Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Sunken gardens: underwater nurseries are yielding the country's newestcrop: coral


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Once a month, Caitlin Lustic and her team of gardeners head west from the Florida Keys. Five miles out, they put on scuba gear and fill their pockets with toothbrushes. Plunging into the clear blue water, they dive to a unique nursery on the seafloor.

The nursery is an array of cinder blocks with fragments of coral attached to them. Lustic pulls out a toothbrush and scrubs off any algae that have become attached to the blocks. Algae grow quickly and can smother the coral fragments. "Fish love when we clean the nursery because they eat algae," Lustic told Current Science. "When we scrape it off and it's floating in the water around us, they get a free lunch."

Lustic is a biologist who oversees a series of coral nurseries in the waters off Florida and several Caribbean islands. The corals' caregivers work for a variety of organizations and universities that are studying and developing ways of improving the health of the ailing coral reefs off the Florida coast.

STATIONARY ANIMAL

A nursery is generally thought of as an area where plants are cultivated and exhibited. Corals, despite what many people think, are not plants. They belong to a group of aquatic animals called cnidarians (nigh-DER-ee-uhns). Cnidarians are invertebrates--they don't have backbones. They're soft-bodied with stinging tentacles that they wield to protect themselves and to catch food. A single opening in their bodies ingests food and eliminates waste.

Some cnidarians are medusae--creatures that pulsate through the ocean water, their tentacles hanging like the snakes on the head of the mythical monster Medusa. Jellyfish are medusae. Other cnidarians are polyps. They attach themselves to a solid surface and remain there throughout their lives. Corals are polyps.

Coral polyps live in colonies. They secrete the compound calcium carbonate, which forms a hard skeleton around the colony. Over thousands of years, many generations of corals build massive underwater reefs. Scientists believe that many of the world's coral reefs began to form 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last glacial period. Corals inhabit tropical waters. Florida is one of two U.S. states--the other is Hawaii--that has offshore coral reefs.

4-H PROJECT

The idea for growing coral nurseries was hatched in 2000 by Florida resident Ken Nedimyer, a tropical-fish collector. His daughter needed a 4-H Club project. "Everyone said it couldn't be done," Nedimyer told CBS News.

Scientists picked up on Nedimyer's idea and have planted 14 nurseries in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Some of them are small and have only about 20 cinder blocks each. Others have hundreds. All of them are located 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) underwater. "Any deeper," explains Lustic, "and it's hard to tend to the coral."

Recently, the scientists began to experiment with growing corals on fishing lines hung like necklaces between buoys. "One advantage of line nurseries became apparent this winter," says Lustic. "We had a surge of very cold water, and the coral on the line were not affected adversely because they floated above the coldest water. Coral is very sensitive to extreme water temperatures, both warm and cold."

The two types of corals grown in the nurseries are staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) and elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata). Both are named for their antler-like appearance. And both grow quickly. The newly planted fragments of coral, which contain many polyps, are 7.5 to 10 centimeters (3 to 4 inches) long. As the polyps multiply, the fragments grow bigger and sprout branches, which the scientists slice off with surgical bone cutters and transplant with epoxy onto existing coral reefs.

Why transplant corals? Many coral reefs around the world are in a precarious state, threatened by water pollution, hurricanes, climate change, acidity, disease, and aggressive fishing practices. In the Caribbean Sea and the western Atlantic Ocean, staghorn and elkhorn coral populations have declined by 80 to 90 percent since the 1980s.

Nursing and transplanting corals to keep reefs healthy has a ripple effect on marine life, says Lustic. Coral reefs form the basis of ecosystems that some scientists call the rain forests of the ocean. Like the rain forests on land, coral reefs are home to an abundance of wildlife. About one-quarter of all marine life inhabit the world's coral reefs.

FULFILLING FUN

Lustic finds coral gardening very rewarding. "It's fulfilling to know you could make a significant difference for the reefs," she says.

"It's not too hard and it's fun," she adds. "We are pretty good with hand signals underwater, so we end up getting the work done but also being silly. We also see some good wildlife--sharks, dolphins, lobsters, and lots of fish.

"Some fish are territorial and don't like us invading their space. They get aggressive and try to scare us away. They're usually pretty small, though, so we just get a kick out of it."

Fraser, Stephen

Source Citation
Fraser, Stephen. "Sunken gardens: underwater nurseries are yielding the country's newest crop: coral." Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication 4 Feb. 2011: 4+. General OneFile. Web. 14 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA248334599&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w

Gale Document Number: GALE|A248334599

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Once a month, Caitlin Lustic and her team of gardeners head west from the Florida Keys. Five miles out, they put on scuba gear and fill their pockets with toothbrushes. Plunging into the clear blue water, they dive to a unique nursery on the seafloor.

