University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science student diver prepares to go down during a night dive to check on coral spawning as the sun sets, Monday, Aug. 15, 2022, in Key Biscayne, Fla. A group of students and scientists were hoping to observe the coral spawn and collect their eggs and sperm, called gametes, to take back to the lab to hopefully fertilize and create new coral that will later be transplanted to help repopulate part of the Florida Reef Tract.
The team from the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science was on a mission to collect eggs and sperm from spawning staghorn coral, which they hope to use to fertilize other strains of staghorn corals in a lab. It's all part of a $7.5 million federal grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to help address security threats to the military and civilian infrastructure along vulnerable coastal regions in