs from those corals. According to Baker, there is one parent from Florida and one from Honduras.
Since the water off the coast of Tela is roughly 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the water off the coast of Florida, they decided to use it.
However, according to Baker, the corals in those habitats—particularly the Elkhorn corals—are thriving.
He pointed out that there are vast beds of Elkhorn that are hundreds of meters long and thriving.
According to Baker, they manage to survive there in spite of extremely hot weather and highly nutrient-polluted waterways.
According to Baker, the circumstances are comparable to what Florida would experience in the coming century.
Additionally, it’s the first time that international coral crossbreeding has been approved for planting on wild reefs.
Therefore, he continued, “we’re really excited to see how these do.”
Baker and the colleagues will be evaluating the corals throughout the summer in the hopes that they would be more heat tolerant.
What do Elkhorn corals look like?
According to Baker, elkhorn corals are among the most recognizable species in Florida and are prized for their ability to build the reef’s crest.
Additionally, shorelines are shielded from flooding and storms by the reef. According to him, if Elkhorn coral populations are robust, you have a fantastic reef that functions as a kind of speed bump, allowing storms and waves to travel over it and release their energy before they reach the coast.
According to Baker, rising water temperatures and coral bleaching are contributing to the severe reduction of Elkhorn corals.
While the vibrant algae that inhabit coral give them their vibrant hues, the algae also produce harmful substances when they are heated for an extended period of time. They are expelled by the coral, leaving behind a stark white skeleton known as, and the fragile coral is in danger of dying.
According to Baker, we may have lost almost 95% of the Elkhorn corals that were present on Florida’s reefs at that time.
According to Keri O. Neil, director and senior scientist of the Florida Aquarium’s Coral Conservation Program, some of the corals that were born at the aquarium’s lab made their way there in 2020.
More pieces from Florida and Honduras will remain in the center, she said.
“We hope to continue determining which parents produce the best offspring by making an increasing number of crosses each year in the future,” O’Neil stated.
How are the corals planted on the reef?
On Tuesday, small concrete bases were positioned around the reef to hold the tiny pieces of Elkhorn coral.
According to Baker, we’ve grouped them so that we can compare how well each coral does.
The group will investigate the differences between corals with Honduran parents and those that are solely from Florida.
“But that’s really what the whole project is looking at, and specifically a warming future and a warming summer, how these corals do, and do they have more thermal tolerance than the native Florida population,” he added.
In his 20 years at the University of Miami, Baker said it’s the most fascinating project he’s ever worked on.
Hope for the future
If the corals are successful, it might serve as a model for coral sharing initiatives throughout the Caribbean.
According to Juli Berwald, co-founder of Tela Coral, this project is about international cooperation and the idea that our environment truly transcends national boundaries and that we can all work together to improve the globe. And it demonstrates that when we collaborate and communicate with one another, we can actually do something that could change the lives of not just ourselves but also the corals, reefs, and all the creatures that depend on them.
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In addition to changing Tela Coral to Tel Marine in the majority of the references, this article converts Celsius to Fahrenheit in paragraph 9.
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From Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Frisaro reported.
