>>NARRATOR: In the spring of 2008,
an 84-foot pleasure boat departed from Fort Lauderdale
bound for the Caribbean.
30 miles south of Miami,
it strayed from marked navigation channels
into the shallow waters of Biscayne National Park.
Suddenly, running at full speed, it collided with a coral reef
near Elliot Key.
Corals, sponges and sea fans were instantly obliterated
as the boat's twin propellers plowed through the reef.
The engines were disabled, and the powerless vessel
drifted in the wind until grounding on a second reef.
Here, the wind and waves rocked the boat on its hull,
shattering the ancient coral mounds and pounding
the reef into rubble.
A coral reef that had taken centuries to grow
was destroyed in just moments.
Two-and-a-half years later,
coral researchers and resource managers are searching
for solutions to help the ocean's declining coral reefs.
Can new technologies
and naturally occurring biological mechanisms
help restore lost coral communities?
And can ecological balance
be returned to Florida's coral reefs?
>>Major funding for this program was provided
by the Batchelor Foundation,
encouraging people to preserve and protect
America's underwater resources.
>>NARRATOR: Biscayne National Park is an undersea garden
filled with multicolored sponges, corals and sea fans.
At the northern extent of the Florida Keys reef tract,
its sea grass beds, coral reefs and mangrove shorelines
cover more than 170,000 acres,
a gem in the national park system,
but an area with a history of damaging boat groundings.
Corals in Biscayne National Park and on a global scale
are in a serious state of decline due to stresses
like climate change, disease outbreaks and overfishing.
Since the late 1970s, close to 98% of staghorn
and elkhorn corals have disappeared from the reefs
in Florida and the Caribbean.
Because corals are having such a difficult time persisting,
resource managers want to restore boating impacts
like the 2008 grounding site in the park.
>>When the vessel grounded, it crushed up the surface
of the reef into a rubble field, and we're trying to use
a combination of adhesives to stabilize that rubble.
We're collecting the rubble into mounds
like this and like this...
and we'll be using a combination of cement and natural sponges
that are found right here on the reef
to bind this rubble to stabilize it through time.
Right now, the rubble mounds are just in the process
of being put together.
We're installing rebar stakes like this that will help us
monitor them through time.
And we'll be looking at such things as coral recruitment,
the stability of the mounds themselves, if they change
in size and shape and height.
And we'll probably monitor these
for a period of at least five years.
>>NARRATOR: Researchers at the University of Miami
have developed one of the first underwater applications
for mosaic imaging, a technique comparable
to aerial photography on the land.
This technology will create useful perspectives
of the coral reef and grounding site in Biscayne National Park.
The diver swims back and forth in a lawnmower-like pattern,
recording overlapping images of the underwater landscape.
Later, at the university laboratory,
a single seamless image of the reef is produced.
>>This is basically an unprecedented baseline,
in terms of the amount of information that you can get
in a very short amount of time.
>>NARRATOR: Three-dimensional images can be created over time
to show reef areas where corals grow best,
the places where restoration is most likely to succeed.
New growths of soft corals and sponges are returning
to the grounding site, but the boat's most damaging impacts
are still evident.
>>The damage extends several hundreds of square meters,
and really, there's no easy way to document that.
Here, we're able to use the video and the stills
to really cover the entire area, both the affected area,
and also the community around it, so that we know
what this area should look like when it's fully restored.
>>NARRATOR: Coral reef restoration gained traction
in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
with marine biologists like Harold Hudson,
"The Reef Doctor," and Ken Nedimyer.
Hudson, a restoration specialist for the sanctuary,
perfected a design for "reef modules"
that were used for the structural repair
of a large vessel grounding site, the Wellwood,
on Molasses Reef near Key Largo.
Nedimyer performed the biological restoration
with transplanted corals grown in his undersea nursery.
His restoration plan was validated
when it was discovered that the transplants on the reef
were spawning several years sooner than expected.
>>I was real excited.
I thought, man, this is amazing,
because this is exactly what we've been trying to say
that we're going to do,
which is reestablish these spawning populations of corals.
