Since 2018, my lab has transplanted hundreds of coral specimens to reefs in Florida to study what makes them grow. We have albums of photos documenting their lives, starting from branches no bigger than your finger to beautiful treelike adults as big as beach balls.
In June 2023, as water temperatures in Florida skyrocketed, my team rushed to our field sites — and found extreme bleaching (the loss of color signaling that corals are starving) and death already underway. Throughout the Florida Keys, corals were disappearing in an ocean that had become too hot for them to survive. We left our experiment running to find out what would happen. By November, 98 percent of our corals were dead.
This severe bleaching was just the latest blow to reefs already battered by storms, disease and the loss of other animals. In the 18 years I’ve studied reefs in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean, coral populations have continued to decline such that they can no longer recover naturally; I worry that even those few survivors from our project won’t last another summer in which water temperatures soar past 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Caribbean reefs are now in such dire condition that lifelong coral biologists are considering calling them a total loss and trying to replace native coral with species imported from the Pacific Ocean. I have a different take. I believe we can still stave off the complete collapse of Caribbean reefs. But we must act quickly to bank living coral in aquariums and stockpile their eggs and sperm in cryostorage for future I.V.F. efforts. If we abandon them in an increasingly inhospitable ocean, we put them at risk of extinction.
The goal is to buy time while we wait for the world to slow, and hopefully, one day reverse climate change. Banking and freezing coral may sound extreme, but it’s necessary — many of the remaining wild corals represent unique genetic combinations. Lose too many and the rest could go extinct just by chance. If we can’t rescue them, we could face the extinction of an entire ecosystem.
Last summer, there wasn’t a roster of emergency workers to help evacuate corals, much less aquariums fully prepared to receive them. Organizations such as Mote Marine Laboratory and the Florida Aquarium swiftly mobilized what tanks and teams they could. Those teams worked themselves to the breaking point.
Many corals were saved, but many more were lost because we weren’t prepared for such an extreme temperature spike. We must plan for ecological disasters just as we plan for public emergencies. Ocean temperatures this summer are on track to be hot but not devastatingly so — but the reprieve is only temporary.
When the next life-threatening heat wave comes, we will need evacuation facilities and shifts of teams so that we can save as many coral colonies as possible. We wouldn’t ask firefighters to rush into a burning building untrained, without a plan. We must adopt the same mentality for ecological crises. And just transplanting corals will not be enough to restore reefs. We will have to increase their heat tolerance by investing in the most promising science.
We’ll need coral seed banks, which exist but have to be expanded. This includes both cryostorage — think Svalbard Global Seed Vault, but for the sea — as well as genetic banks of living corals. Zoos and aquariums already play this role in the conservation and breeding of endangered wildlife. We can do the same here.
Not everyone agrees. Some scientists have argued that investing in reef restoration is like putting a gilded Band-Aid on a patient in cardiac arrest. It’s true that it would cost many millions of dollars over years on top of infrastructure costs to build and power equipment such as cryovaults. But that’s far less than what it would cost to lose reefs altogether. Coral reefs are home to a quarter of the ocean’s biodiversity and are a source of potential medicines. They also support tourist economies, generating roughly $1 billion in annual revenue from fishing, diving and snorkeling in Florida alone.
The United States spends huge sums annually to repair beach communities after major storms — an average of $22 billion per event. Homeowners shell out tens of thousands of dollars just to build personal sea walls. Healthy reefs perform some of the same functions, absorbing storm surges and protecting coastal homes, and they repair themselves without constant maintenance. We simply cannot afford to lose them.
It won’t be easy to correct our course. More than 30 countries and territories have jurisdiction over Caribbean reefs. Political relationships in the region have been damaged by conflict and distrust, in part because foreigners have exploited reef resources that locals depend on. But if done right, a plan to save coral could unite Caribbean nations around a common cause.
My coral transplants are gone, but their genetic lines live on in captivity. I dream of a future in which we have established international networks of biobanks that countries can fall back on to prevent the permanent loss of corals. A future in which we have invested in transformative solutions for nature. A future where I can again watch my corals grow.
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