Coral Nursery

Today we helped attach Acropora cervicornas, the staghorn coral to a ‘tree’ with Cory Walter and Erich Bartell from Mote Marine Laboratory.

This ‘tree’ is made of PVC and the coral fragments are hung to the tree by wire. When the coral is in the water column, less algae grows on the coral prompting greater growth.  We strung up the coral with a wire to make sure the coral didn’t fall off.

We cleaned algae off of concrete discs with wire scrub brushes to give the best coral chance for survival.

On the second dive we measured the transplanted A. cervicornas coral and checked to make sure there were no diseases, bleaching, or snail predation on the corals. Gladly, we did not observe much in the way of bleaching or snail predation

~Colin Cassick, Tarpon Springs SCUBAnaut