Florida's coral reefs have been beset by high temperatures and diseases that have killed entire species off the east coast of the state. But there's a major effort to restock the reefs with a diverse group of corals that have been grown in land-based tanks.
On Wednesday, The Florida Aquarium transferred 9,000 baby corals that were spawned and grown at its Apollo Beach facility. They're being taken to larger tanks, where the babies will grow up before being placed onto the reefs.
It's part of Florida’s Coral Reef Protection and Restoration Program, which is being spearheaded by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The long-term goal: restore at least 25% of Florida’s coral reef by 2050.
To learn more, WUSF's Steve Newborn talked with Keri O'Neil, who heads the coral conservation program at the aquarium.
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
O’NEIL: So we're transferring 9,000 juvenile corals for further grow-out at our partner facilities, the Reef Institute and Reef Renewal (also in Apollo Beach).
This is part of the Florida's Coral Reef Restoration and Recovery Program. So this was funding that was granted by executive order by (Gov.) Ron DeSantis to support the restoration of 25% of Florida's coral reef.
And this is really the first fully start-to-finish action that we've accomplished with multiple partners under this funding. We've been working on this project for about two years.
We spawn corals here. There's a lot of facilities we’re building infrastructure under this funding, and now we're finally putting that pipeline into action. So these corals were born here. They've been here about seven months, and now they're going to our partners to be grown out to be about an inch in diameter, and then they'll go back out into the ocean.
How come there's a two-tier system here? Why wouldn't you do everything here in one place?
We're trying to capitalize on space and people's expertise. So if I know that in my given 9,000 square feet I have here at this facility, I can grow X number of corals to be 1 inch, or I can grow a heck of a lot more corals if they only have to be a quarter of an inch.
So using our facility to only have to grow them through that really critical first couple of months where they're really sensitive, where that's our expertise is the spawning and the really early care, and then I can move them to grow-out facilities where they can use their space before they go out into the ocean.
"So we've created our own sort of monster and our own problem that now it's, 'How do we actually grow out all of these babies that we're making every single year.' Nobody wants to produce larvae that have nowhere to go."Keri O'Neil, director of coral conservation program at The Florida Aquarium
Your research on spawning seems to be very groundbreaking, right? That was a lot of technical work and a lot of patience, a lot of moonlit nights in the tanks and everything here. Have you mastered that? Do you believe there's still some puzzles?
There's always going to be puzzles with coral spawning, but we really have it down to a pretty good science now for the critical reef building species covered under this initiative, and we're able to spawn those every year, consistently producing millions of larvae.
So we've created our own sort of monster and our own problem that now it's, "How do we actually grow out all of these babies that we're making every single year?"
Nobody wants to produce larvae that have nowhere to go. So now it's about expanding facilities and infrastructure and also our workforce. How do we teach graduating students in marine biology to work in these aquarium settings with baby corals and get them back out onto the reef?
Are these corals supposedly heat resistant? Were they chosen for their heat resistant properties? So when they go back out there, they're not going to fry in the next heat wave?
So this batch of corals is actually just as genetically mixed as they can be. There's no selective breeding that has occurred with this large batch of corals. So you can think about this evolution and adaptation for heat resistance.
We could either sit here and try to select all the appropriate moms and dads and make only heat-resistant corals, or they may have an issue now with the next cold snap or the next disease. So we try to focus on the most diverse stock as possible, and that gives the population a more evolutionary ability to adapt to multiple stressors in the future.
On your right here, there's a tank with some very calm water and a bunch of little ... they almost look like sushi, if I could use that phrase. Tell me what we're looking at.
So these are some of the older corals that are getting transferred. These are Montastraea cavernosa, or the great star coral. And these were born. These were actually larvae produced at Nova Southeastern University, and they came here for some research and some grow-out, and now they are going to go to our partners at Reef Renewal and the Reef Institute for their next stage of grow-out and for outplanting.
Why was this particular species chosen?
So this species is actually fairly resistant to stony coral tissue loss disease. It does get it, but it wasn't decimated quite as much as some of the other species. And it's also just generally pretty hardy.
It usually makes it through bleaching events, and it is one of the top five critical species that have been chosen by the state to focus restoration efforts and funding on producing.
We've heard reports recently about Elkhorn coral being basically eliminated from breeding in the wild. Are you looking at Elkhorn coral as well?
