Battered by heat, washed out to a bleached, white hue and ravaged by disease, corals offshore of Key Largo used what little energy they had left to spawn the next generation that could save their populations.
These elkhorn and staghorn corals — recognized by their iconic branching arms that provide habitat for hundreds of species — are some of the most vulnerable among reefs.
Just weeks after spawning season, more than 90% of those parent corals are dead.
Elkhorn corals are already considered “functionally extinct” in the upper Keys, and other elkhorn and staghorn populations in the Florida Reef are following suit, according to Liv Williamson, an assistant scientist of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami. That means there are a small number of individual corals left in the only living barrier reef in the continental United States — the world’s third-largest. It stretches about 360 miles from Dry Tortugas National Park to the St. Lucie Inlet — but they can’t reproduce enough in the wild to support a viable population.
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