Currents Fall 2012 Newsletter - Volume XXVII, Number 2

4 In the News OC Spotlighted for Coral Transplant Work This March, Oceanographic Center researchers and students (Ph.D. candidate Abby Renegar and M.S. student Keri O’Neil ) organized the delicate operation of transplanting 28 healthy, laboratory-raised staghorn coral colonies onto a threatened reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale. Monthly monitoring has shown that the transplanted colonies are growing well and have not experienced any mortality or evident disease. Such research is important because staghorn and elkhorn corals were the first coral species to be listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. These species have been particularly hard hit, with the South Florida and Caribbean Reef populations declining by 90 percent. This work is a corollary to our offshore coral reef “nurseries” program spearheaded by NSU OC faculty member David Gilliam, Ph.D., and Ph.D. candidate Liz Larson. Located in Broward County, these offshore nurseries have provided more than 1,000 transplants to damaged areas. While the land-based coral nurseries are confined by space and cost, they have the advantage of ideal conditions, which can produce bigger corals over a shorter period of time. This can potentially give them a survival advantage once cemented into a new reef. NSU OC nursery research has been nationally covered by NBC news, The Miami Herald , and NPR, as well as internationally by the Australian ABC network and by the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium newspaper . M.S. students Cameron Baxley and Pete Grosso transplanting corals M.S. student Pete Grosso transplanting nursery corals Photos courtesy of Kirk Kilfoyle