We tend to think about corals as stationary animals, almost plants, but they do have a free-swimming stage when they are very young. A team of scientist working in the Caribbean Sea has now found that during this stage, the tiny corals find their way to suitable homes by listening to the distinctive sounds produced by reef dwelling animals.

The big question is now if the increasing noise pollution of the ocean brought on by human activities will affect the corals’ ability to find suitable spots for colonization. If free-swimming corals do not find a spot soon enough they die, and promptly being able to locate a fitting surface is therefore of outmost importance for them. Numerous human endeavours pollute the sea with various sounds, from boating and shipping to drilling, pile driving and seismic testing.

A few years back, Dr Steve Simpson, Senior Researcher in the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, was able to show that reef fish utilize sound to locate coral reefs in the ocean. The Carmabi Foundation Team working in Curaçao in the Dutch Antilles wanted to see if this was true for corals as well, and therefore set up a ‘choice chamber’.

A choice chamber is a device where small invertebrates, such as corals, are given the option to choose between two or more different conditions. The Carmabi choice chamber was filled with coral larvae belonging to the species Montastraea faveolata, the main reef building coral in the Caribbean Sea. The scientist then played recordings of a coral reef, and the corals turned out to very much favour moving in the direction of the sound.

Free-swimming corals are tiny and look a bit like miniscule hairy eggs. How they manage to detect sounds remains unknown.

“At close range sound stirs up water molecules, and this could waggle tiny hair cells on the surface of the larvae, providing vital directional information for baby corals,” said Dr Simpson.

The results of the study, which was headed by Dr Mark Vermeij, has been published in PLoS ONE.

http://www.plosone.org/home.action

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010660

The research was funded through a fellowship to Dr Simpson by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, UK) and by the National Science Foundation and Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA).

More information can be found at

Scuba divers are threatening the survival of the infinitesimal Pygmy seahorses found on the coral reefs around Sabah’s east coast islands in Malaysia.

Sabah, a Malaysian state situated in the northern part of the island of Borneo, is home to two species of pygmy seahorse Hippocampus bargibanti and Hippocampus denise. Both species are fairly widespread in South East Asia and are found on coral slopes from southern Japan and Indonesia to northern Australia and New Caledonia.

Barely five years ago, the pygmy seahorses were discovered at popular Sabah divespots, such as Bodgaya, Mabul and Pulau Sipadan, and since then dive operators have brought large numbers of scuba divers to see the tiny creatures. In some of the most popular spots, over 100 divers can be seen exploring the reef simultaneously and this puts a lot of stress on the reef and its inhabitants.

Photographing divers have for instance been spotted breaking off sea fans – the natural habitat of the pygmy seahorses – and moved them just to get a better angle for their pictures.

In an effort to improve the conditions for the seahorses, marine biologist Yeong Yee Ling of the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu has held a two-day seminar about how to behave when scuba diving in seahorse habitat. The seminar was attended by 57 participants, including representatives from most of the 15 dive operators based in Semporna. Sabah Parks, the conservation-based statutory responsible for conserving the scenic, scientific and historic heritage of the state of Sabah, was also involved in the event.

“Our hope is that the discussions from the seminar would eventually be synthesised into a code of conduct for divers. We are thankful the dive operators have been supportive of this effort,” said Yeong, who has been researching pygmy seahorses for the past three years.

The seminar was funded by the Shell Malaysia’s Sustainable and Development Grant.

For the first time, a predatory coral has been captured by the camera while eating a jellyfish almost equal to its size. The event occurred in March 2009 during a dive among the Red Sea reefs located near Eilat in Israel, and the photos has now been published in the journal Coral Reefs.

Israeli researchers Omri Bronstein from Tel Aviv University and Gal Dishon from Bar-Ilan University were conducting a survey on reefs when they spotted a mushroom coral sucking in a moon jellyfish.

“During the survey we were amazed to notice some mushroom corals actively feeding on the moon jellyfish,” says Ada Alamaru, a member of the research team who is doing her PhD in marine biology supervised by Prof Yossi Loya at Tel Aviv University. “We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw it.”

