South Florida coral that survived last summer’s blistering heat wave could help seed new generations of more resilient coral, thanks to a $16 million-dollar grant from the Inflation Reduction Act.
The University of Miami Rosenstile School will spearhead the work with local coral restoration groups over the next three years, said Jennifer Moore, who coordinates coral recovery in the Southeast for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ultimately, the work aims to plant about 100,000 more resilient coral on reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
“It will help us basically grow the next generation of corals that are better able to deal with the temperature stress,” Moore said at a briefing Monday.
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The project is part of a broad effort to mend South Florida’s ailing reef. In the last 40 years, about 90% of coral have been lost across the Keys, due to pollution, disease and bleaching fueled by warming waters. Last summer’s heat wave bleached coral around the Keys and shallow waters in Miami, providing a startling glimpse at what a warmer future could look like.
Climate change is now considered the biggest threat to coral’s survival, Moore said, because it’s simply making water too hot too fast.
Twofold effort to breed more resilient coral
Scientists at Rosenstiel, the Florida Aquarium, Mote Marine Lab and other places have been working to breed more resilient coral for the last decade.
The effort has been twofold: focus on the coral themselves, but also the microscopic algae that live inside coral’s hard shells and photosynthesize to provide the food coral need to survive. When water becomes too hot, those algae are expelled and coral bleach. Now, ocean waters are warming faster than both coral or algae can evolve.
In lab experiments, scientists have been able to crossbreed more resilient coral and also force them to ingest algae that can withstand hotter water, Moore said.
“What we haven't done is, at a scale, outplanted those corals that swapped algae out onto the reef and tracked them to see: Do they maintain that same algae [and] are they on the reef, not just in the laboratory, more heat tolerant,” she said.
The effort also needs to be tested at different locations around the Keys to determine if success is influenced by location, having two heat-tolerant parents or more resilient algae.
“You need to understand it more broadly and outplant these in multiple locations and habitats to understand if that trend will hold and not just be sort of a one-off observation,” she said.
Restoring other marine life too
In addition to restoring coral, NOAA and other scientists are also working to restore other marine life to the reef needed to keep it healthy. That’s included sea urchins, Caribbean king crabs and lobsters. They’ve also worked to remove snails that can gobble up coral.
“Again, we’re on a spectrum of ramping up from research to restoration,” she said.
The grant was awarded Thursday, said spokesman Scott Atwell, and will provide $7.7 million for the first year and up to $16 million over three years. The money will also include bilingual education about coral restoration and chances for the public to participate in the work that has grown to include 14 active coral nurseries in waters around the Keys that work with local dive shops.
READ MORE: Florida reefs got a reprieve from steamy water this summer, but will it last?
With waters already reaching temperatures typically seen in August, when the bleaching season normally begins, nurseries have mostly stopped outplanting coral until waters cool in the fall, Moore said.
Many had also focused on rebuilding stocks that died in last summer’s bleaching. Bleaching can also hamper spawning because coral refocus their energy on repairing the damage caused by prolonged hotter water. Seasonal spawning for some coral is expected to begin over the next week.
“So, TBD,” Moore said. “There will be people observing to see if those species are spawning in the wild.”
Parts of the bay side of the Keys are already under an alert level one for bleaching, with the ocean side under a warning. Alerts are expected to rise as summer temperatures rise, raising concerns that prolonged heat could stress the already frail coral.
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