#reef conservation

[hope-for-the-planet]

Usually, sharks don't have much interest in lionfish--this is due partially to their venomous spines, but also to the fact that the sharks don't recognize the nonnative fish as prey. The lack of predation by native predators like sharks is part of what makes lionfish such a damaging invasive species.

However, sharks became more interested after spearfishermen working to cull invasive lionfish started feeding the fish they were killing to nearby sharks. After receiving many lionfish "handouts", the fishermen observed sharks hunting and eating lionfish on their own.

This spurs hope that sharks could be "taught" to view lionfish as a viable source of food and contribute to limiting their numbers.

#cw animal death #shark #marine conservation #reef conservation #biodiversity #endangered species #invasive species #lionfish #fishing #good news #hope #environment

[linddzz]

Tell me about corals?

Many tropical coral species are colorful because of a single cellular algae that live in their tissue called zooxanthellae. The algae photosynthesizes and provide coral with the majority of their energy via the extra sugars the algae produce in this process, but corals also can absorb nutrients directly from the water and ALSO capture and eat small prey. Which means they were given a list of ways to gain energy and hit "all of the above".

Whenever you hear about coral bleaching, it refers to a stress response that causes the coral to reject their zooxanthellae. There are multiple reasons this can happen but heat and pollution are the most common. (The heat is why coral bleaching events often happen in the hottest months of the region).

Bleaching isn't the same as death, but they can look similar. A bleached coral does not have the pigment from the algae so you can see the white aragonite skeleton through the now translucent tissue. While not a death sentence it does make the coral extremely vulnerable to diseases and they can eventually starve without their symbiont photosynthesizing.

A dead coral has lost all of the tissue that covers the aragonite, and over time algae grow on the leftover skeleton until it resembles the rest of the reef rock. Diseases that cause tissue loss often affect parts of the coral so there can be patches of missing tissue until it spreads through the colony and finally kills it. Stress from pollution and changes in environment hurt coral immune systems to disease outbreaks are becoming more severe and lasting longer (the tissue loss disease hitting the East Atlantic reefs has been going and spreading since starting in Florida in 2014.) A big hurdle is coral disease is insanely complicated due to well...these brainless sessile rock animals also being stupidly complicated when it comes to their microbiome.

Most coral diseases are described as a bunch of symptoms, with a primary pathogen difficult to impossible to isolate with current knowledge. The good news is the world of coral conservation is expanding rapidly with way more minds on it from different fids. There's a lot of collaboration taking off between field work, pathologists, ocean nurseries, and closed system aquarists sharing information. Lots of places are doing lots of different things with the understanding that the more angles of attack and more things being tried, the better. Some cool stuff happening include:

-Ark projects taking corals from healthy areas of reefs to house in aquariums to preserve a gene bank that can be used for future repopulation. This is done for other animals in zoos and aquariums but doing it for coral is new.

-Asexual reproduction nurseries breaking off pieces of coral to grow either in an aquarium nursery or in nurseries on reefs to then be replanted. While it doesn't preserve genetic diversity as much this keeps coral cover in vulnerable areas to keep the reef going. Many of these places will also remove corals from regions that are under threat from development to move them to a healthier region or build new reefs to protect shorelines.

-"Jump-start" programs for genetic diversity. A big problem with sexual reproduction is as reefs die corals may be too far apart for spawnings to be successful. Field researchers teamed up with aquarists almost a decade ago for the first time to go out and collect eggs and sperm from yearly spawns of selected sites. These are taken to a nearby place to fertilize the eggs, raise larva until they settle onto specialized substrate which can then be "seeded" onto a reef. This exponentially ups the survival rate of coral larvae through that first step that typically only one in a million would survive. Currently the project is working on making the process as cheap and streamline as possible and working more with island populations so people won't need an expensive facility or man hours to do this.

-Induced captive spawning. One of the newer tactics and VERY COOL. Captive corals are kept in specialized systems to recreate a year on the reef. To spawn the corals need to have a year of seasonal changes in daylight PLUS the light from the monthly lunar cycle. Facilities in warm enough areas can keep corals in greenhouses allowing natural light to do this, but new tech (mostly from the home hobby side of aquarium keeping, just to add more complicated nuance) allows places to program specialized lights, pumps, heaters and chillers together to artificially recreate all these conditions.