Corals are predatory animals but most of them feed on tiny plankton, and corals living close to the surface can also obtain energy by forming symbiotic relationships with photosynthesising algae. While it may be possible for plankton eating corals to ingest miniscule embryonic jellyfish, this is the first time anyone has photographed a coral feasting on adult jelly.

“This is definitely unusual. As far as I know no other coral are reported to feed on jellyfish. However, some sea anemones, which are close relatives of corals, are documented feeding on other jelly species,” Alamaru explains.

The coral in question was a mushroom coral belonging to the species Fungia scruposa while the unfortunate jellyfish was an Aurelia aurita – a type of moon jellyfish. Exactly how the coral managed to capture the jellyfish remains a mystery. The area was subjected to a seasonal bloom of jellyfish brought on by nutrient rich ocean currents.

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has announced their plans to create a cryobank for corals. Corals will be collected from tropical areas and placed in liquid nitrogen at the Whipsnade zoo in Bedfordshire.

“Carbon dioxide emissions are rising fast and are already above the safe level for corals,” said Dr Alex Rogers, head of marine biodiversity at the ZSL. “Some reefs are already beginning to fail and many will die within a few decades. We need a plan B, and freezing them is the best option.”

The idea of creating a coral cryobank stems from similar projects concerning seeds, such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault where seeds from all over the world are preserved inside a cool cavern on Spitsbergen, north of mainland Norway.

Storing coral for prolonged periods of time without killing them was made possible quite recently thanks to a new method developed by researcher Craig Downs of the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory.

“We can take 1mm-2mm biopsies from coral, freeze them at -200C and thaw them out to regenerate back into a polyp,” says Downs, who is now working with the ZSL. “We are proposing to do this for every species of coral on the planet.”

Roughly 3,350 cold-water corals and about 1,800 tropical coral species are currently know to science. Downs proposes keeping 1,000 samples of each at the zoo.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington is now discussing setting up their own coral sample facility to alleviate the risks of having just one coral sample storage in the world.

Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said he supported the efforts but warned it was no consolation for the eradication of reefs. According to Veron, endeavours such as cryobanks, genetic make-up preservation, and coral aquariums aren’t meaningful.

“These are not solutions,” says Veron. “Because Australia is home to the biggest coral reef in the world, it should concentrate all its efforts into helping the Great Barrier Reef survive. Personally, I feel it’s no compensation to know that the genetic information of corals is kept in machines.”

Florida anglers are being sharply criticized after a video of them free-gaffing a Mako shark off South Florida this week was made public on the Internet.

In the video, which was uploaded to Youtube and also displayed on the website of a Florida TV station (can be seen below), the anglers can be seen trying to gaff a free-swimming shark. The shark ventured close to the boat after being attracted to a swordfish that the anglers had alongside their vessel.

Since no rods or reels appear to have been used by the anglers as they captured the 748-pound Mako shark, they may have acted in violation of state and federal law. “I’d hazard that I’m not the first to pick up on these fine points of the law but if the video does indeed tell the full tale then these laws need to be enforced,” said Luke Tipple, a marine biologist and director of the Shark-Free Marina Initiative. “If however the fishermen can provide video evidence of them using PRIMARY tackle (i.e. hook and line) to initialize the capture then they would be within their rights to have landed the shark. If this turns out to be the case then I will instead turn this report into a cautionary tale of how the media should be more responsible in reporting on shark harvests, particularly when dealing with species considered by some to be globally threatened.”

A previously unknown field of endangered Staghorn coral has been found in Florida waters by scuba divers belonging to the non-profit group Palm Beach County Reef Rescue.

“We’ve found the largest field (of the coral) in the county,” says Reef Rescue’s director Ed Tichenor. “We’re really surprised by this.”

The field, which is located roughly a mile east of Palm Beach island, is significant since Palm Beach town officials have objected to federal protection of the area.

Last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service designated roughly 1,300 square miles of ocean floor – ranging from the Florida Key to the Boynton Beach Inlet – as critical habitat for staghorn. This prompted the Palm Beach County Reef Rescue to petition the government to extend the protected area northwards to the Lake Worth Inlet, thereby including the coast off Palm Beach.

