Scientists have managed to artificially inseminate coral eggs and grow those corals to the juvenile stage using a technique called “assisted gene flow.”
According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
“The corals produced by this technique demonstrate the reproductive compatibility of coral colonies that would otherwise be too far apart to produce offspring in the wild.
“Flash-frozen sperm collected from corals in Florida and Puerto Rico was used to fertilize coral eggs from hundreds of miles away in Curaçao. Hundreds of juvenile Elkhorn corals from this effort now represent the largest wildlife population ever grown from cryopreservation.”
The scientists published the results of their work in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” To read the paper, click here.
(Featured image credit: Chris Page)
