![]() If some strains survive the warm waters that have already turned many corals on Paradise Reef white, they might one day help repopulate other reefs decimated by high temperatures. The fragments come from more than 20 reefs ranging from Key Largo up to Broward County and could have genetic differences that might make them more heat tolerant. READ MORE: Rare good news for Florida's bleaching reefs: rescued coral from Miami spawnīut on Friday, UM scientists - with help from volunteers like Shera - planted some 75 coral fragments on Paradise Reef off of Key Biscayne. They’ve been placing them in onshore tanks, building a sort of Noah’s Ark for coral species to preserve their genetic diversity in case heat-caused mass bleaching events wipe out entire reefs in Miami-Dade County as they have already in the Keys. They’ve been evacuating thousands of growing coral fragments from offshore nurseries where the scientists had planted them months or even years before. ![]() Putting corals in harms way is the opposite of what scientists, agencies and volunteer divers have been doing for the last month. But if some do - and that’s the hope - it could help identify coral types more likely to endure future climate change. Some likely won’t survive the high ocean temperatures off the state that threaten to devastate much of the natural reef tract. These corals, previously collected from a range of reefs off South Florida, are being put to a critical heat-stress test. With a gentle pat, Wajahat Shera cemented a four-inch staghorn coral fragment onto a patch of seafloor two miles east of Key Biscayne - one of many planted Friday as part of an unusual undersea experiment being run by University of Miami scientists.
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