Downside is it takes a ton of money and manpower. A TON. STUPID AMOUNTS. The plus side is a few places have successfully gotten spawnings multiple years in a row that happen at the same time as the wild spawnings happen, and baby corals born and raised completely in captivity outplanted on reefs show promising results! This also allows much more fine tuning and control for targeted breeding of especially healthy and resilient coral.

A lot of coral conservation is in this state I've heard described as "throwing tracks down in front of the runaway train because we don't know how the train works yet." But the promising news is that there are a LOT of minds throwing those tracks down and working on the train.

#coral reefs #reef conservation #a big takeaway is for any conservation work there is never One Golden Solution #long post #text post

[chainsxwsmile]

https://www.barrierreef.org

Today, you can double your donation in efforts to help restores devastated parts of the Great Barrier Reef! The Great Barrier Reef Foundation has projects focusing on reef restoration and protection, combating climate change effects, accurately mapping out bleached/affected reefs, and more!

My 25USD donation has doubled to a 50USD today; make your donation count, too!

And even if you can’t donate, it’s worth boosting the link to let other people know about this project!

Thank you!

#outofkelp #reef conservation #fight climate change

[wachinyeya]

#good news #environmentalism #science #first nations #canada #coral reef #coral reefs #environment #nature #animals #conservation

[scenetocause]

#cannot describe how severely i am losing my marbles about this image #if i even attempt to put it into words i will unironically need to be put away #oscar piastri #(he is visiting the great barrier reef for a conservation project it's all very good and honourable unlike my thoughts)

[reasonsforhope]

"Similar to the expeditions of a hundred or two hundred years ago, the Tara Pacific expedition lasted over two years. Its goal was to research the conditions for life and survival of corals. The ship crossed the entire Pacific Ocean, assembling the largest genetic inventory conducted in any marine system to date. The team's 70 scientists from eight countries took around 58,000 samples from the hundred coral reefs studied.

The first results of the analysis have now been published in Nature Communications. This largest-ever data set collection on coral reef ecosystems is freely available, and for years to come, will be the basis for elucidating the living conditions for corals and finding a way for them to survive climate change.

Important first results of the expedition show that global microbial biodiversity is much higher than previously thought. The impacts of the environment on evolutionary adaptation are species-specific, and important genes in corals are duplicated.

Global biodiversity ten times higher than assumed

Coral reefs are the most biologically diverse marine ecosystem on Earth. Although they cover only 0.16% of the world's oceans, they are home to about 35% of known marine species. Using a genetic marker-based data set, the researchers found that all of the globally estimated bacterial biodiversity is already contained in the microorganisms of coral reefs.

"We have been completely underestimating the global microbial biodiversity," says Christian Voolstra, professor of genetics of adaptation in aquatic systems at the University of Konstanz and scientific coordinator of the Tara Pacific expedition. He says the current estimate of biodiversity (approximately five million bacteria) is underestimated by about a factor of 10.

Impacts of the environment on evolutionary adaptation are species-specific

The 32 archipelagos studied serve as natural laboratories and provide a wide range of environmental conditions, allowing scientists to disentangle the relationships between environmental and genetic parameters across large spatial scales. This led to another important finding: The effects the environment has on evolutionary adaptation trajectories of corals are species-specific. To determine this, the researchers examined the telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that are the carriers of genetic information, for the first time.

In humans, the length of telomeres decreases during life; that is, with an increasing number of cell divisions, suggesting that biological age is closely linked to the length of telomeres. Researchers on the Tara Pacific expedition have now found that the telomeres in very stress-resistant corals are always the same length. "They apparently have a mechanism to preserve the lengths of their telomeres," Voolstra concludes...

Important genes are duplicated

Research data from the Tara Pacific expedition brought to light that the long life of some coral species may have yet another reason: the duplication of certain genes. Many important genes are present multiple times in the genome. The researchers were able to determine this through sequencing of coral genomes employing a new high-resolution technique.

