It was a gloomy world of mountains and crevasses and caves, and wherever [Marina] looked there were mounds of grey, dead coral topped with a blanket of living purple, yellow, blue, and red coral bushes and feathery pale anemones.
from The Coral Kingdom: Mermaids Rock, book I
written by Linda Chapman
illustrated by Mirelle Ortega
Little Tiger Press, 2020
If you were to ask me to name my favorite place, I might answer a quiet forest full of old-growth trees, or Sand Dune Arch in Arches National Park, or most probably I will freely admit that my favorite place is my green reading chair in my living room at home.
Beaches are wonder-filled places, too, but as much as I enjoy a seascape (with waves or without, with seabirds or without, cloudy sky or clear), beach scenes of wrack lines, abandoned docks, and colorful regattas, and especially underwater photographs of unusual sea life and coral formations, I don’t consider myself a water-person.
I’m good with dry land, thanks.
About 71/% of our Earth’s surface is covered with water, and 96.5% of that water sloshes in the oceans. The world’s coral reefs live and die in a belt around the middle of the globe from about 35° N Lat to 35° S Lat.
The most common corals are hard corals. Also know as stony coral, they create a rigid skeleton of calcium carbonate in its crystal form, aragonite. As many as hundreds of thousands or as few as a scant several hundred individual polyps cement themselves together with the secretions that form their skeletons.
Although fixed in one place and sometimes mistaken for rocks, scientifically, corals are animals. They are related to jellyfish and anemones. And they have a symbiotic relationship with a microscopic one-celled algae. They live in the cells of the outer layer of a polyp’s body and using photosynthesis, provide organic matter for themselves and their hosts.
Essentially, each polyp is a mouth with tentacles. It flutters its tentacles to create waves which trap zooplankton, bacterioplankton, and other tiny food sources to complete its diet.
Corals build their reefs in shallow and deep water. When shallow enough to allow light to enter, the coral that depend on their symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae, those one-celled microscopic algae, can thrive. Even the few types of coral that do not build reefs, live there.
Coral that build their reefs in deeper water, where sunlight cannot reach, must filter out the remains of sea life (animal and vegetable) that drips through the ocean water.
Corals have lived on Earth for 450 million years, two hundred million years before dinosaurs arrived. Corals been exceptional thrivers, until lately.
We have become concerned about them only lately because the same factors threatening the rest of the world are at play in the ocean, too.
And healthy reefs are crucial to the health of our planet.
Towns and cities depend on tourism dollars generated by diving tours, fishing trips and the associated hotels and restaurants and businesses. When people experience the environment, they are more likely to want to protect it.
Coral reefs protect shorelines, homes, and lives by absorbing the huge impact of pounding waves during storms.
Many new medicines are being developed from discoveries found in coral reefs and the plants and other animals that live there. Possible treatments for asthma, arthritis, cancer, viral and bacterial infections and heart disease depend on healthy coral reefs.
The ocean readily absorbs carbon dioxide and 90% of reflected heat generated by greenhouse gasses. Its unnatural and unbridled increase is the primary cause of the ocean’s acidification and the resulting harm caused to corals, shellfish, and plankton.
When corals are stressed, they expel their symbiotic algae and turn white. The individual polyps become mostly clear exposing their white skeletons. Bleached coral is not dead, but it is not healthy. It’s more susceptible to disease. It’s harder for them to reproduce and it’s harder for them to grow more skeletal material.
Pollution from a variety of sources like coastal development, agriculture runoff, and sewage treatment promote rapid growth of algae that compete with coral. Excess sediment smothers it.
Fishing in coral reefs benefits communities around the world. But over-fishing is unsustainable. Scientists are encouraging people to incorporate indigenous and local knowledge about local species and fishing practices.
Dead corals change the reef. The resulting change creates habitat loss for the marine life that depends on them for food and shelter and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods, too.
Enter Elvira Alvarado, a 70-year-old marine biologist who turned from cancer research with sharks to saving the endangered coral reefs in Colombia.
Most corals are broadcast spawners. They spawn once a year, usually about a week after the full moon, but they are also tuned to many other environmental cues. During one precious week, Alvarado set collection tubes on the reef, dove down, and collected eggs and sperm.
In a make-shift laboratory, she and her team mixed the eggs and sperm and watched for the raspberry-shaped eggs to hatch into planulae, the free-floating young. In the wild, they move around until they encounter something hard, whether rock or dead coral. There they land. And there they stay.
Alvarado and her team waited.
After about seven months, the young coral that Alvarado and her team collected, grew large enough to be transplanted to existing reefs. There they will stay. And there they will grow.
Now, three sites, each with a team of scientists, are continuing to work to save the reefs.
Elvira Alvarado is realistic. She says the trick is to regenerate the coral quicker than they die. But she’s hopeful, too. She’s built a legacy. “Even when I can no longer do this work,” she says, “others will continue it.”
I’m reading The Mayfair Bookshop by Eliza Knight (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2022). Lucy St. Clair and her mom are both enthralled with Nancy Mitford’s writing. When Lucy gets an assignment that takes her to Mitford’s favorite bookshop in London, she discovers surprising connections she has with her favorite author. Recommended, but not necessarily at the top of your list.
