Marine scientists help restore coral reef systems in the Keys with 'Coral IVF'

The coral reef off our coast has been under siege for decades. Now scientists are fighting back. A team in Broward County is looking to bring the reef back to life. CBS News Miami's Joan Murray is your reporter in Dania Beach where experts are working hard to protect the fragile ocean organisms. For the past week marine scientists are on a mission in the Florida Keys collecting floating coral egg and sperm bundles, taking them to a lab where they are fertilized in a controlled environment to make baby corals. The coral right there. They're doing similar IVF coral work at Nova Southeastern's lab in Dania Beach. And my parents, my grandparents grew up diving in the Keys and everything and you know they tell me how much has changed. Rachel Iannotta is part of a team working to restore the coral reef system. We usually raise them for roughly a year and a half where they have grown to a size that we feel is suitable for being outplanted on the reefs. Grad student Aiden Healy is in the water a couple of times a week. Eventually he'll attach the baby corals to the reef. Once they're big enough give them back to us. We'll take them to the offshore nurseries and usually put them in like caged in structures so that fish can't get them. The reef system has been under siege for decades because of warm water disease and pollution. Kind of come back to a state where they were where they used to be to pass on for other people that grow up and go here. These are actual pieces of coral that took decades to form. Gives you an idea what everybody's working toward getting closer to that goal every day. In Dania Beach, Joan Murray, CBS News, Miami.