This technique, called long-read sequencing, makes it possible to not only determine the set of genes present, but also to look at their order in the genome. According to Voolstra, the pervasive presence of gene duplication could be a possible explanation for why corals can live for thousands of years despite being exposed, for instance, to extreme UV radiation in shallow waters.

The entire data collection is freely accessible

All data sets are openly accessible and fully described with accompanying physical and chemical measurements to provide them as a scientific resource to all researchers.

"This is unique," Voolstra says. "It is the largest data set collection on coral reefs ever collected and it is completely open access." The aspiration is that this data collection will serve as a foundation and inventory to guide future study of coral reefs worldwide for many years."

-via Phys.org, June 26, 2023

#coral #coral reef #ocean #ocean conservation #biodiversity #microbiology #genetic diversity #genetic research #conservation #telomeres #genetics #climate change #evolution #ocean life #open access #good news #hope

[noaasanctuaries]

UPDATE: NOAA establishes a temporary special use area to protect a relocated Florida Keys coral nursery

In response to extreme ocean temperatures, NOAA has used its emergency authority to create a temporary special use area in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to protect endangered corals that have been relocated to a nursery in federal waters approximately five miles southeast of Tavernier, Florida. The temporary regulation lasts 60 days, with the option for one 60-day extension, and prohibits all entry except for continuous transit without interruption.

🎥: Florida Keys News Bureau

#EarthIsBlue #BreakingNews #FloridaKeys #Coral #MarineHeatwave #CoralReef #Florida #science #nature #ocean #noaa #national marine sanctuary #conservation #corals #reef

[lastingocean]

Bleached corals ingest microplastics.

Studies have found that reef building corals ingest microplastics when exposed to temperatures above normal.

Normally,corals rely on the photosynthetic algae on their surface to provide them with energy.

When temperatures rise, the algae are expelled (bleaching) and most corals eventually die from starvation but some corals start feeding on zooplankton in the water column and in turn also take in microplastics.

So how is this a problem? Feeding on large amounts of microplastics can result in:

Bleaching

Reduced growth as energy reserves drop since plastic has no nutritive value

Reduced feeding on nutritious prey

Tissue necrosis( a coral disease that causes peeling of tissues and death)

Reduced mineralisation of coral skeletons thus reduced growth rates

With coral reefs already facing multiple stressors ; global climate change, ocean acidification and water pollution with a short period for recovery, microplastics could worsen the situation putting the survival of coral reefs at risk.

#stem academia #conservation #plastic #plastic pollution #plastic waste #sustainability #sustainablelifestyle #ocean #coral sea #coral reef #artificial reef #marine life #animals #marine biology #microplastics #plankton #bleaching #climate change

[cypherdecypher]

Animal of the Day!

Reef Stonefish (Synanceia verrucosa)

(Photo from Australian Museum)

Conservation Status- Least Concern

Habitat- Indo-Pacific Ocean

Size (Weight/Length)- 40 cm

Diet- Fish; Crustaceans

Cool Facts- Reef stonefish are the singular reason I’m terrified of going past my knees into a tidepool. Stonefish are ambush predators, blending in with their surroundings and waiting for an unsuspecting fish to dart overhead. Striking and swallowing their prey whole in less than 0.015 seconds, these fish have massive appetites. Reef stonefish are the most venomous fish in the world. The spines along their dorsal fin are sharp enough to pierce the bottom of a shoe and the venom is fatal in even the smallest doses. Luckily to humans, the venom is slow acting and can often be treated with limited nerve damage. Thankfully, reef stonefish are solitary outside of the breeding season and are more likely to move than be stepped on.

Rating- 12/10 (One of my largest irrational fears despite not living anywhere near the ocean.)

#animal of the day #animals #fish #marine creatures #stonefish #sunday #july 23 #reef stonefish #biology #science #conservation #the more you know

[explore-blog]

For World Reef Day, William Saville Kent’s stunning 19th-century illustrations from the world’s first pictorial encyclopedia about the Great Barrier Reef.

