coral reefs

Developing medicines gives scientists tools to save sick corals and can help preserve threatened ecosystems.

Florida's barrier reef has lost 95% of its coral over the last half-century. Researchers, activists and government agencies are working to restore the reefs and ensure their long-term survival.

Federal officials are now considering thousands of comments as they finalize the first update in a quarter century to rules that govern the marine 3,800-square mile marine sanctuary.

The marine lab has been growing coral at a Summerland Key facility since 2000. Even as Ian sideswiped the Keys, researchers were hosting a conference to teach reef restoration techniques to other scientists.

Researchers say Hurricane Ian brought red tide, destroyed artificial reefs from as far away as 30 miles from the coast of southwest Florida, and could impact the state's fishing industry.

Dalton Hesley led a dive team to an offshore Miami Beach reef last month in pursuit of sea urchins. Something else drew his attention instead. A cluster of staghorn corals, their branches reaching toward the surface, appeared a ghastly white.

Florida’s pristine waters are its calling card for tourists, who are now returning to the state in record numbers. But what happens when crushing numbers of visitors harm the natural environment that draws them?

Over the last few decades, corals on the reef have been hammered by warmer water and ocean heat waves, disease and hurricanes. If the U.S. loses its reef tract, it loses a powerful defense against more intense hurricanes fueled by climate change.

The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary's Restoration Blueprint would add Pulley Ridge in the Gulf of Mexico to its boundaries, in addition to putting additional protections on more than 450 square miles around the Keys.

Climate change has already changed places like Florida permanently and irreversibly — affecting coral reefs, leading to higher property values and increasing inequality for vulnerable populations in the state, according to a new global report from the world’s top scientists.

Finding the disease persisting in ocean sand means dredging, hurricanes and other things that stir up the ocean floor can spread the disease.

Around 200 sea urchins were spawned at the aquarium and released in a coral reef off the Florida Keys, where they will eat algae that can overrun the reef.