Coral propagation can happen in different conditions. According to the VI Daily News, despite the many factors in play, researchers can identify the windows in time when corals are most likely to release gametes. Over the past week, teams of Nature Conservancy divers scoured the waters off The Deep End and Cane Bay for those gametes while others monitored the corals at TNC’s Coral Innovation Hub in Estate Little Princess. The researchers found a smaller number of colonies than they hoped for. The effects of the bleaching event in fall of 2023 is still being felt. The recent slight yield followed another disappointing spawning season in May, when another brain coral species The Nature Conservancy monitors showed the effects of last fall’s severe bleaching and heating event. When corals bleach, they exhaust their food reserves and find themselves with little energy to procreate according to researchers.
While bleaching does occur naturally, warming oceans means it’s starting earlier, ending later and more intense, giving corals less opportunity to recover according to the researchers in the article. The Nature Conservancy’s St. Croix work — which this week included late nights diving in worm-ridden waters or peering over dimly-lit aquariums — is meant to restore coral reefs by, eventually, churning corals out at scale.
Read the full article about the researchers work here.
Photo by Kat Macavoy of VI Daily News