Hot seawater killed most of cultivated coral in Florida Keys in setback for restoration effort

By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer

Researchers are finding that record hot seawater killed more than three-quarters of human-cultivated coral that scientists had placed in the Florida Keys in recent years. It was an effort to prop up a threatened species that’s highly vulnerable to climate change. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week returned to five reefs where they had planted staghorn and elkhorn coral, both species classified as threatened in the endangered species list, to see how the repopulated critters had survived prolonged water temperatures in the 90s last summer and fall. Most of them didn’t. They saw widespread death in the Florida Keys.