We stay afloat with grants, foundations, and donations, also with personal snorkeling tours, and providing education to schools. We do accept donations through our website if you would like to donate (links below).
www.reefinstitute.org
Dredging to make room for the cruise ships, when it hasn't been done well can be damaging to reefs. There are some issues in the Bahamas as a result of this, and ships creating "exclusive" islands. The upside is to see a reef in an excursion, can inspire someone to take better care of it. In Florida SCTLD is not cruise related, and that is what is hurting our reefs. So, I would say that we haven't seen any sort of upside from less cruise ships.
In Florida a disease called Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease has been ravaging our reef tract since 2014. It affects more than 20 of of 45 reef building species in Florida. It has brought our coral coral coverage to about 5%. When a colony gets ill it can be totally gone within months or even weeks. The exact cause of the pathogen is unknown. However, there is research showing affected colonies are responding to probiotics. Additionally, human impact in the form of the way we care for our oceans, and reefs are a cause for their decline.
Very informative, thank you!
As you know it is estimated that 90% of our reefs will be eradicated by 2050 if we don't do something! I believe that our mission will focus much more on restoration in the future. Our work with artificial reefs is for intentional design to help bolster and connect healthy reefs. It is also working to spawn coral inland, with a goal to out plant these juveniles in the ocean. Much of this work is currently in the infant stages. I estimate in the next 25-30 years we will have refined these practices. Our hope is that we will have been using inland spawning, fragging, and artificial reefs to save our reefs. I think we will continue to focus on conservation, but it will be a growing effort to save our reefs in a large scale model.
Hi! We can not reintroduce Pacific corals into the Caribbean. In a concentrated area like home aquariums they can live together, and we can take care to ensure no one species takes control. In nature they can take over, and potentially become invasive. When a species (any species) becomes invasive they they can potentially squeeze out the native species. For example Sun or Cup Corals are considered invasive in Florida. It is estimated they may have travelled in on ships from the Pacific. In the States the security of even moving native species from inland to ocean, is very tight. We have to separate out all of our Pacific animals (including corals) from our Caribbean. Instead, we want to spawn, and frag native corals to put more out in the ocean.
Hi! So our adopt a coral program does not give you a "live" coral. Instead, you are adopting one of the corals we have rescued from the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, and are helping us to take care of it. While we can not put them back in the ocean quite yet, the goal is to do that soon!
Thanks! Soon we are going to be sharing some educational videos, and are hoping to invite members to a live event to see our rescue project!
If you are local to the West Palm Beach area, yes. Email us at [email protected]
Hi! The coral gene banking project with the Florida Coral Rescue Project. Not we are not able to hold corals from other parts of the world. Since the Florida Reef Tract is the only barrier reef off of the Continental US, the biosecurity in the way corals are held are high in the states. I am sure you have seen the biobank that they are building in Australia to house corals to ensure genetics are not lost. For us since the hope is to spawn, frag and out plant we can not have any non local species growing together. https://www.theguardian.com/environ...s-for-coral-ark-to-help-save-the-worlds-reefs
Hey Jon-
Hey!
Yes! Did you know that Dry Tortugas is the only area that currently has not seen Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease? Gorgeous!
Is it true that the Red Sea corals are much more resistant to global warming? I have done some research on it and there have been high temps there that they survived in the past so my theory is that somewhere in their genes they know how to deal with global warming unlike coral from other places. So i think the Red Sea reefs with not loose nearly as much coral. Do you agree with this? Is the information I have gathered right or wrong?
Yes that is exactly how things are working out. It's natural selection and the surviving corals in the environment are genetically more resistant to disease, changing chemistry, predation, etc. It's these formidable corals which are now getting looked at very closely by scientists to understand what makes them survivors. It's also a valuable avenue to pursue for coral aquaculture for restoration. We want to amplify the strongest corals to potentially put back out into the environment when things "settle down" out there. We do need to make sure to maintain genetic diversity and so a million clones of the same formidable coral would be neat but not ideal for the ongoing natural survival of a species. Future restoration is a balance of amplifying a bunch of lineages of genetically durable coral withina species, possibly sexually reproducing these in a breeding program, and amplifying and out-planting those offspring/frags strategically for natural "gene mixing" in the future.
The corals which researchers are finding to be most resilient to future uncertainty seem to be corals that have settled and survived more volatile environments. When corals settle in a shallow lagoon where temperature and oxygen can swing dramatically, only the toughest lineages may survive. The Red Sea is hot and salty relative to the rest of the ocean however it may be relatively constant as a large body of water. If we wanted to find extremely temperature resilient corals, we might look in shallow low flow area's of the red sea where temperature limits are pushed and corals are selected for survival under a wide temperature range including both hot and cold extremes.
Imagine pacific acropora sp. in the keys! For the foreseeable future the general scientific and political consensus is to keep things as natural as possible and only restore/maintain natural endemic species of coral. There's a lot of unfortunate instances of unintended consequences when introducing a foreign species into a new environment. For example, We currently have lionfish and iguana's creating imbalances in the Florida ecosystem.
I completely get where this is coming from as it is somewhat important to keep species from taking over the species of coral that are naturally already there. I guess as time goes on and we learn more about what can be done naturally to replace and or repair these reefs as they disappear decisions can be made and or changed. I am coming at it from the mindset that it is better to have a coral reef of some sorts for creature inhabitation and such than to have a dying one. I grew up in FL so I get the issues you are explaining with lionfish, iguanas, and even the python issue that is now plaguing FL. It is the same issue we are having here in VA/MD with the snakehead fish.
