[Coral-List] Re: Coral disease in Zanzibar

[Louis Celliers]

 Dear Scott and Carol,
We have also observed the pink spots on Porites from high-latitude reefs in
South Africa.

Louis

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Dr Louis Celliers
Senior Scientist
Coral Reef Programme
Oceanographic Research Institute - Durban
SOUTH AFRICA
Telephone: +27-31-3288170
Facsimile: +27-31-3288188
Mobile: +27-824523997
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-----Original Message-----
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
[mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Scott Godwin
Sent: 28 August 2004 09:52
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: [Coral-List] Re: Coral disease in Zanzibar

Hello Listers,

I am a PhD student at the National Marine Science Centre in Coffs Harbour,
Australia. My project is concerned with the pathology of coral diseases in
subtropical waters of eastern Australia. Its always interesting to hear
about other diseases occurring elsewhere.

Carol,

Fascinating stuff. The pink spots you described sound very similar to the
pink pigmented spots observed on Porites spp. corals on the Great Barrier
Reef and in Hawaii. The spots are though to be produced in response to
challanges such as parasitic trematodes or cyanobacterial infection (see
Ravindran and Raghukumar, 2002, Coral Reefs 21:252). Bette Willis and her
group have observed this condition on the GBR (Bette.Willis at jcu.edu.au).

The second condition sounds like a fungal infection, probably 'fungal
syndrome' which has been found affecting corals of many genera along many
parts of the East African coastline. Tim McClanahan is the man to ask
(tmcclanahan at wcs.org). I think he has a paper in the pipeline on this
syndrome. It causes bleaching of the coral, and results in the
characteristic grey colour you described. If possible, it would be good to
take a small sample of the diseased colonies and observe it under a
microscope. The fungal filaments should be very obvious if they are present.

Cheers,

Scott


  Scott Godwin
Postgraduate Research Student
School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences University of New
England National Marine Science Centre PO Box J321 Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450,
Australia

Phone: +61 2 66483912
Fax: +61 2 66516580

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