Coral Rescue Operation Brainchild Of FL Aquarium, U Of Miami

TAMPA, FL — To the unsuspecting onlooker, it might have resembled a furtive meeting between a drug dealer and a dope addict in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Naples

But there was nothing criminal about the surreptitious parking lot meetup and the whirlwind exchange of coolers containing mysterious contents.

On the contrary, the rushed rendezvous on May 7 was a critical step in a three-year effort to successfully breed brain coral in a laboratory and wild coral for the first time in the hopes of rescuing the world's dying coral reefs.

For the breeding to take place, scientists from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and The Florida Aquarium in Tampa had to act quickly.

When coral spawning began in the wild earlier this month, the marine scientists quickly arranged to meet in a parking lot at a fast-food restaurant in Naples, about half between their facilities on opposite sides of the state. There, the scientists carefully exchanged fragile vials of frozen coral sperm cradled in coolers filled with liquid nitrogen.

Once the hand-off was made, the scientists sped back to their respective laboratories in time for that evening's spawning event.

The bizarre parking lot exchange had the intended results.

For the first time, grooved brain corals rescued from a disease outbreak and maintained in human care were bred with wild corals that survived the disease.

The breakthrough represents the first-time cryogenically preserved sperm has been successfully used to crossbreed brain coral parents from different locations, a historical step in the effort to create a genetic diverse, disease-resistant brain coral that will restore Florida’s depleted coral reefs.

A source of nitrogen and other essential nutrients, coral reefs support food chains for marine life. They also absorb harmful pollutants, allowing microorganisms that support marine life to thrive.

However, reefs in Florida are in crisis. They've been devastated by stony coral tissue loss disease, which has affected more than 20 coral species to date. Since first appearing in 2014, the disease has spread throughout most of Florida’s coral reef as well as to other reefs in the Caribbean.

In 2018, the Florida Coral Rescue Team, led by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Fisheries, began removing corals before they were affected by the disease outbreak. They then distributed the coral to public aquariums around the U.S. to safeguard them.

Earlier this month, UM Rosenstiel School scientists fertilized eggs from wild Miami colonies of the grooved brain coral, Diploria labyrinthiformis, using frozen sperm collected from corals rescued by The Florida Aquarium, which has maintained these corals in labs since 2018.

At the same time, scientists from The Florida Aquarium fertilized eggs from its rescued corals using sperm from wild corals spawned in Key Largo and collected and frozen by scientists from UM Rosenstiel School, the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies and the Coral Restoration Foundation.

“This is the first attempt to use rescued corals to breed for increased resistance to stony coral tissue loss disease,” said UM Rosenstiel School coral biologist Andrew Baker, a professor of marine biology and ecology and director of the UM Coral Reef Futures Laboratory. “By cross-breeding the remaining wild brain corals with the rescued corals that were saved earlier, we hope to re-introduce some of the genetic diversity that would otherwise have been lost from Florida’s reefs. This diversity is essential to maintain ecosystem resilience to help Florida’s reefs survive into the future.”

This effort led to the hasty fast-food parking lot exchange.

“We planned this in a short phone call a few days before the exchange,” said Keri O'Neil, manager and senior scientist of The Florida Aquarium’s Coral Conservation Program. “With the rapid decline of Florida's coral reef, we cannot sit by and let a spawning event happen without trying to sharpen all of the tools in the toolbox."

Both institutions now have offspring from the cross-bred parents.

“For all of us, this was our first attempt at using frozen sperm to create offspring with fresh eggs, so we weren’t sure it would work," said Liv Williamson, a doctoral candidate at the UM Rosenstiel School. “We were thrilled when it did. The larvae have now metamorphosed into tiny baby corals and are doing nicely.”

“The success of this breeding attempt demonstrates why the Florida Coral Rescue Project was initiated back in 2018,” said Jennifer Moore of NOAA Fisheries, co-chair of the Florida Coral Rescue Team.

“It offers hope for protecting and restoring Florida’s coral reef despite the disease," said Lisa Gregg of the FWC, co-chair of the Coral Rescue Team.

The activity was a collaboration between scientists at the UM Rosenstiel School, The Florida Aquarium, NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center, UM’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies and the Coral Restoration Foundation.

The breeding program is funded by NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program, and this month’s success represents one of the first uses of cryopreservation for the conservation and restoration of Florida’s corals.

The research effort is also part of the Southeast Florida Coral Restoration Hub, funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Timeline Of Events

• May 2018 and 2019: Grooved brain corals were collected from the Lower Keys as part of the Florida Coral Rescue Project, led by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and NOAA Fisheries, and held at The Florida Aquarium.
• May 2019 and May 2020: The rescued colonies spawned in human care. Emily Williams, biologist from The Florida Aquarium, cryopreserved the sperm.
• March 2021: To avoid damage during upcoming dredging operations, brain corals were removed from the Port of Miami by scientists at the UM Rosenstiel School and housed temporarily in outdoor tanks ready for restoration to local reefs.
• May 5-9, 2021: Corals from the Port of Miami were spawned at the UM facility.
• May 6-9, 2021: The rescued corals at The Florida Aquarium were spawned again.
• May 6, 2021: Scientists from the UM Rosenstiel School, the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Science and the Coral Restoration Foundation collected spawn from wild brain corals off Key Largo and UM doctoral candidate Liv Williamson cryopreserved the sperm.
• May 7, 2021: Scientists from UM and The Florida Aquarium met in a fast-food parking lot in Naples to exchange vials of frozen sperm from their spawning corals.
• May 7-8, 2021: Freshly spawned eggs were successfully fertilized using the frozen sperm.
• May 9, 2021: Coral larvae began metamorphosing into baby corals in the laboratory.

The Florida Aquarium

See related stories:

• Florida Aquarium Takes Another Step To Saving Endangered Coral
• Florida Aquarium Makes Historic Discovery To Save Coral Reefs