Officials recently expanded the Port of Miami to allow in larger ships, impacting local coral colonies in the process. (Credit: Felix Mizioznikov/Shutterstock)

Coral reefs along the Florida coastline are struggling. Disease has been running rampant among colonies in recent years, and now researchers have found that a billion-dollar dredging project that wrapped up in 2015 killed off more than half of the coral population in the Port of Miami.

A study published May 24 in the journal Marin