KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. \u2013 Scientists working to save a coral species from extinction transported 30 pieces from nurseries off the Florida coast to a hatchery on land Wednesday, fearing that warming waters could trigger a mass bleaching event this summer that could wipe them out.<\/p>\n
Elkhorn coral populations were decimated by a 2023 heat wave and a less severe one in 2024<\/a> that left them functionally extinct \u2014 meaning remaining colonies are too small and far apart to reproduce in the wild \u2014 from Broward County to the Florida Keys, said Diego Lirman, associate professor of marine biology at the University of Miami. Heat causes coral to bleach, which can be fatal if it lasts long enough.<\/p>\n Researchers have been propagating them at coastal nurseries, but decided to bring some ashore now because of indications that 2026 will be \u201ca really bad year\u201d for bleaching \u2014 perhaps even worse than 2023, Lirman said. Coral has been showing indications of heat stress as water temperatures rise.<\/p>\n Coral populations are living creatures that form reefs, globally important for seafood production, protecting coastlines from storm surges and tourism. But scientists fear they could be lost because of climate change: Florida coral has experienced four mass bleaching events in the past decade.<\/p>\n \u201cThey seem to be blending into each other and corals are not getting time to recover,\u201d Lirman said.<\/p>\n Divers focused Wednesday on collecting genetically diverse coral pieces, wrapping each in wet bubble wrap and placing them in coolers before sanitizing them and putting them in tanks at the hatchery. <\/p>\n The university exchanges coral with other researchers and facilities to preserve as much original genetic diversity as possible in nurseries and in hatcheries, \u201cso if one goes down you don\u2019t lose the last remaining genetic information,\u201d Lirman said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou never know: You may have some that are resistant to disease, some that are resistant to temperature, some that are resistant to acidification,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce we lose them, then that information is lost.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. \u2013 Scientists working to save a coral species from extinction transported 30 pieces from nurseries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3753,132275,1563,28,30,29,1110],"class_list":["post-349480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-climate","tag-diego-lirman","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349480","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=349480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}