The nursery is an array of cinder blocks with fragments of coral attached to them. Lustic pulls out a toothbrush and scrubs off any algae that have become attached to the blocks. Algae grow quickly and can smother the coral fragments. "Fish love when we clean the nursery because they eat algae," Lustic told Current Science. "When we scrape it off and it's floating in the water around us, they get a free lunch."

Lustic is a biologist who oversees a series of coral nurseries in the waters off Florida and several Caribbean islands. The corals' caregivers work for a variety of organizations and universities that are studying and developing ways of improving the health of the ailing coral reefs off the Florida coast.

STATIONARY ANIMAL

A nursery is generally thought of as an area where plants are cultivated and exhibited. Corals, despite what many people think, are not plants. They belong to a group of aquatic animals called cnidarians (nigh-DER-ee-uhns). Cnidarians are invertebrates--they don't have backbones. They're soft-bodied with stinging tentacles that they wield to protect themselves and to catch food. A single opening in their bodies ingests food and eliminates waste.

Some cnidarians are medusae--creatures that pulsate through the ocean water, their tentacles hanging like the snakes on the head of the mythical monster Medusa. Jellyfish are medusae. Other cnidarians are polyps. They attach themselves to a solid surface and remain there throughout their lives. Corals are polyps.

Coral polyps live in colonies. They secrete the compound calcium carbonate, which forms a hard skeleton around the colony. Over thousands of years, many generations of corals build massive underwater reefs. Scientists believe that many of the world's coral reefs began to form 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last glacial period. Corals inhabit tropical waters. Florida is one of two U.S. states--the other is Hawaii--that has offshore coral reefs.

4-H PROJECT

The idea for growing coral nurseries was hatched in 2000 by Florida resident Ken Nedimyer, a tropical-fish collector. His daughter needed a 4-H Club project. "Everyone said it couldn't be done," Nedimyer told CBS News.

Scientists picked up on Nedimyer's idea and have planted 14 nurseries in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Some of them are small and have only about 20 cinder blocks each. Others have hundreds. All of them are located 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) underwater. "Any deeper," explains Lustic, "and it's hard to tend to the coral."

Recently, the scientists began to experiment with growing corals on fishing lines hung like necklaces between buoys. "One advantage of line nurseries became apparent this winter," says Lustic. "We had a surge of very cold water, and the coral on the line were not affected adversely because they floated above the coldest water. Coral is very sensitive to extreme water temperatures, both warm and cold."

The two types of corals grown in the nurseries are staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) and elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata). Both are named for their antler-like appearance. And both grow quickly. The newly planted fragments of coral, which contain many polyps, are 7.5 to 10 centimeters (3 to 4 inches) long. As the polyps multiply, the fragments grow bigger and sprout branches, which the scientists slice off with surgical bone cutters and transplant with epoxy onto existing coral reefs.

Why transplant corals? Many coral reefs around the world are in a precarious state, threatened by water pollution, hurricanes, climate change, acidity, disease, and aggressive fishing practices. In the Caribbean Sea and the western Atlantic Ocean, staghorn and elkhorn coral populations have declined by 80 to 90 percent since the 1980s.

Nursing and transplanting corals to keep reefs healthy has a ripple effect on marine life, says Lustic. Coral reefs form the basis of ecosystems that some scientists call the rain forests of the ocean. Like the rain forests on land, coral reefs are home to an abundance of wildlife. About one-quarter of all marine life inhabit the world's coral reefs.

FULFILLING FUN

Lustic finds coral gardening very rewarding. "It's fulfilling to know you could make a significant difference for the reefs," she says.

"It's not too hard and it's fun," she adds. "We are pretty good with hand signals underwater, so we end up getting the work done but also being silly. We also see some good wildlife--sharks, dolphins, lobsters, and lots of fish.

"Some fish are territorial and don't like us invading their space. They get aggressive and try to scare us away. They're usually pretty small, though, so we just get a kick out of it."

Fraser, Stephen

Source Citation
Fraser, Stephen. "Sunken gardens: underwater nurseries are yielding the country's newest crop: coral." Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication 4 Feb. 2011: 4+. General OneFile. Web. 14 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA248334599&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w

Gale Document Number: GALE|A248334599

ArabicChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)DeutchEspanolFrenchItalianJapaneseKoreanPortugueseRussian
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