Scientists Have Moved Hundreds of Corals from Florida to Texas

Scientists have transferred some 300 marine corals from South Florida to the Texas Gulf Coast for research and restoration.

Researchers from Nova Southeastern University [NSU] and Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi transferred the corals on Wednesday to the former's facility in Dania Beach, from where they were transported to a nearby airport and flown to Texas State.

 

Extreme care was taken for the transportation, said NSU researcher Shane Wever.

NSU's facilities dedicated to marine life research serve as a cradle, a nursery, for the corals, where they are kept, treated for recovery and returned to the ocean.

NSU has shared corals with other universities, such as Miami, Florida Atlantic and Texas State, as well as with the Coral Restoration Foundation.

Despite the importance of corals, it's easy for people who live on land to forget the importance of the things that are in the oceans, said researcher Keisha Bahr, from Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi.

“Corals serve a lot of different purposes,” said Bahr. “First of all, they protect our coastline, particularly here in Florida, from wave energy and coastal erosion. They also provide us with a lot of the food we get from the oceans. And they are home to a huge number of organisms,” he said.

Extremely high ocean temperatures caused widespread coral bleaching in 2023, destroying coral in the Florida Keys, the archipelago of tropical islands in the south of the state.

Researchers at Texas A&M - Corpus Christi turned to NSU when their partners in the Keys were no longer able to provide corals for their investigations.

Broward County was spared most of the bleaching that occurred in 2023, so NSU's offshore cradle has healthy corals to offer.“We're losing corals at an alarming rate,” Bahr said. 

“We've lost about half of our corals in the last three decades. We need to make sure we continue to have these 'girls' in the future.”