MIAMI (AP) — Scientists and students at the University of Miami dived into dark waters miles off the coast of Miami this week as part of an effort to develop a hybrid coral reef.

A team from the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science was tasked with collecting eggs and sperm from spawning corals. We hope to use this to fertilize other strains of coral in the lab.

This is all part of a $7.5 million federal grant from the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to address security threats to military and civilian infrastructure along vulnerable coastal areas of Florida and the Caribbean. help you to

This Miami-based project seeks to use hybrid coral reefs to protect coastal stations from damage caused by hurricane storm surges.

said Andrew Baker, professor and director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab at the Rosensteel School. “We are working on next-generation structural designs and concrete materials, integrating them with new eco-engineering approaches to help promote coral growth on these structures.”

They also plan to test new adaptive biological approaches to produce corals that grow faster and are more resilient to a warming climate.

Corals only spawn on a few nights each year, depending on water temperature and lunar cycles. Coral colonies simultaneously release eggs and sperm into the water column to fertilize each other and produce baby corals.