Plant 1,000,000 Corals

Goal: Plant 1,000,000 corals

I spent last week attending the first Coral Restoration Workshop held at the Elizabeth Moore International Center for Coral Reef Research & Restoration on Summerland Key.

This 5 day workshop was led by Dr. David Vaughan, which one attendee described as the "Dumbledore" of this coral academy. His goal is to plant 1 million corals before he retires. There were 28 attendees representing 13 countries/territories; from the Philippines to Greece.

We learned how to develop in water nurseries, which have been primarily used to propagate Acropora species; staghorn and elkhorn corals. These practices have evolved from placing "pucks" on concrete blocks to floating coral trees (which were developed at the Coral Restoration Foundation.)

Coral encrusted pucks are attached to pvc columns for grow out in the field.

Above is one of Mote's in water coral tree based nurseries located near Sand Key. Most of these survived hurricane Irma, while 95% of those located near the Summerland Key lab were lost. Visibility was still pretty poor due to the recent hurricane. About 100 corals can be grown on each tree. Fortunately the lab was built to withstand category 5 strength winds, as it sustained a direct hit from Hurricane Irma.

Here we learned how to make coral plugs. A mixture of portland cement and silica sand is used, which are premixed in plastic bags. These mushroom shaped bases are what the corals are attached to for grow out. Microfragged coral pieces are superglued to these plugs. Coral larvae are also encouraged to settle on these plugs. The corner of the bag is cut and the mixture is extruded into the mold, similar to a pastry bag. The fatigue mats just happened to be the perfect size mold for both parts of the mushroom-like plug. A similar mixture of portland cement and plaster of paris is used to secure corals during out planting on the reef.

A wet diamond encrusted band saw is used to "microfrag" massive corals in to smaller pieces. It looks more dangerous than it is - the saw won't cut your fingers. First the edges are abrided, then the corals are cut into strips approximately 1 cm wide. These strips are cut into pieces that are 1 cm by 1 cm, and the bottoms are shaved to get the piece as flat as possible. These frags are then superglued to the "mushroom" bases. The coral responds by growing much faster - it seems like they wish to reclaim territory lost.

These corals were just microfragged and are recovering in a clean raceway and kept in the dark for a couple of days to heal.

Corals are then moved out into the raceways to grow. Once these extend to the edges they are either microfragged again or moved out in the field for planting. It takes as little as 6 months for the 1 cm square piece to grow enough to cover a 2.5 cm diameter plug.

Mote is currently operating 70 raceways, each one can house 1000 corals. These are covered with shade cloths and plastic covers (which reduce freshwater intrusion when it rains.) Salinity, pH and temperature are monitored daily to assure optimum parameters. Eight staff are needed to care for the corals. Every raceway is cleaned at least twice per week. Every group of four raceways has one empty and corals are moved from one to the next in order to keep clean.

Several soft corals (sea whips and gorgonians) are also being propagated.

After 6 months or so in grow out, corals are out planted to the reef. Above are corals that were planted just outside the breakwater at Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park. The corals are planted in groups and will eventually fuse to form one sexually reproductive colony. Coral colonies are mature at about football size. This can be accomplished in 2-3 years in the lab whereas in the wild it may take more than 20 years to reach reproductive size.

There is an interpretive panel describing the process at Ft. Taylor beach.

A day was spent teaching how to propagate corals by collecting gametes, caring for the coral larvae and encouraging them to settle. In the wild it is thought that only 1 in 1,000,000 survive, once in a hundred years. Above you can see 3 clusters of baby corals. Plugs are dusted with coralline algae to encourage the larvae to settle on to those plugs. The presence of this algae is a sign that conditions are right for coral growth.

This Coral Restoration Workshop was the first of many to come. It was discouraging to visit Sand Key on this trip - the sand had all been washed away. I had spent a lot of time back in the 80's collecting fish near Sand Key for the National Aquarium and it was distressing to see the degraded state of the corals there. I was encouraged to see so many passionate people working to save coral reefs around the Caribbean and beyond. I believe that this group will succeed in planting 1 million corals, much sooner than Dr. Vaughan had thought possible.