NOAA coral spawning video shows coral doing it

If you’ve ever wanted to see coral spawning, you can either watch this video or start making plans to attend the upcoming coral spawning season in the Caribbean. The coral spawning event is mainly the domain of broadcast spawning corals which release gametes in unison over a period of several nights, usually 4-6 days after the full moon  of late summer. In the nearby Caribbean, the coral spawning events take place in late August through early October, depending on latitude and sea surface temperatures. In some regions the coral spawning is so precisely timed that one could set their watch by the release of coral gametes. The next best thing to being witness to the actual coral spawn is keeping tabs on SECORE’s coral spawning blog. SECORE stands for SExual COral REproduction and the group is a coalition of researchers and public aquarists who are trying to unravel the nuances of raising coral larvae and developing techniques for captive sexual coral reproduction. We’ll report back when the scientists start to hammer down some more precise dates for specific regions and species and we’ll let you know when SECORE fires up their blog for the 2009 spawning event.