It brought a whole new life to the possibility
of not just putting corals back on the reef,
but reestablishing breeding populations that could then
repopulate other downstream areas.
>>NARRATOR: Nedimyer's coral nursery is the largest
in the country, and a model for many coral aquaculturists.
Here, you encounter 100 rows of coral fragments
mounted on concrete blocks.
Each coral is attached to a disc,
with a label designating its origin and genotype,
or genetic properties.
More than a thousand staghorn cuttings are strung
from six line nurseries suspended in the water column
by floats, and cross-tied with horizontal lines.
>>On a line nursery, they grow down,
they grow to the side, they grow all different directions.
And another thing that's nice about them-- if a turtle
or a shark or a fish bumps against them on the line,
they just bounce out of the way and they swing right back
to where they were.
If a turtle bumps against a coral that's firmly mounted
on a disc, it'll break it off.
>>NARRATOR: Nedimyer cultivates staghorn coral,
one of the principal reef building corals
and one listed as threatened
under the Endangered Species Act.
He cultivates them in his nursery for a year,
then transplants them to the reef.
>>One of the things we need to be doing is preserving
the genetic diversity that we still have.
And if we don't preserve as much of that as possible right now,
we won't have anything to work with in ten or 15 years.
>>NARRATOR: Research Associate Tom Capo and colleagues
at the University of Miami's experimental hatchery
are preserving the genetic diversity of orphaned corals
whose survival was threatened by storms, boat groundings
and anchor pulls.
Some were recovered from the grounding site
in Biscayne National Park.
Researchers are trying to answer questions
about a destructive phenomenon known as coral bleaching.
>>What's going on?
Is it disease?
Is it some sort of water quality parameter?
And many of these questions cannot be answered easily
in the field.
So the goal is to have a coral genetic bank,
a coral resource that we can
provide genetically maintained strains of coral
to bona fide researchers around the world, so that they
can look at these problems, at these issues,
and look at them in a scientific way.
>>NARRATOR: In a partnership between Biscayne National Park
and the University of Miami,
trained volunteers assist Capo with a labor-intensive process
known as "fragmentation" to produce a large number
of small coral specimens.
>>You should have one ready for him now.
I mean, he should not stop.
>>NARRATOR: Travertine plates are marked,
drilled and fitted with passive integrated transponders,
or PIT tags, that will give each coral a unique identity.
The large corals are cut into fragments,
each about an inch-and-a-half in diameter.
The bottom surface is shaped on a tile saw.
The fragment is thoroughly dried...
super-glued to a PIT tag plate,
and catalogued for future reference.
Half of the fragments will be transplanted
at the coral restoration site in Biscayne National Park.
The other half will remain at the facility for monitoring
and lab studies to help Capo and coral researchers
answer another difficult question.
>>How can we enhance all this to make
the only real reef tract in the continental United States
a viable place rather than seeing it deteriorate
like it's been doing over the past ten years?
>>NARRATOR: One of Capo's research partners, Martin Moe,
a marine biologist in the Florida Keys,
believes he has an answer.
>>In 1983, there was this tremendous plague
and it hit only one organism.
And that was the long-spined sea urchin, Diadema antellerum,
that occupied all the reefs of the Caribbean,
the Bahamas, Florida.
They were all very densely occupied by Diadema.
And Diadema performed the essential task
of cleaning the algae off the reefs
and conditioning the substrate so that it would accept
and encourage coral growth, and the growth
of many different kinds of fish and invertebrates.
Within one year, 98% of all the Diadema antellerum
from the mouth of the Panama Canal
all the way up to Bermuda were history, were toast.
They all died quickly.
>>NARRATOR: At first, divers like Ken Nedimyer
were happy about the decline of the sharp-spined creatures.
>>As much as I don't like getting stabbed by them,
I think they're important and I want to have them back.
>>NARRATOR: Like sheep grazing in a pasture,
Diadema sea urchins graze the macroalgae that grow
on the reefs and inhibit coral reproduction.
