US: Florida Aquarium shows off remote greenhouse for cultivating coral
The aquarium hopes the greenhouse can one day maintain genotypes of the reef-building coral species staghorn, which could then be used to regrow declining reefs.
Much more needs to be learned, but the Tampa-based aquarium has a collaborator in this quest: the National Aquarium of Cuba in Havana.
Currently, the Florida researchers can reproduce the coral in the greenhouse, but it dies before growing large enough to be replanted in the Gulf of Mexico.
After they learn how to properly grow the coral in a greenhouse tank, next will be figuring out what needs to be done to enable it to survive in the wild.
Read more at TBO
