
This mountainous star coral, Montastraeaa faveolata, from Panama has started to bleach. Photo by E.C. Peters.
David Vaughan plunges his right arm down to his elbow into one of nine elevated tanks where thousands of tiny colonies of coral are growing at an astonishing rate in shaded seclusion next to the Mote Tropical Research Laboratory.
“Now this is the exciting part. You ready for this?” he asks, straining to be heard over the relentless hiss of filtered saltwater squirting from a maze of pipes and plastic tubing into the shallow fiberglass tank, the size of a dining-room table.
Dr. Vaughan, a marine biologist who is executive director of the laboratory, retrieves a flat rock from the bottom. A chocolate-brown colony of brain coral, nearly eight inches wide, has grown on the stony surface, its distinctive fleshy, serpentine folds nearly covering the rock.
A year ago the colony began as inch-and-a-half-wide coral fragments cut with a band saw from the same parent colony. As if doused with a growth elixir, these coral “seeds” began to grow 25 times as fast as they would in the wild.
And when arranged a few inches apart on the rock, the mini-colonies quickly advanced across the surface and fused to become a single grapefruit-sized organism that continues to grow.
Other species grown from tiny coral seeds in the Mote lab have developed even faster — up to 50 times their normal rate.
Dr. Vaughan and a staff biologist, Christopher Page, say this quick-grow technique, called microfragmenting, may make it possible to mass-produce reef-building corals for transplanting onto dead or dying reefs that took centuries to develop — perhaps slowing or even reversing the alarming loss of corals in the Florida Keys and elsewhere.
“This is real,” Dr. Vaughan said. “This potentially can be a fix.”
Other scientists are excited, too. While there are other efforts around the world to grow new coral, “this is easily the most promising restoration project that I am aware of,” said Billy Causey, a coral expert who oversees all federal marine sanctuaries in the Southeastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Dave and Chris are buying us time,” he added. “This will keep corals out there” until “we can come to understand what is happening to coral on the larger scale.”
Still, even Dr. Vaughan’s cheery optimism has its limits. A quarter of the earth’s corals have disappeared in recent decades, and the Mote scientists say no one can predict what will happen if the oceans continue to warm, pollution and acidification increase, overfishing further decimates species beneficial to coral, and land runoff continues to reduce the amount of life-giving sunlight that reaches the bottom.
“We do not know if this is a fix-all,” Mr. Page said. “At worst, we’re buying a little time. At best, we could restore the ecosystem.”
The Latest on: Transplant for Coral Reefs
via Google News
The Latest on: Transplant for Coral Reefs
- Capturing Coral Coitus On The Darkest Nights Of The Year With ‘Avatar’ Videographer Peter Zuccarinion January 20, 2021 at 7:42 am
Capturing images of coral reproducing after being transplanted into an ailing Florida reef was uniquely tricky. But Peter Zuccarini, on a break from filming 'Avatar' sequels, had some help from an ...
- Mannar’s Corals Stand Strong in the Face of Growing Threats – With a Little Helpon January 18, 2021 at 7:36 pm
Researchers working in the Gulf of Mannar have found that coral reefs will accept help, and adapt better to climate change.
- Corals are being groomed for a special purpose and missionon January 17, 2021 at 4:00 pm
Behind the scenes at Maui Ocean Center, aquarists like Christina Cantellops assist with the caretaking of common, rare and endemic Hawaiian corals. -- Maui Ocean Center photo Under a sky of ...
- UCF Engineering and Biology Researchers Collaborate to Aid Coral Reef Restorationon January 11, 2021 at 8:06 am
UCF Engineering and Biology Researchers Collaborate to Aid Coral Reef Restoration | Read more about UCF Colleges & Campus News, Research, Science & Technology, Orlando and Central Florida news.
- Engineering and biology researchers collaborate to aid coral reef restorationon January 10, 2021 at 4:00 pm
The findings will inform efforts to successfully transplant nursery-reared coral into the wild. Florida's threatened coral reefs have a more than $4 billion annual economic impact on the state's ...
- Hashtag: #EwingStreetTreeson November 24, 2020 at 4:00 pm
The Chief Justice has just issued a stay of the work to transplant the trees on Ewing Street, and the City of Hamilton said they have “not yet had the opportunity to present any information to ...
- A federal plan to save coral reefson August 8, 2020 at 5:37 pm
The plan is to transplant fast-growing, disease-resistant corals into the reefs, with the eventual goal of reaching 25 percent coral cover. The 70 acres of reefs included in the plan are popular ...
- Soyoka Mukoon September 2, 2019 at 12:45 pm
Estimates of population viability and response of coral metacommunity to climate change Coral reefs is known as a treasure house ... the reef restoration by transplantation of corals, and the response ...
- The quest to save coralon August 6, 2014 at 1:51 pm
Worldwide, coral reefs provide an estimated $30 billion ... and they're thriving." Transplant efforts in the past haven't been very successful, Palumbi said, but maybe we just haven't been picking ...
- Caribbean coral reefs get help from seeding programon March 15, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Dacosta says he is gradually seeing some balance restored to the Oracabessa Bay fish sanctuary where he works to transplant coral fragments and scoop up snails and worms from reefs. He says bigger ...
via Bing News