February is on track to become the ninth month in a row with record-breaking temperatures, creating concerns for the health of the planet. In the Florida Keys, rising marine temperatures have been bleaching coral reefs.
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High temperatures in summer 2023 caused so much damage that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) added three more levels to a two-level alert system to measure the impact.
Per the new alert system, the Florida Keys hit alert levels four and five last summer, warning of the potential for near complete coral mortality.
Delicate coral conservation nurseries had to be evacuated from the ocean and installed in extensive land-based operations. Ocean temperatures reached triple digits in some areas and didn’t cool down enough to reinstall the coral nurseries until late October.
In a recent NOAA survey of five coral restoration sites off the Florida Keys, several important corals were either completely decimated or barely found.
NOAA and Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary created Mission: Iconic Reefs Research and Monitoring. For this project, a team of researchers took a survey vessel through the Florida Keys looking for elkhorn and staghorn corals.
“This certainly did feel like a step back,” Mission: Iconic Reefs Monitoring Coordinator Katey Lesneski said. “Many of the corals that we did survey are those out of corals that are part of reef restoration.”
According to Lesneski, healthy elkhorn and staghorn corals are typically a tan, orange, brown color. On the research team’s journey to Key West, it came across multiple colonies of coral that had not been alive for months.
Fewer than 22% of staghorn corals survived, and those that did were only found in the two northernmost sites. The Looe Key Reef in the lower Florida keys had no live staghorn or elkhorn corals.
“Now they basically essentially blend in with the background,” Lesneski said. “They’re covered in brown and green algae and look quite drab and they don’t stand out. So we were sad to see that. But we did find survivors of elkhorn and staghorn coral at some of those reefs, which definitely gives us hope.”
Scientists are looking to the survivors of the marine heat wave to direct their efforts in coral conservation and learn what kept the specific reefs and colonies alive.
“We can look at the survivors that we found from this past summer’s marine heatwave and we can learn a lot more about them,” Lesneski said. “Is it something about their genetic lineage? Is it the relationship that they have with symbiotic algae that gives them food? And then we can make decisions about how better to use science to restore reefs while keeping in mind the effects of climate change.”
