May 2023: Coral spawning in South Kohala, Hawaiʻi Island
Great news for Hawaii's corals today (May 7th, 2023)!
A healthy broadcast spawning event was documented early this morning for the recovering coral species, Pocillopora meandrina, or cauliflower coral. In collaboration with other observation teams, HWF monitored about 100 colonies in South Kohala, and just after sunrise, more than 60% of the colonies spawned for several minutes. During a successful spawning event, corals release gametes (eggs and sperm) that travel with the tides and mix in the water column, hopefully creating healthy coral larvae in about 24 to 48 hours.
A coral "knows" it's time to spawn based on numerous cues, including season, water temperature and most importantly, the lunar cycle. We're excited to contribute our observation data from today to a long-term dataset describing the spawning timing of this species in West Hawai'i.
Wishing the thousands of larvae generated today a safe journey and successful resettlement to our recovering reefs!