A diving team from Kuwait has commented that this past Saturday that it had just completed their latest step in cleaning up 7 tons of harmful materials from the coral reef shelf of Qaruh island.

Walid Al-Shattie, the Marine Operations chief of the team, has commented recently to KUNA that this latest step in the cleanup effort utilized a seventy ton crane to help lift the harmful materials above the coral reefs as well as made use of a truck and trailer to transport the materials once they hit land.

Al-Shattie added that the diving team also used airbags and large canvas sacks during their twenty day mission to aid in the efforts to pick up the hazardous material from the coral reefs, and relocate it to more appropriate places in the seabed.

He explained that the team made use of special nets around the island of Qaruh to help contain the hazardous materials until such a time as they could be removed by lifting.

He also noted that the members of the diving team were leery that they may run into some of the old military equipment left over from the Iraqi 1990 invasion, as some military equipment has already been found above the coral reefs at Qaruh and Umm Al-Maradim islands.

That aside, it is good to see that interest in protecting and cleaning up the areas of coral reefs, and even though the face some element of danger, the efforts of this diving team are very much appreciated.

Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

This past Wednesday, researchers at the Mote Marine Laboratory released four different kinds of coral at two different locations in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. This action, which was sanctioned by the Sanctuary officials and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, is supposed to help try out the practicality of using “test tibe” coral to restock the damaged or depleted reefs of the world.

One of the sites chosen for this momentous test, Mote, is utilizing coral grown in a local nursery to try and replenish stocks of stagorn coral. The second location was decided upon because it seemed to be especially hard done by with the cold snap running through, which caused a coildwater bleaching even this past January.

“Now is an especially good time to do this study because of the cold snap in January,” explained director of Mote’s Center for Aquaculture Research and Development, Dr. Kevan Main. The MCARD reared the coral fragments in partnership with Mote’s Center for Coral Reef Research at Mote’s Tropical Research Laboratory on Summerland Key. “During that cold event, many of the fragmented corals growing at the inshore release site were lost. This gives us an opportunity to see whether we can jump start the recovery of corals at this site with cultured fragments.”

Its good to see that some progress has been made to help the world get its reefs back in tip top form. As we all know, coral reefs are a vital part to the well being of the world’s oceans, and if they go, soon all life in the sea will go.. And we know where that leads….

Healthy reef

Blooms of toxic algae could possibly wipe out coral reefs.

Researchers who have been studying the coral reefs in the Gulf of Oman have sounded the alarm after a big algae bloom laid waste to an entire coral reef in just three short weeks.

Some ninety-five percent of the hard coral directal under the algae died off, and seventy percent fewer fish were found in the vicinity.

The algae grows rapidly and hog all the sunlight and oxygen which the coral need to survive.

Add in climate change, development along the coasts, overfishing and pollution and you have a rather bleak outlook for the coral reefs of the world.

The biggest threat facing the coral reefs is climate change, which has caused many coral bleaching events around the globe.

However, this latest discovery, which was published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin postulates that algal blooms are just as much a threat to the coral reefs.

Scientists from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health had taken it upon themselves to study the environment of two different coral reefs in the Gulf of Oman.

After they finished up their first study, an algae bloom which measured over 500 square kilometers happened in the area.

After the scientists made a return visit some three weeks after the fact, they discovered that the coral under the bloom had been almost completely destroyed.

So, it appears that the coral is facing yet another threat, algae. Scientists are now working on a way to help the reefs, but since this is a new phenomena it might take some time.

Elkhorn Coral

The only living coral reef in North America has really been put through a lot by humans, with the hellish effects of a booming population on mainland Florida as well as in the Keys, which is causing some coral to die and a lot of others to become distressed. Researcher are now focusing on a way to try and help repair the damage done, and even restore the reef to its previous glory.

Researchers have been raising coral, which is still a living organism, in nurseries so that it can be easily moved into the ocean, with a minimum of fuss and muss. The plan is to begin with Davis Reef in Islamorada (purple island), which has been particularly hard done by, thanks to growth, shipping, and other man made messes.

Bill Sharp, a researcher over at Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, has explained that the work to be performed on Davis Reef could aid scientists in better understanding how nursery-grown coral can come to the aid of natural coral.

Researchers also hope that the project will help bring back the long-spined sea urchins, which normally use the coral reefs for shelter.

Not only does the reef provide shelter for a myriad of life in the sea, living reefs are also a major draw in terms of tourism, attracting divers and snorkelers from all over the place, year in and year out.

