MIAMI — Earth just reached its first catastrophic climate tipping point.

Coral reefs around the world are facing widespread dieback.

“Unless we take radical steps, I fear that we’re going to see the disappearance of reefs as we know them,” said Andrew Baker, a marine biologist at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School. “Coral reefs are one of the world’s first ecosystems to be at risk of complete extinction from climate change.”

Hurricanes, pollution and disease are decimating Florida’s once vast and pristine coral reefs. Over the past 40 years, 90% of all live coral has been lost — and the primary killer is heat.

“Increasing temperatures, climate change, warm summers and marine heat waves,” Baker said.

The summer of 2023 saw some of the highest ocean temperatures ever recorded, triggering devastating mass bleaching across the already imperiled Florida Reef Tract.

“Conditions are changing far faster than they ever changed before,” Baker said.

That doesn’t bode well for Florida’s coastlines.

The state’s reefs aren’t just a major tourism driver; they also act as natural speed bumps, weakening storm waves as they approach shore.

“Turns out having reefs off our shoreline that are healthy and still building helps dissipate that wave energy before it gets to shore,” Baker said. “That’s worth hundreds of millions a year in avoided damage just to Miami and Fort Lauderdale.”

With so much at stake, Baker and his team at the Rosenstiel School are racing to save reefs by taking bold action.

“This effort to breed international corals together is the first of its kind,” said Maren Stickley, a student at UM.

Identifying heat- and disease-resistant corals could help scientists isolate “super genes” and use them to breed stronger corals for future restoration efforts.

“We needed to get more diversity on the reefs,” Baker said. “And the only way to do that is through breeding.”

UM researchers have been busy playing matchmaker — breeding corals from the warmer waters off the Honduran coast with Florida corals that have not fared as well.

“The hope is that the Honduran parent will supply some new genes for heat tolerance and stress resistance, and the Florida parent will supply genes for doing well in Florida’s typical reef conditions,” Baker said.

However, coral spawning is notoriously difficult. Corals only spawn once a year, and getting them to spawn in a tank is tricky.

“They use a lot of cues — from temperature to lunar cues to wind and things like that — to know when to spawn, even right down to the minute,” Stickley said.

Scientists have managed to replicate those environmental cues using lights and timers that mimic the sun and moon. Once spawning begins, researchers collect the sperm and eggs and fertilize them in the lab.

“It’s a waiting game, and sometimes it can be kind of excruciating when you’re waiting on the edge of your seat for them to go,” Stickley said.

They even try to set the mood. The lab uses a special playlist featuring romantic music and songs related to the sun and moon — all bathed in soft red light.

That method is working. So far, the team has bred and outplanted 50 crossbred “Flonduran” corals. By the end of the year, they expect to outplant another 250.

“So the big advantage of this particular approach is that it’s very scalable,” Baker said. “Even a coral the size of my head can produce hundreds of thousands of babies.”

Baker hopes these super corals will help build the reefs of tomorrow and restore what’s been lost.

“Everything here is really aimed at throwing corals a lifeline — something that they can hold on to for some period of time while we wrestle our boat, get it under control, and hopefully reel them back in again.”

The university hopes to scale the project into a full-scale coral “baby factory” — a warehouse assisted by robotics that could grow up to a million baby corals per year.

It’s a big investment, but scientists say it’s worth it.

Restoring reefs in vulnerable areas of Fort Lauderdale and Miami could recover an estimated $300 million a year in avoided storm damages.

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