Page 288 - The Virgin Islands

The coral seems to want to repair itself quickly and grow
back over its lost ground before something else takes its
territory. But it wasn’t until Mr. Page was hired in 2011
that Dr. Vaughan first applied this insight to the large-
scale production of massive corals.
Mr. Page raised corals in an aquarium as a teenager in
Buffalo. He knew that hobbyists and live-coral deal-
ers routinely split growing colonies into pieces to sell
or trade. “This was something that could be done,” he
said. “I had done it as a hobbyist. It was a chance to ap-
ply what I had done on a much larger scale and actually
accomplish something big.” Three years later, he said, he
can produce 1,000 microfragments just one centimeter
square (one-sixth of a square inch) in four days. And with
more space and adequate funding, he added, “the sky’s
the limit.” More than a year after they were transplanted
to offshore test sites, 134 of 150 colonies grown from mi-
crofragments continue to flourish, Mr. Page said.
Mote scientists won federal approval to begin their most
ambitious project yet — to create a living coral thicket on
the limestone skeleton of a dead reef half a mile off Big
Pine Key, just east of Key West. They have started plant-
ing 4,000 nursery-raised corals — symmetrical brain,
boulder star, great star and massive starlet — on the
2.5-acre test site. Those species will join more than 1,000
staghorn coral raised in Mote’s offshore nursery by a team
led by another staff scientist, Erich Bartels. The goal, Dr.
Vaughan said, is to create “in a very short period of time a
reef like the reefs we remember” from decades ago.
The project, among the largest coral restorations ever at-
tempted, is the first large-scale effort in the Keys, and one strand within a family of coral that has a set of genes
of the few in the world, to restore massive corals in the
wild, Dr. Vaughan said. It is partly supported by a $35,000
grant from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chi-
cago. Planting will continue indefinitely. The researchers
want to identify the corals that fare best, and to determine
the ideal length of time needed to acclimate each species
to make them less attractive to hungry fish. If success-
ful, they plan to use their nursery-raised corals to restore
other degraded reef sites throughout the Keys and train
others to set up their own coral factories. And while other
scientists have been enthusiastic about the project, such
as Bill Causey, a coral expert who oversees all federal ma-
rine sanctuaries in the Southeastern United States, the
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean for the National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration, who commented
stating that “this is easily the most promising restoration
project that I am aware of,” he also added that “Dave and
Chris are buying us time,” he added. “This will keep cor-
als out there” until “we can come to understand what is
happening to coral on the larger scale.”
OTHER KEY PROJECTS
Dr. Vaughan’s team has not stopped at using microfrag-
menting to repopulate damaged reefs. The Summerland
Key team is also running water temperature simulations
of expected water temperatures 20 years and 50 years
from now to see which coral species can withstand the
higher expected temperatures. This is a tricky analysis
because it involves not only the coral but also the zoox-
anthellae that live within the coral tissue and provide the
color and energy for the living coral.
Understanding and identifying which species have the
best potential to tolerate expected higher water tempera-
tures is where the coral growth and restoration efforts
should focus.
The growth of coral in test tanks could also identify a
for both the coral and zooxanthellae that can tolerate el-
evated water temperatures.