The Palm Beach County Reef Rescue estimates the newfound staghorn field to be between 100 and 300 feet long.

“I was expecting to see it but not as much,” said Connie Gasque, a Palm Beach resident who led the dive group. “My reaction was ‘Wow!

Everywhere you looked, there it was.”

Before this discovery, only small pockets of staghorn coral was known to exist in the waters off Palm Beach.

Palm Beach County Reef Rescue now hopes that the discovery will convince the National Marine Fisheries Service to include the region in the protected coral zone.

What is Staghorn?

Staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) is a branching coral that can reach a length of up to 2 meters (almost 7 feet). It is the fastest growing species of all West Atlantic corals and can grow 10-20 cm per year in favourable conditions. The natural range for Staghorn coral stretches from Florida, USA through the Bahamas and the Carribbean Sea, down to Venezuela in South America.

Acropora cervicornis was placed on the U.S. Endangered Species List in 2006, and it is also listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, staghorn is not found north of Boca Raton.

In 1998, the gobies vanished from a section of the Great Barrier Reef as the corals became bleached. The corals have now re-colonized the bleached areas, which are located just of Orpheus Island, but the gobies haven’t returned. This lack of goby fish is puzzling Australian researchers, who had assumed that the gobies would return as soon as the corals bounced back.

Professor David Bellwood from James Cook University says the goby’s failure to repopulate the coral is disturbing, and that it may be an indicator that fish will not return to damaged reefs as fast as first thought.

“What’s happening is they’re not bouncing back, they’re not coming back as fast as we’d expect”, says Bellwood. “These gobies only live for a few weeks – you’d expect them to be turning over very, very fast and they become like an indicator of how the future might be. The reef may never be the same ever again – it’s going to be different, we may have a reef but it’s not going to be like the one we remember and it’s more variable and more unpredictable than we thought.”

New coral reefs and hills have been discovered in Lónsdjúp, off Iceland’s eastern coast.

The corals, which come in two different colours, were stumbled upon by the Icelandic Marine Research Institute during a submarine research expedition in June.

The newfound coral area is located within a 40-square-kilometer vicinity at a depth of 200 to 500 meters. Unlike the corals that form reefs in tropical environments, the Icelandic corals are cold water species. Since no sunlight reaches them at these great depths they cannot carry out any photosynthesis. Instead, they survive by filtering nutrition from ocean currents.

“What makes these so special is that they take a very long time to grow; it takes a coral reef several hundred thousands of years to develop and in that time it creates a special habitat for other organisms,” says Steinunn Hilma Ólafsdóttir, an expert in demersal organisms.

All other known coral areas off the coast of Iceland are protected as nature reserves.

The reef in the picture is not the newly discovered reef. It is a picture from the great barrier reef.

The Nature Conservancy and its partners’ staghorn and elkhorn coral recovery project, including Lirman’s nursery in Biscayne National Park, will receive $350,000 to help save U.S. reefs.

The news was announced yesterday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who also said that the money, which will come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), will be used to further develop large-scale, in-water coral nurseries and restore coral reefs along the southern coast of Florida and around the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Nature Conservancy will serve as coordinator of the overall project; a project which will include the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, as well as other academic, government and private entities.

The project goal is to grow approximately 12,000 corals in Florida and use them to enhance coral populations in 34 different areas.

The Australian government will spend 200 million AUD to improve the water quality around the Great Barrier Reef in what Agriculture Minister Tony Burke calls a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to resuscitate the reef”.

The first “downpayment”, consisting of 50 million AUD, was committed on Thursday. The money will be divided between agriculture industry groups, natural resource management bodies, and the WWF (World Wide Fund). The recipients will work to increase the water quality by promoting better farming practices on land. The short-term goal is to reduce nutrient and chemical discharge into the reef environment by 25 percent from next year.

“Farmers hold one of the keys to the reef’s long-term health – they understand the land and how to manage it in a smart, productive way,” Burke said in a statement.