Last summer was the hottest the territory has recorded, and we braced for the worst. When our divers surveyed the nursery tables in September, the coral we raised from lab-fertilized larvae told a different story: 91% of the IVF-bred colonies came through without bleaching.
The technique — assisted fertilization during the annual spawn, then a year of growth in protected tanks before the nursery — selects for heat tolerance from the very first cell division. Colonies from the same reefs raised by fragmentation bleached at nearly twice the rate.
We are expanding the program this spawning season with UVI Marine Lab, doubling tank capacity at Coki Point. If the survival numbers hold, IVF-bred coral becomes the backbone of every planting we do from 2027 on.
