[Coral-List] Zbar Coral 'disease' unidentified

Carol - Chumbe chumbe at zitec.org
Fri Aug 27 03:31:41 EDT 2004


Dear Coral-listers

I am writing from Zanzibar, Africa, and wish to ask for comments on two 'diseases / bacteria'(?) I have seen on corals recently around the islands here.  There are two types of 'problems' that seem to be affecting different corals...

1) Small, bright pink, chalky patches on Porites lutea.  These patches are little mounds, only about 1cm in diameter, about 1 - 2mm high and I observed them sometimes densely covering the Porites species, other times only with a few patches per colony.  The coral tissue seems to be damaged directly underneath each patch but not beyond it ie. not very deep into the coral skeleton.

2) Fine web, mainly over Millepora but also found on some Acropora species.  The best I can describe this is that it looks like a fine mesh of mucus strung over part or whole colonies.  There are a few colonies with half of the coral destroyed and the web encasing the remaining living part ie. indicating that the web has resulted in the death of the coral - still has it's colony shape but is grey in colour with all the tissue gone.

Unfortunately we don't have pictures of these but can anyone help in identifying the problem from my description or know of something similar and how destructive they are?

Thanks
Carol

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Carol Daniels
Conservation Co-ordinator
 
Chumbe Island Coral Park Ltd (CHICOP)
P.O.Box 3203, Zanzibar, Tanzania
Tel & Fax: 255 (0)24 223 1040 
Mobile 255 (0)747 465363 / (0)744 463734
Email: chumbe at zitec.org, Website: www.chumbeisland.com
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