In this photo provided by the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science staghorn coral spawns, Sunday, Aug. There they separate, and mingle with gametes from other colonies, making coral babies that will drift, transform into larvae, and after several days, descend to hopefully attached to a reef. Williamson explains that staghorn are hermaphrodites, creating both egg and sperm, but an individual coral’s gametes can’t fertilize one another.Īt just the right moment, the colonies, and those around them, synchronize and release their egg/sperm bundles, which float to the surface, like a snow flurry in reverse. Pregnancy in coral is quite different from pregnancy in humans. “That doesn’t guarantee that they’re going to release those tonight, but they are pregnant, more or less.”
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“We cracked a few branches of the staghorn coral and saw that a lot of them are gravid, which means they contain bundles of eggs and sperm ready to go,” she says. Hope springs eternalīack up on deck, senior research associate Liv Williamson, who was leading the action underwater, has a big smile on her face as she takes off her oxygen tanks.
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They’re also major tourism drivers in Florida, pulling in $1.1 billion annually and supporting 71,000 jobs in South Florida, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. In Florida, that includes juvenile phases of delicious and economically valuable grouper and snapper. They protect shorelines, and are home to at least 25% of all marine species, according to the United Nations. The study estimated that more than 500,000 corals died within 550 yards of the dredge channel, and the dredge may have affected corals as far as 15 miles away. And in areas such as South Florida, with intense human impact, coral has to tend with stressors such as coastal pollution, nutrient runoff, wastewater runoff and sedimentation, which can smother reefs.Ī UM study found that the 2012-2016 dredging of Miami’s Government Cut by the Army Corps of Engineers stirred up sediment that buried from 50% to 90% of nearby reefs. At the same time, the human population, which harvests fish from coral reefs, has increased by 174%.Ĭlimate change has raised water temperatures, leading to coral bleaching, where stressed corals expel symbiotic algae, their main food source, and turn pale or white. Staghorn are listed as threatened under the U.S Endangered Species Act, and their fate is indicative of coral globally.Ī 2021 paper published by researchers at the Institute for the Oceans & Fisheries, University of British Columbia, found that living coral coverage around the planet has declined by half since the 1950s. Though these staghorn stand like mature oak trees above the other coral, most of them wouldn’t be here were it not for UM’s efforts.
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Staghorn tend to spawn once or twice a year a few days after a full moon in summer. The egg-and-sperm bundled are the spherical objects just inside each coral exterior. The texture of a staghorn coral preparing to spawn last week. The researchers scuba dive down and assess the situation, cracking open some of the staghorn to see if their eggs and sperm are ready to go. Schools of small fish shimmy this way and that. The reef is about 20 feet down, with staghorn and a forest-like mix of other coral giving way to limestone crevasses and crannies.
At this site, they’ve outplanted some 30 to 40 large staghorn, which should be sexually mature by now. The UM team has been outplanting nursery-grown corals at local reefs sites since 2017, and first witnessed them spawning in 2020. The preludeĪ mile or so off Key Biscayne, just after sunset, the team locates the dive site. Tonight’s moonlit expedition is a small step in answering those questions. They want to know if a blend of human infrastructure (artificial reefs engineered to be coral- and biodiversity- friendly) and green infrastructure, such as coral, can protect low-lying cities such as Fort Lauderdale, as well as coastal military bases, from the brutal storms and sea-level rise predicted for the coming decades. The project is funded, in part, by a $7.5 million grant from the Department of Defense, which is looking for ways to enhance coastal resiliency. University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science senior research associates Dalton Hesley, left, and Liv Williamson prepare for a night dive to check on coral spawning on Monday in Key Biscayne.
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