SAN ANDRÉS, Colombia — Nearly 50 years after she first put on a wetsuit, Elvira Alvarado still remembers coming upon a coral reef off Colombia's Caribbean coast.

"Everything was alive. And it was green and bright orange. And there were fishes. And there were huge things. And they were corals. It was astonishing," she says. "Can you imagine paradise? It's paradise."

At 70, Colombian marine biologist Elvira Alvarado is still diving, researching and training a new generation of scientists. Her mission: rescuing Colombia's endangered coral reefs by reproducing coral through in-vitro fertilization. Her lifelong dedication to these marine invertebrates has earned her the nickname: "the mother of Colombian corals."

Coral are vital ecosystems that provide food, shelter and breeding grounds for

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