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.
This severe bleaching was just the latest blow to reefs already battered by storms, disease, and the loss of other animals. Throughout the Florida Keys, corals were disappearing in an ocean that had become too hot for them to survive. I worry that even those few survivors from our project won't last another summer in which water temperatures soar past 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
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 unique coral species, amplifying the threat to overall ecosystem health, which is already at a critical juncture.
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