Secondary-school students from the Tampa Bay area involved in the SCUBAnauts International programme have been working with marine scientists at Molasses Reef to collect gametes (cells that fuse togather during fertilisation) produced by the farmed coral.
The project is said to be a significant breakthrough, because it proves that staghorn corals cultivated in nurseries can reach sexual maturity and help to rebuild reefs naturally.
In spring 2006 Ken Nedimyer, president of the Coral Restoration Foundation, harvested 2.5cm-long live staghorn fragments and planted them in a nursery off the Keys.
The following year he worked with students to transplant the more mature staghorn corals to a sandy area. The coral clippings have since grown to about 60cm in diameter.
Staghorn corals are classified as "threatened" in the USA, but are often the building blocks of reefs in Florida and the Caribbean. Nedimyer says that farming corals that are able to reproduce naturally could lead to advances in future reef restoration.
The staghorn gametes collected by the students will be used in laboratory fertilisation projects, with the objective of producing offspring that can also be transplanted.
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