Coral Spawning 2025

On October 10 2025, our lab was crowded, as both Acropora pulchra and Acropora cytherea spawned under controlled conditions! 🪸🥚

In the early stages, we observed the beautiful pink gamete bundles, each containing around 10 eggs and sperm, being carefully collected by our team to carry out fertilization experiments. These experiments were conducted under two temperature treatments (27°C and 31°C) to investigate how thermal stress affects egg and sperm viability, as well as early developmental success.

After two hours, the fertilized eggs were reared under temperature-stress conditions as part of our ongoing research on coral resilience and adaptation to climate change. In just three to four days, we expected to see swimming coral larvae beginning their journey, a truly magical process! While we continue to wait for wild spawning on the reef, our lab experiments provide vital insights into coral biology and environmental stress responses.

Fast forward to today, we are excited to announce that the next generation has arrived: the larvae have successfully settled and the baby corals are here! 💫 These are one day old Acropora cytherea recruits: microscopic coral polyps that have just begun their journey toward becoming reef-building colonies.

Over the coming months, these tiny recruits will grow and calcify, playing an essential role in restoring reef structures that support countless marine species. Each new recruit represents a significant milestone in our understanding of coral resilience and the development of large-scale reef restoration techniques.

Stay tuned as we continue to monitor their growth and survival and share more coral magic from the SUPER CORAIL project, a collaborative effort between Fondation de la Mer and the Renovation4Reef project from the Office français de la biodiversité.

Thank you to the incredible team making this research possible!