Expansion planned for Cayman’s coral laboratory
In a room on the ground floor of the Cayman Islands Department of Environment offices in George Town lies the islands’ only lab dedicated to growing corals, the building blocks of Cayman’s reefs.
There, inside temperature-controlled tanks full of ‘artificial’ sea water, illuminated by blue lights, sit clear plastic trays holding scores of inch-wide circular pucks on which hundreds of juvenile brain corals are growing.
Those tiny corals have never been on a reef, as they were spawned in the lab from their parent corals, which have been temporarily removed from the reef. One day soon, certainly before the end of this year, some of them will get a chance to experience life in their natural habitat, as DoE scientists will out-plant them to determine if they’re big enough and strong enough to survive in the wild. For a more complete summary of the story, please see the below link:
Published on: Jun 06, 2026 04:17 PM