Excerpt:
Two months into 2024, water temperatures in the North Atlantic are off the charts — raising concerns this year will bring another wave of record-breaking marine heat.
Last year, sea surface temperature records toppled around the world, and about half the surface area of the world’s oceans experienced marine heat wave conditions by the end of the summer.
The high temperatures then and now are especially worrisome to experts working to protect Florida’s vulnerable coral reef — the only extensive reef system in the continental United States. And the heat is putting a damper on some efforts to bolster corals against future warming.
The Coral Restoration Foundation, a marine conservation nonprofit based in the Florida Keys, has spent years growing new corals in offshore nurseries and then relocating them to the Florida reef, a process known as outplanting. It’s a strategy designed to bolster threatened and endangered coral species while improving the reef’s resilience to environmental disturbances.
CRF participates in a collaborative initiative spearheaded by NOAA known as Mission: Iconic Reefs, which aims to restore around 3 million square feet of coral reefs across seven sites in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Transplanting new corals to the reef is a big part of those efforts.
But CRF, which is one of the world’s largest reef restoration organizations, has decided to press pause this year on most of its outplanting activities.
Marine heat last year wiped out more than half the group’s nursery stocks. And while they were still left with about 20,000 corals — down from 50,000 before the heat struck — they hope to spend much of this year building their numbers back up again.
But it could be tough. Restoration experts are worried about another extreme summer. If this year’s temperatures rival last year’s, much of the reef could bleach or die for the second year in a row.
“It’s not the best decision to do a huge charge into outplanting again in what could be another difficult or extreme year,” said Jessica Levy, CRF’s restoration program manager…
See also:
NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (08-16-2023):
2023 Coral Bleaching – Cheeca Rocks, Florida Keys
NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory’s Coral Program documented bleached corals at Cheeca Rocks near Islamorada, FL during routine monitoring starting in late July 2023. Part of the Mission: Iconic Reefs project, Cheeca Rocks has some of the highest percent of stony coral coverage in the Florida Keys and has historically been more resilient than other reefs in the area. The water temperatures at this site has reached 91 degrees Fahrenheit, which is much higher than what is typically recorded for this time of year. Most of the corals here are heavily bleached, with some already experiencing mortality. AOML Coral Program scientists are visiting this site often to collect photomosaics to document this bleaching event.
