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I have some great news! IVF for coral works!
Coral spawning season occurs in late summer, around August, and usually happens a few days after the full moon, but since 2016 coral have had some help from scientists during spawning season!
IVF stands for “in vitro fertilization,” and for coral that means taking coral spawn and either fertilizing them in a lab or putting them in pools like these to promote reproduction. Once the offspring are released and attached to the reef, these younger IVF-bred coral are far more resilient to climate change!
There was a huge marine heat wave in the Caribbean in 2023, and the bad news is that about three-quarters of the native colonies of coral were bleached or paled. You see, coral is a symbiotic organism and it gets most of its nutrients (and its color) from algae that live within it, called “zooxanthellae.” When a coral is stressed — say by extreme temperatures — it might get rid of that algae. And that’s what bleaching and paling is.
But 90% of these younger, IVF-bred coral were totally fine! We don’t know why yet, but one of the theories is that these younger coral are more exploratory, and they’ll try different types of algae, some of which are more heat resistant.
Not only that, but we know that these IVF coral can reproduce in the wild — because they did for the first time in 2021 in the Great Barrier Reef!
IVF is just one of several ways that scientists have found to help protect and repopulate our threatened coral populations, and it’s great to hear that it’s working just swimmingly!
If you’d like to learn more about coral restoration, check out my full length video on YouTube, and follow for more cool science!