A team of scientists from the University of Miami, the Florida Aquarium and Tela Marine in Honduras is working
together to transplant crossbred coral fragments onto a reef off Miami’s coastline that was devastated by coral bleaching two years ago.
They’re looking for ways to help reefs survive increased ocean tem
peratures caused by global warming and climate change.
“It’s the end of a very long process,” Andrew Baker, professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of M
iami’s Rosenstiel School and director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab, said Tuesday as divers planted the corals off Miami.
The plan of introducing corals from the Caribbean evolved over the past few years.
“We had this idea that we really needed to try to help Florida’s coral reef by introducing more diversity from arou
nd the Caribbean, recognizing that some of the biggest threats to coral
a and if you try to have Florida’s reefs save themselves on their own, we could give them some outside help,” Baker said.
Coral breeding has also been done in Hawaii, where in 2021, scientists were working to speed up the coral’s evo
lutionary clock to breed “super corals” that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.
Why crossbreed with corals from Honduras?
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Baker’s group teamed with the Florida Aquarium and Tela Marine, bri
nging in fragments of corals from a warm reef off of Tela, Honduras, which spawned in tanks at the aquarium.
“We were able to cross the spawn from those corals, the sperm an
d the eggs, to produce babies. One parent from Florida, one parent from Honduras,” Baker said.
They chose the reef off of Tela because the water is about 2 degrees C
elsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the water off the coast of Florida.
“And yet the corals in those environments, and especially the Elkhorn corals, are really thriving,” Baker said.