Thank you for signing up to keep in touch with the Coral Conservation Project. Pictured above, you will find your coral frame as it was few days after construction. Your personal page will allow you to see regular updates and amazing facts about the corals and animals living on your frame. By having all the updates on one page, you will be able to track the progress of your frame and see how your contribution is benefiting the ecosystem. If you want to satisfy your curiosity even more, you can take a look at our Marine Blog Life and videos from the Marine Lab Diary or connect with us for more information.
Here is the start of a healthy coral reef relationship!
As you can see from the picture, your coral frame are colonized by some little, brown and green organisms called Ascidia. The species is called Didemnum molle (also known as the green barrel sea squirt or the green reef sea-squirt.) and is very common in the Indo-Pacific area. Ascidia is a filter-feeder, feeding on suspended plankton and detritus and its green color is given by the algae living in symbiosis with them, in this way the algae is protected by the predation and the Ascidia can receive energy from its little hosts. Luckily they don’t possess any threat to the corals when they are few in numbers, however they can colonize quite quickly on the frames through asexual budding, as such they are regularly removed to minimize competition with growing corals.
This is your 6 month frame progress update. Your frame is doing fantastic!
Looking at your frame, we can see lots of new growth, especially of the acropora corals (the branching & fast growing corals). We can see some of the corals are competing for space, which is a good problem to have, it means your frame is thriving. We can also see that your frame is contributing to the overall health of the coral ecosystem. We see lots of life such as little fish, crabs, worms and mollusks around your frame. Overall your frame has survived the warm months of March, April and May just fine, unfortunately some of the other frames in our colony weren’t so lucky.
Over the following months we will continue with maintenance to keep harmful algae and predators off your frame and to give your frame the best chance for successful growth.
Coral reefs are built and made up of thousands of tiny animals called coral “polyps” that can live individually (like many mushroom corals do) or in large colonies that comprise an entire reef structure. A polyp has a sac-like body and an opening, or mouth, encircled by stinging tentacles called nematocysts or cnidae (imagine an upside down jellyfish). The polyp extracts calcium and carbonate ions from seawater to build itself a hard, cup-shaped skeleton made of calcium carbonate (limestone). This limestone skeleton protects the soft, delicate body of the polyp. Coral polyps are usually nocturnal, meaning that they stay inside their skeletons during the day. At night, polyps extend their tentacles to feed. Most coral polyps have clear bodies whereas their skeletons are completely white, like human bones. Generally, their brilliant color comes from the zooxanthellae (tiny algae) living inside their tissues. Several million zooxanthellae live and produce pigments in just one square inch of coral. These pigments are visible through the clear body of the polyp and are what gives coral its beautiful color.
Acropora corals are among the most common genera of corals in tropical reefs with up to 150 species already described. Corals are composed of tiny individual polyps each that resemble an upside-down jellyfish with the mouth in the middle, surrounded by the tentacles. Here you can also see the tiny polyps in this picture (each tiny bump is a coral polyp). Furthermore, Acropora corals are called hexacorallia since each polyp has six, or multiples of six, tentacles. Such structures are used for hunting prey, microorganisms, but are also used for defense. These tentacles are armed with unicellular weapon needle-like structures composed with a strong mix of toxins. Humans are not harmed by these toxins but it may cause inflammation along with some itching if touched.
Here we would like to give some information about this nice looking Pocillopora meandrina branches collected from a broken colony that is located on your coral frame. They are also known as the cauliflower coral and are quite common around the Maldives. Pocillopora meandrina occurs on shallow reefs and amongst coral communities on rocky reefs, at depth from 3-27 m and their radiating branches can reach up to 40 cm in diameter. In this species many or most of the branches are flattened on the ends and some may be curved and their colors may vary from cream, green or pink. Pocilloporid corals, not excluding P. meandrina, are generally amongst the strongest coral competitors with relatively high rates of calcification. However, coral species exhibiting high rates of calcification usually have relatively high mortality rates
Your frame is the start of a new beginning for the Thudufushi House Reef! Your coral frame is part of an experimental trial. We are trying to determine if we can start a coral frame chain that will act as an artificial reef. The “frame chain” is currently located on the sandy seafloor in front of the Main Bar & Water Villa Jetty.
A few concerns we are having with this location are the shallow water, which might make the corals more prone to bleaching due to warm waters. We are also concerned about the stand and possible turbidity that might not allow enough light to penetrate for photosynthesis.
So why did we choose this spot? As we are trying to expand our coral reef and help corals take back areas they used to inhabit before the big bleaching in 2016 we need to expand frame locations past the already existing reef. Furthermore the location is easily accessible for the biologist to monitor and clean the coral frame and react to any changes quickly.
Let’s cross our fingers and hope the corals will adjust to their new location well.
The coral on your frame is thriving. The fragments attached at the beginning are growing very well. All the fragments of this digitate Acropora are now fusing together. We applied the micro-fusion technique that has been described by the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida. In particular, when putting fragments of the same genotype close to each other they can stimulate the fusion of these fragments, speeding up their growth rate. When doing coral frame restoration or maintenance we usually apply this technique when we find a huge broken colony. We cut off small branches and then we attach them very close to each other as you can see here.
As you can see from your first post, we have already done the first maintenance on your frame which is to remove the additional cable tie ends and move the frame with the other frames for time being. After about a week we will start placing your new spider frame (which is the #6 of its kind) along the coral rubble reef with other similar frames. You can read more about this initiative in our blog section (https://coralframe.planhotel.com/2019/03/22/taking-corals-back-reef/). Here is some information about the fragments that we put on your frame, most of them belong to the genus Pocillopora which was was broken due to trampling and a few fragments that belongs to the Acropora genus which is one of the fastest growing corals and almost 149 species described. These are mostly the branching ones, and the larger rounder ones belong to the family of giant corals. Over the next few months we will show you some close-up pictures of the fragments we attached onto your frame with some interesting facts and the creatures that now lives on your frame. After 6 months we will show you the progress of your frame in a new post.
