Miami, FL
Scientists transplant crossbred corals to help save Miami’s reefs from climate change
KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. — A team of scientists from the University of Miami, the Florida Aquarium and Tela Coral in Honduras is working together to transplant crossbred coral fragments onto a reef off Miami’s coastline that was devastated by coral bleaching two years ago.
They’re looking for ways to help reefs survive increased ocean temperatures caused by global warming and climate change.
“It’s the end of a very long process,” Andrew Baker, professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School and director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab, said Tuesday as divers planted the corals off Miami.
The plan of introducing corals from the Caribbean evolved over the past few years.
“We had this idea that we really needed to try to help Florida’s coral reef by introducing more diversity from around the Caribbean, recognizing that some of the biggest threats to corals, like climate change, are really global phenomena and if you try to have Florida’s reefs save themselves on their own, we could give them some outside help,” Baker said.
Coral breeding has also been done in Hawaii, where in 2021, scientists were working to speed up the coral’s evolutionary clock to breed “super corals” that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.
Baker’s group teamed with the Florida Aquarium and Tela Coral, bringing in fragments of corals from a warm reef off of Tela, Honduras, which spawned in tanks at the aquarium.
“We were able to cross the spawn from those corals, the sperm and the eggs, to produce babies. One parent from Florida, one parent from Honduras,” Baker said.
They chose the reef off of Tela because the water is about 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the water off the coast of Florida.
“And yet the corals in those environments, and especially the Elkhorn corals, are really thriving,” Baker said.
He noted that there are extensive beds that are hundreds of meters long, full of flourishing Elkhorn.
“And yet they survive there despite really warm conditions and also quite nutrient-polluted waters,” Baker said.
The conditions are similar to those Florida will face over the next century, Baker said.
It’s also the first time international crossbreeding of corals has been permitted for planting onto wild reefs.
“So we’re really excited to see how these do,” he said.
The hope is the corals will be more “thermally tolerant,” which Baker and the team will be testing throughout the summer.
Elkhorn corals are some of Florida’s most iconic species and are valuable because they form the crest of the reef, Baker said.
“And the reef is what protects shorelines from storms and flooding. So if you have healthy Elkhorn coral populations, you have a great reef that is acting almost like a speed bump over which waves and storms pass and dissipate their energy before they hit the coast,” he said.
Elkhorn corals are in serious decline, thanks in part to the coral bleaching in 2023 and warming sea temperatures, Baker said.
While coral get their bright colors from the colorful algae that live inside them, prolonged warmth causes the algae to release toxic compounds. The coral ejects them, and a stark white skeleton — referred to as coral bleaching — is left behind, and the weakened coral is at risk of dying.
“We’ve lost maybe more than 95% of the Elkhorn corals that were on Florida’s reefs at that point,” Baker said.
Some of the corals spawned in the Florida Aquarium’s laboratory arrived there in 2020, said Keri O’Neil, director and senior scientist with the aquarium’s Coral Conservation Program.
She said more fragments from Honduras and Florida will continue to live at the center.
“We hope that every year in the future we can make more and more crosses and continue to figure out which parents produce the best offspring,” O’Neil said.
The tiny Elkhorn coral fragments were placed onto small concrete bases along the reef on Tuesday.
“We’ve arranged them in a certain way that we can compare the performance of each of corals,” Baker said.
The team will study how the corals that have a Honduran parent compare to the ones that are entirely from Florida.
“But it’s really the future that we’re looking to and in particular, a warming future and a warming summer, how these corals do and do they have more thermal tolerance than the native Florida population, because that’s really what the goal of the whole project is,” he said.
Baker said it’s the most exciting project he’s worked on during his 20-year stint at the University of Miami.
If the corals thrive, it could provide a blueprint for working across the Caribbean to share corals.
“This is a project about international collaboration, about the fact that our environment really doesn’t have closed borders, that we can work together to make things better in the world,” said Juli Berwald, co-founder of Tela Cora. “And it shows that when we talk to each other, when we work together, we can really do something that might be life-changing, not just for us but for the corals and the reefs and all the animals that rely on the reefs.”
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Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Argentine forward’s brace included the match winner against Colorado Rapids in front of over 75,000 fans in Denver.
Published On 19 Apr 2026
Lionel Messi scored a brace and German Berterame headed another as Inter Miami earned a 3-2 win over the Colorado Rapids in Major League Soccer (MLS) on Saturday in Denver.
Messi scored the go-ahead goal in the 79th minute. He started a run just inside midfield and went unchallenged until the box, where he blasted into the upper left corner for a 3-2 lead.