>>A lot of the problems are directly related
to the lack of sea urchins.
And if you fix all the water quality issues,
and fix all of these other things,
but you don't fix the sea urchin problem,
you're not going to have a coral reef.
Sea urchins play a really important role.
>>Ken and I came to the point of view that the loss
of the Diadema was critical to the decline of the reefs.
Now, our coral reef decline comes from many factors,
not just the loss of Diadema.
But that is certainly one of the most critical elements,
because it's the Diadema that maintain that balance
between coral and algae growth.
>>NARRATOR: With support from
the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary,
Nedimyer and Moe did two experimental reef studies
where they reintroduced the Diadema.
A year later, the findings were remarkable.
Juvenile corals increased by more than 150%;
coralline algae, which encourages coral settlement
and growth, was sharply higher;
and macroalgae was reduced from 11% to less than 2%.
>>I started with the Florida Board
of Conservation Marine Laboratory back in 1962.
Florida was a very different place back then.
I worked with the Keys, and the Keys were magical.
I remember going out and diving around John Pennekamp area,
and there were huge stands of elkhorn coral, palmata.
Beautiful.
And it was such a tremendous environment.
And when I came back in the late '90s,
the reef was so much different.
And it was so sad to see what was a glorious coral environment
just become, for the most part, a lot of algae covered rocks.
It seemed like the best thing that I could do was to work
with the Diadema, because nobody else was doing it
and it was something essential to do.
>>NARRATOR: Martin Moe is committed to perfecting
the technology to reproduce, or culture,
Diadema in the laboratory.
Today, he begins a new culture process, or run,
by selecting Diadema that are ready to spawn.
Immersing them in a tub of warm water stimulates the spawn.
>>Oh, yeah.
Now that's a male.
You can see the white sperm there.
Yes, sir, that's a female.
We've got spawning-- first three.
How about that?
Okay, this is the product from the spawn.
Apparently, a male and a female both went,
which means that I should have eggs in here.
Oh, yes, that is nice.
I can see fertilization membranes are present
around every egg, so we know we have had a good spawn.
We know we've got good eggs.
Out of, let's say, five million eggs
that were spawned here, which is a pretty good estimate,
and out of those five million, you'd probably be lucky
if one or two made it, in nature, all the way
through the process and became a juvenile.
And then, you'd probably be lucky if one of those survived
into adulthood-- very lucky, actually.
>>NARRATOR: The following morning,
he counts the developing embryos.
>>The eggs hatch in about 18 to 24 hours.
They become blastulas; they become prisms,
which is the initial urchin shape.
>>NARRATOR: The embryos are transferred
to three larvae culture tanks where they will eat and grow
for the next 35 to 45 days.
But unlike other types of invertebrates,
Diadema larvae will die if they settle on the bottom
of the tanks.
Finding a method to mimic the natural ocean current
to keep the larvae in suspension had been Martin's biggest trial
during his early culture attempts.
Maintaining a sterile environment
had been another problem.
Entire runs had failed in the culture tanks.
The weeks ahead will again test his system
and the Diadema's ability to survive.
Meanwhile, the fragmented corals from the University of Miami
have arrived at the grounding site in Biscayne National Park.
Volunteer helpers swim with buckets of cement
and crates of tiles to the transplant areas.
Another group has reattached broken pieces
and transplanted nursery-raised coral to the site.
And resource managers are betting on the feasibility
of a new restoration technique.
>>We're going to be using sponges to bind the rubble
that was created by this grounding incident.
And this is the first time we've tried this,
and to our knowledge, the first time that sponges
have been used in an actual restoration project
for this purpose.
>>NARRATOR: Sponges are known to play an ecological role
in binding rubble in a natural reef setting.
There's also evidence that coral will settle and grow
more favorably on an area that's been bound by sponges.
>>Right here, we've marked a sponge where we cut
a fragment off yesterday.
We've tagged and marked this parent colony,
so that we can track it through time and see
how that lesion heals, just to make sure it's doing okay.
