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APOLLO BEACH – After two years and more than $ 4.5 million, the Atlantic Aquatic Ocean Aquatic coral into a spawning in a laboratory, aquarium officials announced Wednesday.
The fact that this can be done in a lab, they said, is a hopeful for the Florida coral reef that stretches along the Atlantic coast from Martin County south to the Keys. The corals have been suffering from the effects of warming water and acidification due to climate change, and they are in danger of extinction. Scientists hope to cultivate enough lab-spawned pillar coral to rebuild the reef.
"This is a massive breakthrough," said Jaime Craggs of the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London, a partner in the rescue effort. Craggs was the first scientist to be successful Pacific coral to spawn in a lab six years ago.
The historic event occurred at 12:45 pm Saturday in a 350-gallon tank. The tank sits in a small, dark room on the second floor of a wooden building next to a Tampa Electric Co. power plant. Scientists used computer-controlled lighting and manipulated water temperatures to the bottom of the world, the right time to spawn.
Keri O'Neil, 39, aquarium's senior coral scientist, almost missed it. After constant monitoring the progress of the 30 corals in the tanks, she had stepped out of the room for just a minute. When she stepped back in, he said, "This one is releasing its sperm."
![Keri O'Neil, senior scientist coral at the Florida Aquarium, addressing reporters on Wednesday. She is working with a group of scientists who are the first to spawn an Atlantic coral species in a lab. at the Florida Aquarium Center for Conservation located in Apollo Beach south of Tampa. [OCTAVIO JONES | Times]. OCTAVIO JONES | Times](https://arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tbt.s3.amazonaws.com/public/JKBMGLG2KBDZBPMON6XSCWRDCE.JPG "Keri O'Neil, senior scientist coral at the Florida Aquarium, addressing reporters on Wednesday. She is working with a group of scientists who are the first to spawn an Atlantic coral species in a lab. at the Florida Aquarium Center for Conservation located in Apollo Beach south of Tampa. [OCTAVIO JONES | Times]. OCTAVIO JONES | Times")
"What?" O'Neil asked, "Not a woman", "She was shocked to see you in the water." Soon the female coral was pushing her eggs to mingle with the cloud and become fertilized.
"It's kept going for half an hour," O'Neil said, still sounding giddy while discussing it Wednesday. "They were spawning right at the time they would have spawned in the wild."
Before long they had 30,000 coral larvae wiggling around. Roger Germann, O'Neil said, "we are celebrating our success and we are just starting to win."
The group of scientists and volunteers scooped the larvae with big plastic cups she said, then poured them – 4,000 at a time. They walked very carefully down one of the stairs, across a grass expanse and then back up another set of steps.
"It was the most careful walk ever," O'Neil said. "We did not spill any."
![Keri O'Neil, Senior Coral Scientist at the Florida Aquarium Center for Conservation, located in Apollo Beach, checks tanks holding corals on Wednesday. The center for Conservation utilizes large aquarium holding systems powered by LED technology and computer-controlled systems that mimic its natural environment and signals coral to reproduce. [OCTAVIO JONES | Times] OCTAVIO JONES | Times](https://arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tbt.s3.amazonaws.com/public/Q2NDU5OB6ZEGTL7ODEWNSC6VH4.JPG "Keri O'Neil, Senior Coral Scientist at the Florida Aquarium Center for Conservation, located in Apollo Beach, checks tanks holding corals on Wednesday. The center for Conservation utilizes large aquarium holding systems powered by LED technology and computer-controlled systems that mimic its natural environment and signals coral to reproduce. [OCTAVIO JONES | Times] OCTAVIO JONES | Times")
In just one day of observing those larvae, she said, they have learned to know more about them. The larvae swam around and eventually will settle on small, square tiles with algae on them. That's where they will begin to grow.
At some point when they mature, perhaps in two years, the scientists will explore replanting them in the Keys as part of an effort to rebuild the declining system, O'Neil said.
The Commission on Fish and Wildlife Conservation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Each summer, the Florida Aquarium sends to the Florida Keys for the annual spawning of the coral to collect specimens. The collected spawn is taken from the Keys to get out of what they have collected. Beaches in the Apollo Beach Greenhouses, which the aquarium officials call "arks" after the river boat that saved humanity from a flood.
The aquarium scientist uses data collected by sensors in the Keys to dictate the conditions in the spawning tanks, O'Neil said. Ping pong balls with lights stand in for the moon, for instance.
The pillar coral will take a year to spawn again, she said, but they hope to coax another imperiled species, maze coral, into spawning in about three months. They also hope to fill a blanket of the blanks about the species reproduces.
"We barely know anything about its spawning in the wild," she said.
Germann said that the federal and state funding helped, as did Tampa Electric parent TECO's agreement to lease the aquarium 22 acres for $ 1 a year. But some of the funding also came from the aquarium's own ticket sales.
"Everyone who bought a Florida Aquarium has their fingerprints on the success of this project," he said.
This story was produced by the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.
Ccontact Craig Pittman at [email protected]. Follow @craigtimes.
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