Multi-species Coral Rescue in Response to the Major Disease Event on the Florida Reef Tract

Since 2014, the Florida Reef Tract has been experiencing a major disease event affecting over 20 species, with up to 80% mortality, that spans from Martin County to the northern extent of the Lower Keys. A multi-agency collaboration is responding to the event. One intervention is to "rescue" fragments or small colonies of still-healthy individuals of susceptible species to provide genetic preservation and a stock source for future restoration activities. Beginning in August 2018, the rescue will include collection of fragments or colonies of putative unique genets of priority species from multiple habitat strata across the reef tract. When possible, replicates of each genet will be collected or subdivided for distribution to multiple housing facilities to spread risk. Collections will be transported to a network of land-based and in-water nurseries for gene banking and propagation, for future reintroduction back to the Florida Reef Tract. Since a goal of the project is the maintenance of genetic diversity of the affected species, an additional component may include the development of genetic markers for genotyping and tracking genets. This unique effort builds off a similar rescue effort for the threatened Pillar coral, but is precedent setting in its scope and scale, given the large number of species being rescued.