Be curious! (and experiment)
from The Coral Kingdom: Mermaids Rock, book I
written by Linda Chapman
illustrated by Mirelle Ortega
Little Tiger Press, 2020
If you were to ask me to name my favorite place, I might answer a quiet forest full of old-growth trees, or Sand Dune Arch in Arches National Park, or most probably I will freely admit that my favorite place is my green reading chair in my living room at home.
Beaches are wonder-filled places, too, but as much as I enjoy a seascape (with waves or without, with seabirds or without, cloudy sky or clear), beach scenes of wrack lines, abandoned docks, and colorful regattas, and especially underwater photographs of unusual sea life and coral formations, I don’t consider myself a water-person.
I’m good with dry land, thanks.
About 71/% of our Earth’s surface is covered with water, and 96.5% of that water sloshes in the oceans. The world’s coral reefs live and die in a belt around the middle of the globe from about 35° N Lat to 35° S Lat.
The most common corals are hard corals. Also know as stony coral, they create a rigid skeleton of calcium carbonate in its crystal form, aragonite. As many as hundreds of thousands or as few as a scant several hundred individual polyps cement themselves together with the secretions that form their skeletons.
Although fixed in one place and sometimes mistaken for rocks, scientifically, corals are animals. They are related to jellyfish and anemones. And they have a symbiotic relationship with a microscopic one-celled algae. They live in the cells of the outer layer of a polyp’s body and using photosynthesis, provide organic matter for themselves and their hosts.
Essentially, each polyp is a mouth with tentacles. It flutters its tentacles to create waves which trap zooplankton, bacterioplankton, and other tiny food sources to complete its diet.
Corals build their reefs in shallow and deep water. When shallow enough to allow light to enter, the coral that depend on their symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae, those one-celled microscopic algae, can thrive. Even the few types of coral that do not build reefs, live there.
Coral that build their reefs in deeper water, where sunlight cannot reach, must filter out the remains of sea life (animal and vegetable) that drips through the ocean water.
Corals have lived on Earth for 450 million years, two hundred million years before dinosaurs arrived. Corals been exceptional thrivers, until lately.
We have become concerned about them only lately because the same factors threatening the rest of the world are at play in the ocean, too.
And healthy reefs are crucial to the health of our planet.
Towns and cities depend on tourism dollars generated by diving tours, fishing trips and the associated hotels and restaurants and businesses. When people experience the environment, they are more likely to want to protect it.
Coral reefs protect shorelines, homes, and lives by absorbing the huge impact of pounding waves during storms.
Many new medicines are being developed from discoveries found in coral reefs and the plants and other animals that live there. Possible treatments for asthma, arthritis, cancer, viral and bacterial infections and heart disease depend on healthy coral reefs.
The ocean readily absorbs carbon dioxide and 90% of reflected heat generated by greenhouse gasses. Its unnatural and unbridled increase is the primary cause of the ocean’s acidification and the resulting harm caused to corals, shellfish, and plankton.
When corals are stressed, they expel their symbiotic algae and turn white. The individual polyps become mostly clear exposing their white skeletons. Bleached coral is not dead, but it is not healthy. It’s more susceptible to disease. It’s harder for them to reproduce and it’s harder for them to grow more skeletal material.
Pollution from a variety of sources like coastal development, agriculture runoff, and sewage treatment promote rapid growth of algae that compete with coral. Excess sediment smothers it.
Fishing in coral reefs benefits communities around the world. But over-fishing is unsustainable. Scientists are encouraging people to incorporate indigenous and local knowledge about local species and fishing practices.
Dead corals change the reef. The resulting change creates habitat loss for the marine life that depends on them for food and shelter and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods, too.
Enter Elvira Alvarado, a 70-year-old marine biologist who turned from cancer research with sharks to saving the endangered coral reefs in Colombia.
Most corals are broadcast spawners. They spawn once a year, usually about a week after the full moon, but they are also tuned to many other environmental cues. During one precious week, Alvarado set collection tubes on the reef, dove down, and collected eggs and sperm.
In a make-shift laboratory, she and her team mixed the eggs and sperm and watched for the raspberry-shaped eggs to hatch into planulae, the free-floating young. In the wild, they move around until they encounter something hard, whether rock or dead coral. There they land. And there they stay.
Alvarado and her team waited.
After about seven months, the young coral that Alvarado and her team collected, grew large enough to be transplanted to existing reefs. There they will stay. And there they will grow.
Now, three sites, each with a team of scientists, are continuing to work to save the reefs.
Elvira Alvarado is realistic. She says the trick is to regenerate the coral quicker than they die. But she’s hopeful, too. She’s built a legacy. “Even when I can no longer do this work,” she says, “others will continue it.”
I’m reading The Mayfair Bookshop by Eliza Knight (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2022). Lucy St. Clair and her mom are both enthralled with Nancy Mitford’s writing. When Lucy gets an assignment that takes her to Mitford’s favorite bookshop in London, she discovers surprising connections she has with her favorite author. Recommended, but not necessarily at the top of your list.
Be curious! (and experiment)
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