NOAA divers plant lab-grown deep-sea corals to heal Gulf damage
Sixteen years after the Deepwater Horizon spill, NOAA divers used a new “coral torpedo” to place laboratory-grown corals on the Gulf seafloor.
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster devastated mesophotic and deep benthic habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, ecosystems that receive little sunlight and are hard to study. Building on earlier lab successes, NOAA Fisheries scientists cultivated colonies of Swiftia exserta, Muricea pendula and Thesea nivea and prepared a 2026 expedition aboard the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster.
Divers, equipped with closed-circuit rebreathers, outplanted 26 corals and relocated 16 fragments, while also mapping more than 14 square nautical miles and gathering biological and sediment samples. The operation represents the first successful outplanting of lab-grown mesophotic corals and the inaugural use of rebreather divers to propagate corals underwater. Ongoing monitoring will assess the transplanted colonies’ survival as part of the broader Deepwater Horizon Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities Restoration program led by NOAA and the Department of the Interior.
Why it matters
Restoring deep-sea coral habitats helps revive Gulf biodiversity and tests new techniques for repairing hard-to-reach marine ecosystems.
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