Biscayne National Park, located in Miami’s back yard, protects extensive mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, the northernmost Florida Keys, and a portion of the Florida Keys Reef Tract. Status as a national park offers a level of protection from some local stressors, yet the park’s proximity to ...

Heirs To Our Oceans is not just a global movement empowering youth to protect their oceans and waters for their generation, it is a representative of how the education system must change to prepare our kids as they will inherit the problems our oceans face including the coral crisis. 14 year old Cha...

The die-off of the long-spined sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) in the early 1980s is a well-studied event in the Caribbean. The loss of this important herbivore lead to significant increases in algal abundance, and consequently, coral reef degradation. Recently, D. antillarum populations have been i...

The decline of living coral throughout much of the Florida Reef Tract, with no sign of community recovery over the last several decades, has resulted in a substantial need for active coral restoration. However, much of the threats associated with coral mortality, such as high water temperatures and ...

Coral reef restoration techniques through coral gardening suffer a founder effect. As in the population genetics concept, a small population of pioneers who initiated restoration at a specific region develop the in situ (ocean) nurseries and outplanting (transplantation) methods. The techniques deve...

The impacts of hurricanes and tropical storms on coral reef organisms have been well documented. Impacts of storms on reefs have ranged from minor to devastating, with extreme cases resulting in the destruction of the reef framework. Taxa with shallow distributions and branching morphologies like th...

Coral reef social-ecological systems (SES) frameworks can provide an important tool for managers as they develop and implement restoration actions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) developed an SES framework and integrated monitoring (IM) program to inform management and re...

Coral growth is a critical aspect to reef health, resiliency under rapidly changing environmental conditions, and restoration efforts. Although fragmenting has been occurring for many years in an effort to restore reefs, recently it was discovered that microfragmenting, the process of cutting one co...

The Miami-Dade portion of the Florida Reef Tract consists mostly of non-accretionary hard bottom coral communities organized into patchy platform and shelf edge reefs. Live hard coral cover is very low in the wake of coral disease, thermal shocks and hurricanes. However, the reefs are high value due...

In Florida, coral reefs have experienced up to a 98% loss in the populations of Acropora coral. This decline can be attributed to multiple compounding factors including overfishing, poor water quality, extreme water temperatures, and the loss of herbivores. As these threats continue - and potentiall...

Over the past 30 years we have lost 50% of corals worldwide. With climate change projections increasing over time, it is estimated that only 10% of corals will survive past 2050. Therefore, we must intervene to establish a foundation of resilient corals that allow our reefs to have a future. In 2015...

The north of Mozambique is famous for the biodiversity of coral, specially Acropora genera. Despite climate change the region recovered well for the el Ninõ 1998 and after that was not hit. Meanwhile the 3th biggest reserves of gas where discover in deep sea, and a big LNG plant is going to be buil...

Despite widespread increases in coral outplanting around the globe, few studies focus on the effects of coral restoration on reef communities or important ecosystem functions like herbivory and coral predation. Here, we measured the impact of coral restoration at four reefs in the Florida Keys, USA,...

Additional co-authors: Gabriel Juarez, Bruce Fouke, Forest Rower, and Linda Wegley. Materials scientists are engineers who study how synthetic and natural materials interact with their environment, whether that be mechanical, chemical, electrical, thermal, optical, magnetic, or even biological. They...

Caribbean coral populations are actively being restored via asexual fragmentation of adult populations and the production of sexual offspring. The goal of restoration is to increase population sizes while maximizing adaptive potential of restored populations. Because the total number of remaining wi...

Once largely abundant throughout the Florida Keys and Caribbean, Acropora cervicornis and A. palmata populations have drastically declined (>98% at some locations) due to multiple, compounding natural and anthropogenic stressors. As these threats continue, there is a clear need for innovative method...

Under predicted future ocean conditions, elevated seawater temperatures and ocean acidification (OA) will affect coral simultaneously. Many studies have shown that these conditions can be detrimental to the physiology of both the coral host and its endosymbiotic algae. Moderate nutrient additions, h...

Currently, there is a widespread coral disease outbreak occurring on the reefs of Florida that has resulted in significant mortalities of 11 of the 24 species surveyed. This unprecedented outbreak provides a unique but time-sensitive opportunity to address critical questions about coral disease. Thi...

A major obstacle for reef conservation is the identification of stress tolerant corals and habitats at large scales. We present a novel method to overcome this limitation, detecting tolerant corals using prior information on the natural bleaching response of individual colonies and airborne imaging ...

Rising seawater temperatures are a major threat to coral reefs worldwide, causing coral bleaching events that are occurring annually in some locations and are expected to be annual events globally this century. Corals with high levels of stored energy reserves are known to have increased survival an...

The Florida Reef Resilience Program’s Disturbance Response Monitoring program (DRM) was developed to assess stony coral condition on shallow coral reefs from the Dry Tortugas to Martin County during the months of high thermal stress. Results from DRM survey events have shown that bleaching prevale...

Cellular stress memory is an important and conserved feature across the tree of life. A growing body of evidence in the literature suggests corals may have a thermal stress memory. Indeed, knowledge of coral stress memory could improve restoration outcomes. To elicit thermal stress memory in the lab...

The Australian Government has pledged A$ 100 million over the coming 5 years towards Reef restoration and adaptation science, thus providing a globally significant opportunity to advance coral reef restoration. This program will build on the outcomes from the Reef Restoration and Adaptation program;...

The Varadero Reef is a relic of a wider reef system located close to one of the straits that connect the Bay of Cartagena in Colombia to the Caribbean Sea. This reef has remained relatively healthy despite the poor environmental conditions associated to significant freshwater discharges with high se...

As climate change decimates coral communities on a global scale, effective outplanting of resilient corals will become an increasingly important management tool. This study examined endangered Caribbean coral Acropora cervicornis with three objectives. 1) Determine if there is significant phenotypic...

Measuring the performance of coral phenotypes can link genotypes to their environment, potentially allowing practitioners to cultivate species and genotypes that are particularly well suited for restoration projects. Yet, performance depends on interactions between individuals and their local enviro...

The Florida Reef Tract (FRT) spans approximately 595 km along the south and southeast Florida (SE FL) coastline from the Dry Tortugas to Martin County. These reefs continue to experience a devastating coral disease event that began in 2014 and altered the population demographics, effectively elimina...

To date coral restoration has focused disproportionately on branching species in large scale outplanting projects. These species are chosen because they fragment readily, have fast growth rates, and cover large areas in short periods of time. Unfortunately these traits are linked to species suscepti...

Current research has shown strong differences within species between coral colonies in their resistance to bleaching temperatures. Sources of variation range from the symbiont, acclimation by the host, adaptation by the host and microbiome. New efforts in the Pacific show that choosing heat resistan...

Assisted migration of corals over latitudinal gradients has been proposed as a strategy for increasing coral thermotolerance, but is currently considered high-risk, due to the potential for the unwanted introduction of pathogens or invasive species, and genetic risks such as outbreeding depression. ...