Hurricane Irma, September 4-5, 2017WIKIMEDIA, NOAAHurricane Irma has destroyed islands in the Caribbean, left 1 million residents without power in Puerto Rico, and killed at least 10 people. As the Category 5 hurricane takes aim at southern Florida, mandatory evacuations have pushed tens of thousands of people northward.
Mote Marine Laboratory’s new coral research facility on Summerland Key has been secured, Robert Etti, the center’s housing manager, tells The Scientist in an email. Most of the employees have evacuated with the rest of Monroe County residents, as ordered by authorities. The campus’s executive director, David Vaughan, and one other staff member have stayed behind to watch over the corals.
Vaughan says they took precautions, such as dividing corals between inside and outside facilities. “We have half of our broodstock genotypes split so that we do not have all our eggs in one basket,” he writes in an email.
Meteorologists expect Irma to whack southern Florida over the weekend, and then move northward along the East Coast. In Miami, colleges including the University of ...
