Coral Reefs News and Discussions

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Coral Reefs News and Discussions

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First Immortal Cell Line Cultured for Reef-Building Corals

Amanda Heidt
Jul 1, 2021

Corals are poster children for the harms of climate change, with vibrant reefs withered to bleached barrens as temperatures climb and waters become more acidic. Even as scientists work to restore reefs, they have long lacked stable cell lines for probing corals’ cellular and molecular workings. While cells can be isolated for a time, they inevitably fail to thrive. Establishing so-called immortal lines in the lab would allow researchers to investigate critical questions about why corals bleach, what mediates their symbiotic relationships with microalgae, and how they form their skeletons.

In search of a solution, a team of scientists in Japan, including comparative genomicist Noriyuki Satoh at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, collected adults of the reef-building Acropora tenuis from around Okinawa and Ishigaki islands. Rather than isolate cells from these adults, the researchers induced the corals to spawn and produce planulae, tiny larvae roughly the size and shape of sprinkles on ice cream.

The reason for using planulae, Satoh says, is twofold: planular cells are primed to proliferate more readily than adult cells, and larval cells lack a microbiome. While coral-associated microalgae, viruses, fungi, and bacteria are essential for adult corals’ wellbeing, they can contaminate and take over cell lines. By starting with planulae, “we are very sure that the cultured cells originated from corals” rather than their associated microbes, Satoh says.

Read more: https://www.the-scientist.com/modus-ope ... rals-68858


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Giant pristine coral reef discovered off Tahiti

Published
8 hours ago

Marine explorers have discovered a "pristine" 3km (2-mile) coral reef at depths of 30m (100ft) off the coast of Tahiti, French Polynesia.

It is one of the largest discovered at that depth, says the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which led the mission.

Dr Julian Barbiere, from Unesco, said there were probably many more of these ecosystems "we just don't know about".

"We should be working to map them and to protect them," he said.

Unesco director general Audrey Azoulay said the "remarkable" discovery extended our knowledge of "what lies beneath".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60047368


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Dead coral found at Great Barrier Reef as widespread bleaching event unfolds

Fri 18 Mar 2022 05.39 GMT

Dead corals are being recorded in aerial surveys across the Great Barrier Reef in what the marine park’s chief scientist says is a widespread and serious bleaching event on the world heritage icon.

Aerial surveys have covered half of the 2,300km reef, with the worst bleaching observed in the park’s central region off Townsville, where corals on some reefs are dead and dying.

The unfolding bleaching comes ahead of a 10-day UN monitoring mission to the reef due to start on Monday.

Leading reef scientist Prof Terry Hughes said this week a sixth mass bleaching event was now unfolding on the reef, adding to events in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020.

Dr David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, told Guardian Australia: “There is certainly a risk we are seeing a mass bleaching event, but we aren’t in a position to confirm that yet. We want to finish the aerial surveys to really understand this before we make a call on the extent and severity of this bleaching.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... nt-unfolds


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Snap, Crackle, Pop: Healthy Coral Reefs Brimming With Noise
May 25, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) DENVER, May 25, 2022 – A healthy coral reef is loud. Like a busy city, the infrastructure leads to more organisms and activity, and more background noise. Every time an invertebrate drags their hard shell over the coral, or a fish takes a bite of its food, they add to the soundscape.

Vocal fish, whales, and dolphins occasionally interrupt with louder grunts and calls. Altogether, the hundreds of thousands of animals living in the reef sound like static on the radio, or the snap, crackle, and pop of a bowl of Rice Krispies as you pour milk on the cereal, when the coral reef is healthy. The sound changes for reefs that are not healthy, becoming quieter and less diverse.

Lauren Freeman, of the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, will present experiment results of passively acoustically monitoring coral reefs to get a snapshot of their health at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. The presentation, "Coral Reef & Temperate Coastal Soundscape Features Evident in Directional and Omnidirectional Passive Acoustic Time Series," will take place May 25 at 11:35 a.m. Eastern U.S.

Passive acoustic monitoring of coral soundscapes offers a long-term, nonintrusive, and inexpensive way to track the state of reefs around the world, which are threatened by humanity via fishing, pollution, and climate change.

Compared to healthy reefs, degraded coral communities don't have as rich or diverse of a soundscape. There tend to be fewer fish calls and more high frequency noise from algae photosynthesizing and releasing bubbles of oxygen, which ring out as they rise through the water.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/953100
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‘Globally Significant Moment for Ocean Conservation’:
Australia to Phase Out Gill Net Fishing in Great Barrier Reef


Published: June 5, 2023

The Australian and Queensland governments have introduced a more than $160 million package to phase out the commercial gill net fishing that damages the Great Barrier Reef.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world, as well as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Area. It comprises more than 900 islands and 2,900 individual reefs, and is home to 400 types of coral, 4,000 species of mollusc and 1,500 types of fish, according to UNESCO.

“This announcement is shaping up as a globally significant moment for ocean conservation, fisheries management and the Great Barrier Reef — one of the natural wonders of the world,” said Dermot O’Gorman, CEO of WWF-Australia, in a press release from WWF Australia. “If all goes to plan, by June 2027 we’ll have a Net-Free Reef where dugongs, turtles, dolphins and other threatened species can swim without the threat of becoming entangled and drowning in a gill net, and that’s a cause for global celebration.”

The government package will provide the funds for a gill net licenses buyout and mandate independent data validation for commercial fishing boats.

“The commitment to mandate the use of independent data validation on commercial fishing vessels is also welcome and long overdue. It means we’ll have a much better understanding of what’s happening out on the water, including how many threatened species are being accidentally caught,” said Richard Leck, WWF-Australia’s Head of Oceans, in the press release.

https://www.ecowatch.com/gill-net-fishi ... -reef.html
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