In April, the Coral Restoration Foundation, a Florida-based reef restoration nonprofit, unveiled its new coral bus, which it described as a cutting-edge aquarium trailer system designed to transport nursery-raised corals safely to their new homes within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

But just three months after the bus first hit the road, it is being used as part of a much more desperate and sobering effort not to haul corals out to sea, but to evacuate hundreds of them from the record-shattering and relentless marine heat wave now ravaging reefs in the Florida Keys, and to prepare the ecosystem for whats coming soon.

In order to restore coral reefs, we need to maintain genetic diversity of the local populations, Phanor Montoya-Maya, the foundations restoration program manager, told HuffPost. Were going to try to save as much as we can, so we have a good representation of that genetic diversity that will help coral reefs to bounce back.

As of Monday, more than 1,500 corals had been relocated from offshore nurseries to climate-controlled water tanks at the Keys Marine Laboratory in Layton, Florida. They are expected to remain there for several months, until ocean temperatures subside, after which they will be returned to offshore nurseries. The rescue effort, coordinated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, involves numerous organizations that have been on the front lines of trying to restore degraded reefs off Floridas coast.

Since early July, surface water temperatures in the Keys have hovered in the mid-90s, way above the mid-July average. On Monday, a buoy in Manatee Bay, off the coast of Key Largo, recorded water temperatures reaching a stunning 101.1 degrees a normal temperature for a hot tub and, if verified, potentially the hottest sea surface temperature ever recorded.