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In the Atlantic, off the Florida coast and in the Caribbean, about 99.7% of the coral reefs have been hit with “very very severe” losses in staghorn and elkhorn species, Manzello said Thursday in NOAA’s monthly climate briefing.

Staghorn coral spotted on a Teriaroa Society tour.

They carefully scraped away harmful algae and predators impinging on staghorn fragments, under the supervision and training of interns from Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education, or I.CARE.

Their mission now was to collect hundreds of fragments of staghorn and elkhorn for NOAA’s gene bank, plus any other species they had time to collect.

A handful of the elkhorn and staghorn did not survive the journey.