So if you actually just turn about 90 degrees to your right, and those tanks along the wall, we have four tanks of Elkhorn coral, and two of those contain large Elkhorn coral. They're up to about 2 feet long and a foot wide. And two of those tanks are stock from Florida, and one of them is actually stock from Honduras.
So you think you had talked to us before about the breeding efforts to cross the Florida and the Honduran Elkhorn corals, and now you're getting to see them in person. So this is some of our Florida stock right here. And a lot of the corals in this tank are no longer alive in their wild location on the reef. And these are some of the largest pieces of Elkhorn coral that remain alive from the Florida population
These are rare birds.
Yeah, these actually still gives me chills and also a ton of anxiety thinking about their health and making sure these systems are running all the time. There's alarms on everything, and they're a very difficult coral to maintain, but we have been able to spawn them consistently every year. Still, this is one of the tricky ones, though, that I mentioned. We don't get them all to spawn.
There's still something about these guys that we don't quite understand. So this is a huge area of research. How can we get better production from this species on land? We get some. We produce more coral babies of Elkhorn coral than anyone in the world, but it can still be a lot better and give us a lot more material for research.
But in the meantime, they're also a living gene bank, and as these corals get bigger, we break off fragments, give them back to other nurseries to keep make sure that these individuals are represented in multiple locations.
Will these eventually go back out on a reef? Do you believe these exact corals will stay here for reproduction purposes?
But as we know, the corals are a colonial organism. So as this branch here grows off to the right, it gets up close to the surface of the water. I can actually break that branch off, and that's what can go back out to the reef.
"I feel like I'm actually the grandmother at this point because I have a team of 14 people now working on all of this work, and they are the ones, really boots on the ground right now, and I've become the director of everything, so I just kind of give a lot of advice and support every day. "Keri O'Neil, director of coral conservation program at The Florida Aquarium
These are kind of like your babies in a sense, right? You have this motherhood instinct going on.
I do. I feel like I'm actually the grandmother at this point, because have a team of 14 people now working on all of this work, and they are the ones, really boots on the ground right now, and I've become the director of everything, so I just kind of give a lot of advice and support every day. And it's really my team that's doing this work, and watching these young corals. I really feel almost like the grandmother now.
So you're part mother, part emergency technician.
Yeah, I'm the part grandmother and part just emotional support system, I think, and financial support system.
Keri, does this give you hope for the future of the reef? We're beset with stories about global warming, rising seas, 101-degree temperatures in the Caribbean, and some people could get really depressed about that. But do you have hope for the future of this species?
Oh, I definitely have hope for the future of this species of the Elkhorn coral and all the other species we work with here. I think that we've finally — we can prevent extinction with corals. This is a given. We can move them onto land. We can keep them happy and healthy, and we can prevent extinction, and that buys us time.
"We can prevent extinction with corals. This is a given. We can move them onto land. We can keep them happy and healthy, and we can prevent extinction, and that buys us time."Keri O'Neil, director of coral conservation program at The Florida Aquarium
The great thing about a coral is that, in theory, this parent can live for thousands of years because they're asexual. The parent stock never dies. So we can sit here and research how to make the most resilient Elkhorn coral for 50 years, if we need to, and this species is not going to go extinct. And we've actually made so much progress just in the last five to 10 years that I do believe that we can breed a resilient stock of corals.
You're pretty hopeful. It sounds like it's going to take a lot of work, and what it really is going to rely on is consistent annual funding, and that is this: Florida's coral restoration and recovery initiative is one amazing example of how that actually happened.
That's about $9.5 million a year from the state that goes into coral restoration and has been focused primarily on building infrastructure and workforce to do this kind of work, and we're just working on phase one of that. And what we really need is phase two and three of that to be supported.
And you need money for those phases.
We need funding for those phases. At minimum, the lowest level of funding is keeping this annual $9.5 million that goes into restoration. I think about this.
It's $9.5 million a year to keep our corals alive, yet we spend something like $250 million a year to renourish our beaches. So it's a catch-22, you know, if we can keep our coral reefs alive, that can help protect our coastline.
So we invest so little into the health of our coral reef, which is an $8.5 billion asset in the state of Florida, and we only spend $9.5 million a year to protect it. But yet, we'll spend $250 million on sand.
