SUMMERLAND KEY, Fla. — David Vaughan plunges his right arm down to his elbow into one of nine elevated tanks where thousands of tiny colonies of coral are growing at an astonishing rate in shaded seclusion next to the Mote Tropical Research Laboratory.
“Now this is the exciting part. You ready for this?” he asks, straining to be heard over the relentless hiss of filtered saltwater squirting from a maze of pipes and plastic tubing into the shallow fiberglass tank, the size of a dining-room table.
Image: A mountainous star coral colony that was grown from an inch-square fragment cut a year earlier off of a parent colony. Credit Richard Morin