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Rafael Navarro and Darren Yapi each scored for Colorado (4-4-0, 12 points) in front of 75,824 at Empower Field, the second-largest crowd in MLS history.
Miami (4-1-3, 15 points) took a 1-0 lead in the 18th minute after Colorado goalkeeper Zack Steffen’s pass was intercepted by Yannick Bright. Josh Atencio offered a hard challenge and was shown a yellow card after video review.
Messi took the resulting penalty and rolled his shot straight down the middle as Miami took a 1-0 lead.
Colorado had a solid look at the goal when midfielder Wayne Frederick attempted a one-touch lob. Miami goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair was out of position and well beyond the penalty arc after heading away a loose ball, but Frederick’s attempt sailed over the open net.
In the fifth minute of first-half stoppage time, Miami extended their lead to 2-0, connecting on a series of passes deep in their attacking third. Messi got the run of play started with a tight touch pass to Rodrigo De Paul.
De Paul sent Mateo Silvetti on a run to the boundary line. His inward-spinning cross floated to the front of goal, where Berterame rose above the Colorado defence and tucked a header under the bar.
Navarro’s goal cut Miami’s lead to 2-1. He started a run in midfield and used a step-over move to get an open shot a few steps into the box that tucked inside the left post past a diving St. Clair in the 58th minute.
In the 62nd minute, second-half substitute Yapi settled on a direct pass from Lucas Herrington and sizzled a shot past St. Clair for the equaliser.
Miami closed the win playing a man down as Yannick Bright was sent off with a red card in the 87th minute.
The Cleveland Browns traded for an extended right tackle, former Houston Texan Tytus Howard, at the start of free agency as they began their rebuild of the offensive line that was awful in 2025. But Howard has played every position on the offensive line except for center, so if it’s all about getting your best five on the field, which it should be, there’s a chance Howard doesn’t play at right tackle in 2026.
While doing a mock draft on Peter Schrager’s podcast, former Tennessee Titans general manager Ran Carthon had the Browns drafting Miami (FL) right tackle sixth overall. He talked about the issue with Howard, but said Mauigoa could either take over the tackle spot or be a really good guard.
Carthon said he knows that Mauigoa would be one of their best five, whether it is at guard or tackle. Some will say that a guy who may be best at guard isn’t worth the sixth overall pick, and I have to disagree. You should draft the best football players, and Francis Mauigoa is my highest-rated offensive lineman and seventh overall. It might be at guard, but I have a good feeling that Mauigoa will find a home in the NFL as a high-quality offensive lineman.
Inventory of homes and condos across the coastal Miami mainland and Miami Beach and the barrier island markets fell in the first quarter, marking the first big inventory drops since 2023.
The Corcoran Group’s first quarter reports don’t cover all of Miami-Dade County, but they offer insight into how the coastal markets, which have a higher share of luxury properties, are performing.
In Miami Beach, Sunny Isles Beach, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Surfside, Miami Beach, Fisher Island and Key Biscayne, single-family home inventory dropped 15 percent annually to 398 listings, and condo inventory was down 13 percent to 3,919 listings.
On Miami’s coastal mainland markets, which include Aventura, Miami Shores, Upper East Side, Edgewater, downtown Miami, Brickell, Coral Gables and Coconut Grove, inventory slipped 4 percent to 4,584 condo listings and 555 single-family listings, down 6 percent year-over-year.
Here’s a closer look at the market:
Miami Beach and the barrier islands
Single-family sales rose 13 percent year-over-year to 85 closings, the first time they have increased since the second quarter of 2024. Condo closings rose 15 percent to 693 closings, the first increase since the last quarter of 2024.
Pricing dropped, with the median price of single-family homes down 4 percent to $3.5 million and the median condo price down 9 percent to $640,000. The average price per square foot was nearly flat at $1,119.
Still, buyers set records with their purchases. Billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg paid $170 million for the waterfront mansion at 7 Indian Creek Island Road, and Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz paid $44 million, or $7,949 per square foot, for a penthouse at the Four Seasons Residences at The Surf Club.
Coastal mainland
Sales of single-family homes on the coastal mainland rose 16 percent to 220 closings. While markets like Coral Gables experienced declines in condo and single-family home sales, Coconut Grove home sales surged — up over 100 percent for single-family homes to 47 closings and up 55 percent to 87 condo closings. Condo sales rose 13 percent to 759 closings.
The median price of single-family homes across the coastal mainland rose 11 percent to just over $2 million. The median price of condos increased slightly, up 1 percent, to $602,000.
The priciest deals in the first quarter were the $32 million trade of 12 Tahiti Beach Island Road in Coral Gables, and the $19.8 million sale of a penthouse at Vita at Grove Isle.
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