In Florida, a race to rescue diseased corals
On any given day, aquarist Sara Stevens whips up a slurry of plankton, amino acids and other powdered nutrients to feed a voracious group of rescued corals. Using a turkey baster, she blasts the cloudy concoction over each colony made up of thousands of individual organisms called polyps, watching as their tiny tentacles slowly extend and envelop the meal. For the especially carnivorous ones housed at the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colo., she hand-feeds them full-bodied krill.
This ritual is just one part of the painstaking care Stevens and other aquarists across the country have been giving to a group of corals rescued from disease-ridden waters in Florida. Their future depends on it.
Since 2014, a mysterious illness known as stony coral tissue loss disease has plagued Florida’s reef tract, killing off nearly half the state’s hard corals, whose rigid limestone skeletons provide the architectural backbone of the largest bank reef in the continental United States. By 2018, it became clear that without drastic intervention, these corals would face imminent localized extinction.
“We couldn’t sit back and watch these corals disappear,” said Stephanie Schopmeyer, a coral ecologist from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
To save them, scientists devised a plan to remove the most vulnerable species from their natural habitat and create a land-based gene bank that would serve as a modern day ark for the animals. They knew that to succeed, time was of the essence and collaboration was key. What followed was an unprecedented effort, in which dozens of federal and state organizations, universities, zoos and aquariums joined forces to rescue thousands of Florida’s endangered corals.
Around 40 percent of Florida’s rescued corals remain local at the Florida Coral Rescue Center, a state-of-the-art facility created solely for the purpose of housing and restoring populations affected by stony coral tissue loss. But before the facility opened last year, rescued corals were flown across the country to be rehomed. To date, around 2,000 corals have been placed at more than 20 facilities in at least 14 states.
“This is the first time an aquatic species has been rescued in this manner,” said Beth Firchau, Florida Reef Tract Rescue Project coordinator.
Unlike other coral diseases, which typically affect about 2 percent to 3 percent of corals on a reef and fluctuate seasonally, stony coral tissue loss targets more than 20 species and kills its host within a few months — sometimes even weeks.
No one knows what causes the waterborne disease or what sparked its initial outbreak. Climate change, however, has made such events increasingly common.
“Anytime you’ve got warm temperatures and increases in nutrients, it kind of creates this environment that can breed bacteria and increase things like viruses in the water,” said Schopmeyer.
Recently, the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center released data suggesting a virus is probably triggering the disease, according to Maurizio Martinelli, Florida Sea Grant’s coral disease response coordinator. A bacterial infection may also be involved. But without knowing for sure, little can be done to stop it.
Since it was first detected near a Port of Miami dredging project, the disease has continued to spread north and south along Florida’s 360-mile-long reef tract, which is valued at $8.5 million for the jobs it creates and the income it brings in from tourism. Corals in more than 17 countries and territories throughout the Caribbean are now being impacted.
“To have something like this last this long and affect this number of species has really never been seen before,” said Jennifer Moore, Threatened Coral Recovery Coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.