This is literal, partly how the guy down the street, at your local saltwater aquarium shop, keeps supply in stock. This is grafting/cloning from fragments, boring coral propagation, widely done for many decades. It only works very quickly for some coral though (there are over 1000 known).
Nobody involved with any of this consulted a marine biologist with a rudimentary understanding of coral, or the guy propagating it for a living down the road.
How did I know this? I did a report on coral when I was a kid.
> Nobody involved with any of this consulted a marine biologist with a rudimentary understanding of coral
Hmm.
> Stephen Palumbi: Jane and Marshall Steel Jr. Professor of Marine Sciences, Professor of Oceans and of Biology
https://profiles.stanford.edu/stephen-palumbi?releaseVersion...
You sure he doesnt have even a rudimentary understanding of coral? Did you read the paper? I'm going to assume the marine biologist publishing papers has at least some idea on corals, unless give a good reason to doubt it.