If the reef could somehow have the damage done to it repaired, and the age of the dam is not too much, then coral reefs can regenerate over time, however it can take decades, hundreds or even thousands of years to replenish to their natural states

Sea urchin - By: Marco Busdraghi

The coral reefs off of Hawaii are being smothered by tons of algae, and efforts have been made to help solve this dilemma. The answer comes from an unlikely source.. Sea Urchins. Sea urchins, commonly known as the “cows of the sea”, are being used along side a new underwater vacuuming system aptly named the “Super Sucker” in an attempt to finally start getting the algae off the reef and get them healthy again.

Researchers from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources are pleased to announce that the project has been a success, as it has been using sea urchins alongside the Super Sucker for the past year in Kaneohe Bay.

“It exceeded our exectations,” Tony Montgomery, a state aquatic biologist commented. “It actually worked better than we thought.”

The project began in August of last year, where divers were manually removing the offending algae from the reef. Once harvested, the algae was then sucked up using the super sucker.. On another part of the reef however, a bunch of sea urchins were left to do their business. The results were that these cows of the sea were quite the eating machines. While the project is being deemed a success there is still a lot of algae to be removed, and Montgomery is remaining casually optimistic. “We will see how they do with thousands of pounds of algae to eat,” He said.

Great star coral (Montastraea cavernosa)

Researchers from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University and the Smithsonian have brought the first frozen Hawaiian coral bank into existence to try and prevent them from becoming extinct and to preserve their diverse population in Hawaii.

A faculty member over at the HIMB, and also a respected scientist with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Mary Hagedorn, is leading the lab at the HIMB research facilities on Coconut Island in Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, which is storing the frozen cells of the coral.

“Because frozen banked cells are viable, the frozen material can be thawed one, 50 or, in theory, even 1,000 years from now to restore a species or population,” explains Hagedorn. “In fact, some of the frozen sperm samples have already been thawed and used to fertilize coral eggs to produce developing coral larvae.”

Many people tend to forget that Coral reefs are living, dynamic ecosystems which afford precious services: They are the home to many offspring for marine animals and other invertebrates; they give natural protection from storms on the coasts; they take carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere; and they even might be sources for future medical wonders.

So, is it any wonder that it would be a good idea to keep them alive? By freezing them, we are saving them, and can keep them alive for up to 1,000 years. Think of all the wonderful things will be accomplished, by simply saving the coral.. Imagine if we had the same initiative when it came to everything?

Coral bleaching. Picture: Bruno de Giusti

The Wildlife Conservation Society has recently released an initial report stating that there was a drastic rise in the surface temperatures in the waters of Indonesia, and has caused a massive bleaching event which has really sent coral populations into a tail spin.

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s “Rapid Response Unit”, a group of highly trained marine biologists, was sent out to take a look into the coral bleaching reported in May. This bleaching event occurred in Aceh, located on the northern side of the island of Sumatra, and the team discovered that over 60% of the coral population was bleached.

This “Bleaching” – coral turning white when algae which has previously made its home there gets booted out – is indicative of stress on the coral by any number of environmental factors. It could be the temperature of the ocean’s surface, or any other number of things. Depending on what exactly is the root cause of the issue, bleached coral may renew itself overtime or just die off.

The sad state of affairs, is it appears that this batch of coral is following the latter… A second monitoring by the marine ecologists at the WCS, James Cook University, and Syiah Kuala University have been completed since early August and the results are very grim indeed.

The group discovered that 80 percent of some of the species of coral have died off since their initial assessment and even more of the coral colonies are expected to die off within the next couple of months..

Someone really needs to get to the bottom of this, and soon.. Or we may find ourselves with no coral in our oceans.

Elkhorn Coral

An accidental find just off of Key Largo has lead to farms being created for delicate, yet ever so important, species of coral.

Just over 30 feet below the calm waters above the colorful reef off of Key Largo, Ken Nedimyer proudly displays a small slate which reads “Let’s plant corals.”

Along with a team of volunteer divers, they quickly get to work and utilize epoxy putty to help tiny bits of staghorn coral gain a foothold in the great big ocean.

In the vast expanse of ocean just off of Key Largo, Fort Lauderdale, and a few other choice locations, Nedimyer, an accomplished collector of tropical fish from Tavernier, along with researchers and his hodgepodge group of volunteers, are getting to work and raising groups of rare coral species to help repopulate the rapidly depleting reefs of the southeastern United States.

“These are my little children,” 54 year old Nedimyer, commented later that same day, explaining that the endangered coral which he has been cultivating on slabs of concrete, grows much like delicate saplings in an aquatic underwater offshore nursery.

