Scientists race to save Florida’s last remaining elkhorn coral before bleaching season

Ocean temperatures are climbing once again, and scientists fear Florida’s coral reefs could be headed for another devastating bleaching season.Extraordinary steps are now being taken to rescue some of the state’s most valuable and vulnerable coral before the worst of the heat arrives, including an urgent mission to safeguard the last remaining elkhorn coral in Florida.Science teams from the University of Miami’s Lirman Coral Restoration Lab are racing to collect select elkhorn coral genotypes from ocean nurseries off the coast of Miami.“Right now -- we’re seeing not only ocean temperatures warming at an alarming rate, but projections are kind of reminiscent of 2023, which was a historic bleaching event,” said Dalton Hesley, program director of Rescue a Reef at the University of Miami.The team selected 30 decent-sized elkhorn coral pieces from the nurseries.“They knew where to find these corals within our nurseries. They went around and they selected 30 decent-sized elkhorn pieces,” said Diego Lirman, associate professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School at the University of Miami.The corals were carried ashore in coolers and moved to a University of Miami coral hatchery. The fragile corals represent the genetic diversity of Florida’s elkhorn coral and are being protected in anticipation of a possible bleaching event.“They’re so important and they’re so critically endangered, that we decided that the moment temperatures got above a threshold, a bleaching high temperature threshold, we would act,” Lirman said.Just two weeks ago, NOAA raised its coral bleaching alert level for parts of the Florida Reef Tract as ocean temperatures climbed to dangerous levels.South Florida has now endured 46 consecutive days of triple-digit heat indices, and early signs of coral bleaching and paling are already appearing at Cheeca Rocks off the coast of Islamorada.“What’s really concerning right now is we’re already hitting these alert levels this early on in July,” said Dr.

Ian Enochs, lead scientist with NOAA’s AOML program.As happened in 2023, Mote Marine Laboratory in the Florida Keys has launched an effort to rescue thousands of vulnerable corals from offshore nurseries. The Coral Restoration Foundation is awaiting regulatory approval to begin transferring vulnerable corals to Elbow Key, where cooler water and better flow could help protect them.The goa…