CLIMATE -CORAL- CLARION : PRECIS

Since 2018, my lab has transplanted hundreds of coral specimens to reefs in Florida to study what makes them grow.

We have albums of photos documenting their lives, starting from branches no bigger than your finger to beautiful treelike adults as big as beach balls.

In June 2023, as water temperatures in Florida skyrocketed, my team rushed to our field sites - and found extreme bleaching [ the loss of color signalling that corals are starving ] and death already underway.

Throughout the Florida Keys, corals were disappearing in an ocean that had become too hot for them to survive.

We left our experiment running to find out what would happen.

By November, 98 percent of our corals were dead.

The World Students Society thanks Carly D. Kenkel, a professor of marine biology at the University of Southern California.