#William Saville Kent #natural history #coral #marine biology #ecology #conservation #Great Barrier Reef #science and technology #science #history #scientific illustration

[bubblesorbubbles]

Coral tree 🎄

Dendrophyllia ramea

#sea #scubadiving #scuba #diving #underwater #ocean #sealife #marine life #marine biology #conservation #coral #reef #photographer on tumblr #nature

[tuulikki]

Man fuck everything about the 2024 Olympics. It’s one thing after another.

This is some rampant colonialism. France will look fancy for putting on the Olympics and meanwhile Tahitians have no say in the exploitation of their environment. Just because the imperial centre wanted to put on a fancy show.

#environmentalism #coral reefs #surfing #conservation #polynesia #tropical #france #paris #jeux olympiques d'été de 2024 #olympics #olympics 2024 #paris 2024 #paris olympics #colonisation

[antique-symbolism]

(11.28.23)

Living in a dying body,

Stranded on a dying world,

What shall the dying do?

Grind our bleach-white coral bones,

Drown in rising water, our limbs too weak to tread?

How about this instead?

On New Year's Eve, my father, a doctor of the weather said: 

"I believe in the resilience of our atmosphere."

And thus began my year,

With a body set for ambush storms, and unprepared to take my cover,

Hopeful, kicking at the knees that wouldn't last the summer.

But if Dad can see the damning data and give us yet our chance, 

Then I will face the fates that are written in my scans,

Feed the sturgeon lunch at the museum,

Bend slowly to the waterline and whisper this to them:

"I believe in our resilience, too."

#whether it's conservation or medicine I am interested primarily in resilience #prevention is great. love to prevent things. #but we are living on a world that already has a lot of scars. a lot of us are living in bodies that already have injuries and diseases #there are some disasters that are out of anyone's control right now (like the onset of autoimmune disorders) #and there are some disasters that are out of the hands of most people who care about preventing them (like climate change) #and so what i really need to know is: #what can we do when our bodies are already hurting? what can we do for environments that have already experienced destruction? #I don't know but all I know is that we can't do nothing #and I hope that I won't be the only one trying #i hope i live to see old age. i hope i live to see the cure for arthritis. i hope i live to see the coral reefs restored. #i can't do it all myself. but i have to do something. #my writing #my poetry

[wachinyeya]

#good news #environmentalism #coral reefs #nature #science #environment #conservation #marine biology #marine life

[reasonsforhope]

“Scientists in Australia have achieved the first-ever offseason coral spawning in the history of coral breeding and restoration sciences.

The breakthrough dramatically expands the capacity to grow corals in captivity to then use to restore the Great Barrier Reef, since it allows the scientists to spawn coral 50% more often than in nature.

At the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences, coral colonies are kept in captivity with the hopes of one day transplanting them to the biggest reef on earth. Out on the GBR, coral spawning happens only twice a year, between October and December [which are summer months in Australia].

At the Institute’s Townsville lab, coral have now reproduced in the middle of winter [August, since this is Australia], thanks to artificial moonlight and controlled temperatures which convinced the 43 lab corals the time was right, despite being 6-months ahead of schedule.

“We’re going to have a lot of opportunities to advance coral reproductive biology,” senior aquarist Lonidas Koukoumaftsis told ABC Australia. “Normally we can only explore this once a year in the summer period...”

“At the moment we only have about two times a year we can generate these juvenile corals and then plant them on the reef,” said Koukoumaftsis “Possibly in the future we can increase that ability to restore the reef.”” -via Good News Network, 8/25/22

#coral #great barrier reef #coral reef #australia #conservation #marine science #good news #hope

[noaasanctuaries]

Every August, the reef-building corals of NOAA's Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary put on a fantastic spawning display. It is one of the most abundant coral spawning displays in the entire Caribbean due to the high density cover of broadcast spawning species.

Check it out in our #EarthIsBlue video, and learn more at https://flowergarden.noaa.gov/education/coralspawning.html!

#EarthIsBlue #nature #science #ocean #national marine sanctuary #texas #coral #coral reef #noaa #conservation #Youtube