{"id":334257,"date":"2026-07-09T12:09:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/334257\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T12:09:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:09:43","slug":"how-experts-are-restoring-ailing-coral-as-the-ocean-warms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/334257\/","title":{"rendered":"How experts are restoring ailing coral as the ocean warms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions of dollars in coastal infrastructure and a booming fishing industry are at risk in South Florida as the region\u2019s coral reefs continue to die off at a rate scientists call alarming.<\/p>\n

The threat has become more visible in recent weeks as South Florida endures a string of heat advisories<\/a> and ocean temperatures keep climbing. The state\u2019s coral reefs once covered roughly 50% of the sea floor; today, that figure is under 5%.<\/p>\n

\u201cCorals cannot tolerate that increase in heat,\u201d said Joana Figueiredo, a marine biology professor and director of Nova Southeastern University\u2019s\u00a0 National Coral Reef Institute<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019ve evolved for millions of years in a very narrow temperature range, so whenever they go outside of that, they just get stressed, and then a lot of them die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reefs are the first line of defense against coastal flooding, absorbing up to 97% of incoming wave energy before it ever reaches the shore. Without this buffer, storm surge and coastal erosion hit harder, which can threaten homes, roads and other infrastructure \u2014 and in worse cases, can force communities to relocate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reef is really important because it breaks the wave action,\u201d Figueiredo said. \u201cSo when the waves hit the reef, they break the wave and that means they\u2019re going to have less coastal erosion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s flatness, Figueiredo added, makes the flooding risk especially acute.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven a minor storm, you\u2019re going to get water going in, not just a big storm,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Researchers estimate that coastal erosion in the U.S. causes about $500 million<\/a> in property loss and damage annually.<\/p>\n

The U.S. already spends heavily on beach nourishment \u2014 pumping in new sand to replace what storms wash away \u2014 a method that has cost more than $10 billion<\/a> nationwide over the past century.<\/p>\n

Researchers say investing in coral restoration now can lower future costs.<\/p>\n

\"JoanaJoana Figueiredo, executive director of the National Coral Reef Institute and marine science professor at Nova Southeastern University, speaks about coral research at the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach. (Amy Beth Bennett \/ South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year we put sand on our beach and then the storms come in and take the sand away,\u201d Figueiredo said. \u201cAll this money we put on the beach just goes away, so imagine having to do that so often.\u201d<\/p>\n

NSU researchers are working to slow this decline by growing coral to a suitable size for planting on Broward County\u2019s reefs; their goal is to reconnect a population that has become too sparse to sustain itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re [the corals] are too far away from each other to make babies,\u201d Figueiredo said, explaining that corals killed off by heat and disease leave survivors too isolated to reproduce.<\/p>\n

The University of Miami is taking a different approach: Building \u201chybrid reefs\u201d in Miami-Dade County that pair manmade structures a couple hundred meters offshore with living coral.<\/p>\n

The UM project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency<\/a>, aims to grow corals that can better survive warmer water.<\/p>\n

To do that, scientists are crossbreeding native Florida coral with coral sourced from Honduras, where reefs run about 2 degrees warmer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re [the oceans] are warming faster than ever before,\u201d said Andrew Baker, a UM marine biology professor and the school\u2019s director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab<\/a>. He noted that not every year is warmer than the last, but that \u201cif you plot a line through the last few decades, there\u2019s an inescapable trend upwards, and that rate of change is accelerating really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, a NOAA analysis<\/a> found it \u201cvery likely\u201d that 2026 will rank in the top five warmest years.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single year, we\u2019ve entered a new normal, where the kinds of temperatures we see every summer are the kinds of temperatures that would have been unheard of even in the year 2000,\u201d Baker said.<\/p>\n

But the new hybrid corals aren\u2019t just built for heat. Despite 2025 delivering some of the warmest summer months on record, January brought some of the coldest winter temperatures in years, and Baker said the coral are being bred to handle both extremes, not just abnormal warmth.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change isn\u2019t just about the warming trend, it also tends to increase the variability along with that trend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A 2022 study<\/a> by NOAA and the University of Miami found that 70% of Florida\u2019s coral reefs are currently experiencing net habitat loss \u2014 meaning they\u2019re eroding faster than they\u2019re growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the impact is much higher than people are thinking,\u201d Figueiredo said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be doing restoration forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ResearchResearch and development manager Rachel Ionata cleans baby brain coral in the lab at the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach. (Amy Beth Bennett \/ South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions of dollars in coastal infrastructure and a booming fishing industry are at risk in South Florida as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[134467,506,113,1563,28,29,249,251,250,114,373,115,557,554,109],"class_list":["post-334257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-all-readers","tag-broward-county","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami-dade-county","tag-news","tag-palm-beach-county","tag-science","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}