ABOVE: © SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY, ALEX MUSTARD
It was the seventh night after the August full moon, the peak spawning window predicted for the mountainous star coral. We loaded the boat and headed out to a coral reef near Summerland Key, Florida, around sunset. As we donned our scuba gear and jumped in, the sun dipped below the horizon.
We’d been monitoring this site for three years now, watching and waiting for signs that the restored corals we’d planted in 2015 had achieved the next critical developmental milestone in their life cycle—sexual reproduction. In 2018, a storm prevented us from monitoring the corals; in 2019, the site was hit hard by the deadly stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) outbreak, and we did not witness any spawning activity. Last year, however, a preliminary investigation provided reason for hope: we confirmed that the corals were sexually mature in ...
