Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.
“These babies have been raised on land since conception,” said Bailey Marquardt, a doctoral student at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science, who led the effort of moving the corals to the ocean in April.
The outplanting effort is part of a pioneering initiative to test if cross-breeding Florida’s elkhorn corals with more heat-resilient variants from other places in the Caribbean can help improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand rising ocean temperatures.
Prior to 2023, elkhorn corals remained a prominent and important reef-building species in Florida and the Caribbean. Their large, branching colonies created complex three-dimensional structures that provided critical habitat for fish, lobsters and other marine life. They also formed much of the reef crest that helped protect Florida’s coastlines by absorbing and dissipating waves before they reached shore.
