DANIA BEACH, Florida — Scientists have relocated about 300 endangered marine corals from South Florida to the Texas Gulf Coast for research and restoration.
Nova Southeastern University And Texas One&M University-Corpus Christi Researchers packed the corals Wednesday at NSU’s Oceanographic Campus in Dania Beach. The marine animals were then loaded into a van, taken to a nearby airport and flown to Texas.
According to NSU researcher Shane Wever, the researchers were extremely careful when moving these fragile corals.
“The process that we’re undertaking today is a great opportunity for us to expand the representation of the corals that we work with and the locations where they’re stored,” Wever said. “Increasing the locations where they’re stored really acts as a safeguard for us to protect them and preserve them for the future.”
Each coral was packed with fresh, clean seawater and supplemental oxygen, placed in a protective box and insulated and lined coolers, and transported for the shortest possible time.
NSU’s marine science research facility serves as a coral reef nursery, where rescued corals are stored, processed for restoration and returned to the ocean. The school has shared corals with other universities, including the University of Miami, Florida Atlantic University and Texas State University, as well as the Coral Restoration Foundation in the Florida Keys.
Despite how important coral is, it’s easy for people who live on land to forget how important things are in the ocean, Texas A&Keisha Bahr, a researcher at M University-Corpus Christi, said:
“Corals serve a lot of different purposes,” Bahr said. “First, they protect our coastlines, especially here in Florida, from wave energy and coastal erosion. They also provide us with a lot of the food that we get from our oceans. And they are nurseries for a lot of the organisms that come from the sea.”
Abnormally high ocean temperatures caused widespread coral bleaching in 2023, wiping out corals in the Florida Keys. Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi turned to NSU when its partners in the Keys could no longer provide corals for its research. Broward County was spared from the majority of the 2023 bleaching event, so the NSU offshore coral nursery had healthy corals to donate.
“We’re losing corals at an alarming rate,” Bahr said. “We’ve lost about half of our corals in the last three decades. So we need to make sure that we continue to have these girls in the future.”
Texas One&M University-Corpus Christi is using some of these corals to study the effects of Port Everglades sediment on coral health. The rest will help the university with its work to create a bleaching guide for the Caribbean or will serve as a genetic bank, representing nearly 100 genetically diverse Staghorn coral colonies from South Florida reefs.
“We wanted to give them as many genotypes, which are genetic individuals, as possible to really serve as a safeguard for these super important species,” Wever said.