BARBADOS TODAY: CORALL GETS GREEN LIGHT TO BUILD MARINE NURSERY
VIDEO FROM CORALL ON FACEBOOK
“CORALL GETS GREEN LIGHT TO BUILD MARINE NURSERY” 16Jun2020
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Successful re-invigoration of staghorn coral and a lot else at the Oracabessa Bay Fishing Sanctuary in Jamaica 26Apr2020
View A BAY IN JAMAICA COMES BACK TO LIFE
By UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME MARCH 16TH, 2020
““We search for dying coral colonies. We take the best coral pieces to the undersea coral nursery, cut them in bits and hang them on vertical lines, 15 feet apart supported by moorings and buoys. After 7 to 8 months we tie them to the reefs with cement (using a technique adapted from Belize).” – Lenford Dacosta, fisher and coral gardener”
A really good story
Posted in Acroporoids
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Spectacular A. prolifera in Belize 16Apr2020
Photo and more to be viewed on Fragments of Hope, Belize
From Fragments of Hope, Belize Facebook page
From About for Fragments of Hope, Belize
Mission
To re-seed devastated reefs with genetically robust, diverse and resilient corals that will mature to spawning age/size, and at the same time begin to understand the biology and mechanisms of coral bleaching (i.e. the role of the coral host versus its symbiotic algae, the zooxanthellae when it comes to resiting or recovering from bleaching events)
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Stony coral tissue loss disease heading towards Antilles 9Jul2019
A healthy colony of Porites porites on the Vauxhall reef, Barbados. P. porites is one of the species found susceptible to stony coral disease in Florida
Stony coral tissue loss disease, first reported in Florida in 2014, is moving quickly according to a report in Science News and has reached the US Virgin Islands; view:
A mysterious coral disease is ravaging Caribbean reef
BY CASSIE MARTIN 6:00AM, JULY 9, 2019 on Science News
It is also affecting deeper water corals:
Holstein is using ocean current data and other factors to forecast where the disease might show up next. Early results suggest that another U.S. Caribbean territory, Puerto Rico, should be worried. Divers in May confirmed that the outbreak is inching toward the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, with star corals about 17 kilometers offshore and 40 meters deep already pocked with white lesions, says Tyler Smith, who oversees the reef monitoring program at the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas.
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Good News 1Feb2019: Staghorn coral Acropora cervicornis in Reef Front of Vauxhall Reef, Barbados 1Feb2019
Acropora cervicornis Feb 1, 2019
According to a report by R. MacLean and H.A. Oxenford on surveys of Acroporoids on the west coast of Barbados in the summer of 2015, “although no A. cervicornis colonies were found on the fringing reefs surveyed in this study, several colonies are known to exist in the deeper patch reef area immediately seaward of some of the fringing reefs (e.g. Vauxhall reef, see annotated photographs of D. Patriquin at: http://versicolor.ca/reef/).
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Posted in Acroporoids, Vauxhall Reef
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Good News 1Feb2019: Clusters of Diadema on reef front, Barbados 1Feb2019
Photo Jan 31, 2019
The GPS on my camera wasn’t working well. The approximate location is shown below.
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Posted in Holetown area
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Concerning News : Padina sanctae-crucis disappears from Vauxhall Reef, Barbados 1Feb2019
UPDATE July 1, 2023: In the Vauxhall Reef area this past winter I observed healthy Padina, but not on the reef flat where it had once been abundant, rather it was on rocks near shore in the beach area.
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Going through my recent and older photographs of the reef flat on Vauxhall Reef, I realized that Padina sanctae-crucis was absent in my recent 2019 photos, but was present in photos taken in each of the winters of 2015,2016, 2017 and 2018. So
I checked the area out over the last couple of days, and also traversed nearby fringing reefs over about 800 m towards the north.
Nada.
I don’t know what that means, but on Jan 30, 2019 asked on the CORALL Facebook page whether anyone else has noticed the plant recently.
It’s not necessarily bad, for example, the loss of P. sanctae-crucis might be due to increased feeding by nearshore herbiverous fishes.
Posted in Holetown area, seaweeds, Vauxhall Reef
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Good News: Fused Staghorn Coral doing well on Vauxhall Reef, Barbados 1Feb2019
The first place I head for when I return to Barbados is a little section of the Vauxhall Reef where in 2015, I found some colonies of Acropora prolifera, the Fused Staghorn Coral I always wonder” Are they still there? They were/are and seem to be thriving, still.
Here’s an example:
Posted in Holetown area, seaweeds, Vauxhall Reef
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