August 25, 2020 — A University of North Carolina at Wilmington laboratory made history this month by spawning in captivity an endangered coral that once thrived in shallow reefs in the Caribbean.
Researchers at the university’s Center for Marine Science are the first to spawn two species of coral, including Orbicella faveolata, also known as mountainous star coral, in a laboratory.
Their success at reproducing the coral stems from a groundbreaking discovery just a few years ago in the United Kingdom, where a then-doctorate student collaborated with Neptune Systems, a company that makes aquarium controller systems, to electronically mimic environmental settings coral rely on in the wild to spawn.
“Ever since then other institutions and other laboratories have been able to do so,” said Nicole Fogarty, the assistant professor who headed the research in the lab referred to as the Spawning and Experimentation of Anthropogenic Stressors, or SEAS facility. “This has just been a big game-changer in trying to spawn corals in technology.”