By Amanda Onion
Dec.
8 — They host such diverse life that they’re known
as the rain forests of the sea. But more than a quarter of the world’s coral reefs has been
destroyed and the remaining communities may die within the next 20 years,
according to a recent study released by scientists at a coral reef
conference in Bali, Indonesia. The corals, which are spineless marine
organisms, build latticed limestone structures around themselves. Since
these structures are home to crustaceans and an estimated 25 percent of
the world’s marine fish — the coral’s demise could also be that of many
other marine species. To nurse the reefs back
to life, scientists have called for measures to stem pollution and
warming. But a businessman believes he may have another, more immediate
solution to reviving coral reef populations: He wants to grow them.
Tank Farm
Cultivation This December, Applied Marine Technologies,
based on the Caribbean island of Dominica, launched its first effort to
replace dead and dying natural coral reefs with corals grown in a
controlled setting.
Alan Lowe of Applied Marine Technologies
lifts a 1,000-pound ball, lightened by an air blatter, and carries
it underwater into position off the coast of Mustique. (Darlene
and Norman McCullough, www.greystonephoto.com)
Reef Ball copyrighted by www.reefball.com
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| “People say it takes thousands of
years to grow a coral reef — and that’s true,” says Alan Lowe, the
American owner of the coral cultivating company. “But individual pieces of
coral grow rather quickly and can be put together into a
reef.” Since last July, Lowe began directing
the cultivation of nearly 25,000 pieces of coral on what he calls a tank
farm. The “farm,” which sprawls over a large swathe of land near the
shore, includes 128 shallow tanks. Each tank holds 250 gallons of sea
water. Every day, 8 million gallons of water are pumped from the ocean, to
the farm and back again to keep the tanks fresh. Inside the tanks, Lowe
uses small chunks of existing coral and then a patented process to trigger
the coral to multiply. This December, Lowe and
his crew are flying more than 900 pieces of cultivated coral to the
Caribbean island of Mustique, where local, wealthy inhabitants (who happen
to include Mick Jagger and Tommy Hilfiger) have pitched in $60,000 for 29
concrete, oval structures that will each host about 30 pieces of coral. By
installing the coral balls as well as several single pieces of coral, the
team hopes to replace damage wreaked by Hurricane Lenny last
year. Divers have already installed bases —
three-quarter cement spheres that are designed with holes for coral to
take hold. And soon divers will lower hundreds of pieces of farm-raised
coral and secure them to the bases using steel screws and
plugs. “It’s like plugging a dead lawn with
new grass sod,” Lowe explains. “We’re plugging dead reef with living
reef.”
‘Jury’s Still
Out’ While scientists say cultivating and transplanting
coral is possible, they caution it may not be an ultimate solution to the
problem of dwindling coral reefs. The hard part, they say, isn’t in
replacing the coral, but ensuring it survives.
“My concern is we might be raising pretty little bouquets of corals in the
hothouse, but putting them into an environment that is not conducive to
coral health can be problematic,” says Harold Hudson, a coral reef
specialist at the Florida Keys National Marine
Sanctuary. Hudson has spent more than three
decades taking coral chunks from reef zones that are perpetually damaged
by hurricanes and fastening them to shore bottoms where ships have
grounded and damaged coral communities. Hudson
uses hollow concrete domes to host the coral, which he fastens using
special glue. He installed his first transplanted reef into Florida’s
waters in 1976 as an experiment. So far the 4-foot-long reef and 90
percent of his subsequent transplanted reefs have
survived. But he points out 30 years is only a
blip on coral reef time scales. “The jury’s
still out on how successful planting coral will be,” he says. “Even if
what you do in the first couple years may seem successful, their lifespans
are really decades or centuries so what may look successful today could be
gone tomorrow.” Although Hudson doesn’t grow
his own coral like businessman Lowe, other scientists have. Robert
Richmond, a specialist in coral reefs at the University of Guam’s Marine
Laboratory, explains there are a couple ways of cultivating coral.
Building by
Breaking One is to capture coral larvae that are spawned
once or twice a year on a lunar cycle. The other is to fragment the
corals. That works, he explains, because coral reefs grow through a
relationship between an animal — polyps living inside the coral limestone
— and algae. The polyps exist in a thin layer
of tissue over the coral’s limestone base and multiply and expand at the
tips of the coral. Tiny algae, dependent on sunlight, live inside the
coral’s tissue and produce nutrients that feed the polyps and help them
grow. As the polyps grow, some of the polyps calcify algae and other
organisms to secrete adhesives that form the
reef. Much like an inflated balloon will
consume more space as it inflates, these calcium-producing polyps will
grow and lay down limestone more rapidly if more coral surface is exposed
by breaking. In Guam, Richmond cultivates
small amounts of corals in experiments to assess damage done to coral by
pollutants and cyanide fishing. Throughout the South Pacific and Southeast
Asia, he explains, fishermen occasionally drip cyanide into shallow water
to stun fish, which they then capture and sell to aquariums or in some
cases to restaurants that feature live fish.
By exposing homegrown coral to minute amounts of cyanide, Richmond and his
colleagues have shown that the chemical is deadly for the
reefs. “We call it Dr. Doolittle science,” he
says. “We’re essentially talking to the animals to hear what they need to
grow and reproduce.” While Richmond supports
coral cultivation for such experiments, and for producing coral to be used
in aquariums, he too is wary of planting cultivated coral as a solution to
depleted reefs. “The idea of putting corals
back in the water is very sexy,” he says. “But we have to be careful not
to sell people a false bill of goods. If we really want to help the
problem we have to start with fixing what’s killing them.”
Sturdy
Crops But Lowe is more optimistic. He says his corals are
cultivated under conditions that are designed to make them more hearty.
His tank-raised corals grow in water that is 86 degrees Fahrenheit. That
exceeds temperatures that coral reefs normally tolerate. Lowe argues his
corals will be better at surviving in waters warmed by possible global
warming. Lowe’s first cultivated corals are
scheduled to be installed into Mustique’s waters by the end of December.
If the tank farm coral survives through the next year, Lowe hopes to
launch his next project in Jamaica — an island dependent on its reefs for
tourism. “I have no doubt they’ll survive,” he
says. “In the tank, everything you’d expect they’d die from, they’re
thriving in. They should do fine.” <=Back
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W E B L I N K
S Applied Marine
Technologies
Reef
Check
Global Coral Reef
Alliance
National Geophysical
Data Center (NGDC)
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