Elkhorn and staghorn corals are classified as undersea architects, they create structures in the reef which then in turn support a myriad of sea lifeforms such as sponges, fish, lobsters, and many others. These reefs have really taken a beating from things like global warming, disease, and many other stresses over the past three decades, and have declined to just a few sparse patches in the warm waters that run from southern Palm Beach County to the islands of the Caribbean.

However, in an exciting turn of events, staghorn coral was found growing in an undersea farm for commercial aquarium rock, and researchers have now begun to raise these diffent species of coral in nurseries located offshore with the ultimate goal of transplanting them back into the wild.

The Obama administration, through economic stimulus money, has been financing the expansion of the $3.4 million project. It is hoped that this will create 57 full time jobs, commented Tom Moore, who is a representative of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration’s Habitat Restoration Center in St. Petersburg.

Healthy reefs lead to more jobs in the tourism industry, increase the habitat for fisheries, and even provide much needed protection from weather patterns such as hurricanes, Moore continued.

Today there are now a row of 10 such coral nurseries which stretch from Fort Lauderdale to the U.S. Virgin islands, which are cultivating new stands of both the elkhorn and staghorn coral.

“These are two of the most important species of coral,” explained the marine science program manager for The Nature Conservancy, James Byrne. The Nature Conservancy is an ecologically minded group of individuals corporations that have applied for the federal money and is coordinating the work. “The staghorn coral provides very important habitat for juvenile fish, and elkhorn coral is one of the most important reef builders.”

It is nice to see that a group has taken an interest in the “reforestation” of the seas, as well as on land. The ocean is crucial to our world’s survival.. Nice to know someone has remembered that.

Great Barrier Reef

New research has discovered that seaweed is leeching the life right out of the Great Barrier Reef and annihilating coral!

Researchers who were engaged in one of the most extensive water quality and pollution studies on the reef have concluded that seaweed is taking a toll on the $1 Billion a year tourist attraction.

Due to run off in the area, the water quality on the reef is extremely poor. The study discovered the level of nutrients and high turbidity of the water was increasing the occurrence of seaweed and decreasing the biodiversity of corals on the reef.

The areas which seem to be the most effected are the inshore reef to the north of the Burdekin River and the whole of the Wet Tropics zone from Port Douglas to Townsville.

“Seaweeds are a natural part of the reef,” said Dr. Katharina Fabricius, an Australian Institute of Marine Science coral reef ecologist. “But what we don’t want is billions of algae smothering coral.”

“Choking is a loaded term but when seaweed abundance becomes too high there is no space left for coral to grow.”

This study and its results were recently published in the scientific journal Ecological Applications. The data published included data collected from 150 reefs and over 2000 water quality stations located across the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park since the early 1990’s.

Dr. Glenn Death, the principal investigator has said that the seaweed is now covering five times the coral under these poor water conditions.

“The diversity of corals was also affected, decreasing in poor water quality,” he explained.

“Currently, the water on 22 per cent of reefs – about 647 reefs – on the Great Barrier Reef does not meet water quality guidelines.”

The conclusion that the study eludes to is that if the quality of the water was improved in the problem areas, then the seaweed would diminish to one third of what it is now, and the coral species would exhibit a 13 percent increase.

The area that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park covers is approximately 345,000 square kilometers and extends itself for 2,000 kilometers along the northeast coast of Australia.

Great star coral (Montastraea cavernosa)

Scientists and conservationists might be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to finding corals which are suited to surviving the global climate crisis. This is according to a recent research paper which was published in the journal Science.

Two researchers, Ann Budd and John Pandolf, came to this conclusion after they closely analyzed the link between evolutionary innovation and geography of the boulder star coral species complex (which is known in the scientific community as Montastrae annularis). The boulder star coral complex is a group of Caribbean reef corals.

They took a look at the shape of various growths of coral, both recent and fossil in order to see what morphology differences existed. The fossils involved dated back to over 850,000 years ago.

The results were that the quickest, and most drastic, changes to the morphology of the fossil coral growth happened at the outer edges, and the least drastic, and slowest, changes happened in the more central parts.

This seems to suggest that the edge of the coral played an integral role in evolutionary innovation, which may just be caused by cross breeding, or any other number of factors.

This is very big in terms of conservation of the coral reefs. The conventional wisdom dictates that we preserve the center of the coral, more so than focus on conserving the outer edges.

However, by focusing our efforts on the center, we may be overlooking the important sources of adaptation during climate changes.

Ann Budd, lead author of the paper, elaborates more on the subject. “…areas ranked highly for species richness, endemism and threats may not represent regions of maximum evolutionary potential.”

The conclusion of the paper is that in order to properly design marine reserves in the future we need to also take the evolutionary processes and the link between the coral and other species into account by looking at the outer edges as well.