Ocean temperatures are climbing once again, and scientists fear Florida’s coral reefs could be headed for another devastating bleaching season.

Extraordinary steps are now being taken to rescue some of the state’s most valuable and vulnerable coral before the worst of the heat arrives, including an urgent mission to safeguard the last remaining elkhorn coral in Florida.

Science teams from the University of Miami’s Lirman Coral Restoration Lab are racing to collect select elkhorn coral genotypes from ocean nurseries off the coast of Miami.

“Right now -- we’re seeing not only ocean temperatures warming at an alarming rate, but projections are kind of reminiscent of 2023, which was a historic bleaching event,” said Dalton Hesley, program director of Rescue a Reef at the University of Miami.

The team selected 30 decent-sized elkhorn coral pieces from the nurseries.

“They knew where to find these corals within our nurseries. They went around and they selected 30 decent-sized elkhorn pieces,” said Diego Lirman, associate professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School at the University of Miami.

The corals were carried ashore in coolers and moved to a University of Miami coral hatchery. The fragile corals represent the genetic diversity of Florida’s elkhorn coral and are being protected in anticipation of a possible bleaching event.

“They’re so important and they’re so critically endangered, that we decided that the moment temperatures got above a threshold, a bleaching high temperature threshold, we would act,” Lirman said.

Just two weeks ago, NOAA raised its coral bleaching alert level for parts of the Florida Reef Tract as ocean temperatures climbed to dangerous levels.

South Florida has now endured 46 consecutive days of triple-digit heat indices, and early signs of coral bleaching and paling are already appearing at Cheeca Rocks off the coast of Islamorada.

“What’s really concerning right now is we’re already hitting these alert levels this early on in July,” said Dr. Ian Enochs, lead scientist with NOAA’s AOML program.

As happened in 2023, Mote Marine Laboratory in the Florida Keys has launched an effort to rescue thousands of vulnerable corals from offshore nurseries. The Coral Restoration Foundation is awaiting regulatory approval to begin transferring vulnerable corals to Elbow Key, where cooler water and better flow could help protect them.

The goal is to preserve the genetic diversity that could one day help rebuild Florida’s reefs.

“We focus on the most vulnerable. We also have really good genetic tracking, so we know which ones we should prioritize,” Lirman said.

Scientists say these elkhorn corals are critical because they represent the original genetic diversity of elkhorn coral in the Florida Keys. Because of past bleaching events and disease, only about 100 of these original elkhorn corals remain in the wild. About 30 years ago, they numbered in the thousands.

“They’ve declined so much in Florida to the point that after the 2023 bleaching event, we lost more than 90% of all wild and restored colonies,” Lirman said.

Along with staghorn coral, elkhorn coral is one of the most important reef-building species in the Caribbean and Florida Keys. It creates essential habitat for countless marine species while helping protect coastlines from erosion and storm surge.

“We’ve had such drastic declines in the abundance of this particular species to the point where they’re now critically endangered and functionally extinct, which means they cannot recover by themselves if we don’t take care of them and propagate them,” Lirman said.

Scientists acknowledge moving the corals comes with risks because the process is stressful for them. But leaving the remaining elkhorn genotypes in the ocean to bleach and die is not an option.

So far, the rescue effort appears to be working.

“A week into this operation, I’m happy to see that these corals are happy themselves. Their polyps are extended. They’re feeding. They have good coloration. So the rescue operations were a success thus far,” Lirman said.

Scientists say rescue missions like this are not a long-term solution. As climate change continues to warm the ocean, coral reefs will keep disappearing unless meaningful action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“We have to act both locally, regionally, and globally to make sure that we slow down the impacts of climate change, so that we can give these last few survivors a chance to recover, and then use those survivors to restore our reefs,” Lirman said.

Scientists say coral bleaching may seem like an environmental issue, but it is also an economic one. Florida’s reefs support billions of dollars in tourism, fishing and recreation while helping protect coastlines from storms.

Even if you’ve never gone diving, scientists say the health of Florida’s reefs affects everyone.

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