The sponge fragment we took from there we've attached
over in our sponge nursery.
Each tile has nine PVC trees.
We attach one sponge fragment to each PVC tree.
We cut these sponge fragments off of the parent colonies
that I showed you earlier.
We're trying to get the cut surface in contact
with the paver stone at least as closely as possible.
Our colleagues have shown that those cut surfaces bind
to whatever they're in contact with very quickly,
if all goes well.
So we hope to come back and see these sponges growing down
onto the tiles, and also up starting to branch out.
And the idea is that, in time, once the sponges grow
and start getting larger, that you can then cut fragments
off of these and use them in restoration projects.
We tried to get all of our fragments cut
to approximately ten centimeters in size.
We harvested these fragments yesterday, and some of them
are starting to show a slightly blackish color.
We're not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
We're going to be watching these sponges carefully--
on a daily basis in the beginning--
and then probably every week or so
to see how they survive and grow.
When they started to turn black, we started to get
very concerned, not knowing if we had done something wrong,
or not knowing if we had potentially killed
all these sponge fragments that we had harvested.
However, we were very relieved to see that, even the next day,
the blackness goes away, the sponges are doing great,
and they appear to be reattaching very quickly
to both the rubble pieces that they've been attached
to and also to the grow out structures.
>>NARRATOR: For 40 days, Martin Moe has been monitoring
the survival and growth of the Diadema larvae.
A week ago, he hit a setback--
all three cultures were struck by an infestation of Vorticella,
an organism that causes competition for food
and a decline in the larval development.
But one of the cultures showed a larger number
of well-formed larvae than the other two.
He made a decision to dedicate the remaining food supply
to the survival of the well-formed culture
and abandon the others.
It might be the only chance for at least some of the larvae
to reach the settlement phase.
>>Now, this one is ready to come out,
and we can check for settlers on it.
And they settle as larvae, and then they go
through metamorphosis in which the spines and larval tissue
all drop down into the rudiment, and the rudiment becomes
a little round juvenile.
And you can pull it out of the settlement, like this,
and the water stays in these little cubicles.
Then, you put it right down into the settlement tray.
The water in the settlement tray is all adjusted for temperature,
pH, alkalinity, calcium, and it's ready to support
the process of metamorphosis and the early juvenile.
After they go through metamorphosis,
they're a soft little creature.
And they can't survive as a soft little creature.
They have to pull calcium carbonate,
the same stuff your bones are made out of, out of the water,
which is dissolved in the water, and they have to form
their hard parts and their mouth parts so they can
actually scrape and feed and survive as a sea urchin,
rather than a pelagic floating larvae.
And then, it can be carried and placed down
into this raceway kind of facility.
I call it a raceway.
There's a water current that moves all through
the whole tank like this, and as they are settling there,
it keeps the water fresh and clear around them.
They grow and become little urchins on these plates.
At some point, it becomes optimum to be able
to pick the plate up and put it in a bucket.
They'll stay stuck on the plate, and then you can move them
to any kind of a grow-out area that you wish.
>>NARRATOR: After four years of developing the technology
to raise lab-cultured Diadema,
Martin Moe is nearing the end of his quest.
>>When we get to the point where we can produce
large numbers of juvenile Diadema,
then we can begin to research on what is the best way
to reestablish them on the reef.
At that point, along with Ken's work with the corals
and what I've been able to develop with the Diadema,
we can come together and we can achieve at least some semblance
of ecological restoration on the reefs.
>>NARRATOR: At the grounding site,
the sponge transplants are healthy and growing.
Amanda Bourque is watchful as the sponges replicate
their natural behavior in a transformed environment.
But it will take several years of monitoring before the success
of this project is fully known.
Coral reef restoration is an emerging science
built on innovative ideas, lessons learned,
and continual refinement of the human technologies
that are helping nature restore its gardens of the sea.
>>Major funding for this program was provided
by the Batchelor Foundation,
encouraging people to preserve and protect
America's underwater resources.