[Coral-List] Alga densities and bleaching

Douglas Fenner douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Mon Nov 26 14:06:15 EST 2012


There are many iron shipwrecks all over the world with corals growing
happily on them.  One of the more famous places is Truk (Chuuk) Lagoon in
Micronesia, where a large number of Japanese ships were sunk in World War
II.  They are encrusted with a wide variety of corals.  I've not been
there.  Florida has a series of sunken ships, some with corals growing on
them.  There are many many other iron wrecks with corals on them.  Many of
the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico have corals on them.  I bet there
are a fair number of aluminum planes as well in places, I remember seeing
one in Papua New Guinea, if I remember it had a few corals growing on it
too (but given that it was a WW II wreck, it had a lot of surface without
them after about 70 years under water).  There are at least two reports of
Tubastraea coccinea in the Caribbean growing on plane wrecks.  I remember
in the Philippines someone finding a dive mask that had been underwater for
a while.  Close inspection revealed tiny coral recruits on the glass of the
mask.
Cheers Doug


On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 6:07 AM, Rudy Bonn <rudy_bonn at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Interesting?  The Key West Marine Park is managed by Reef Relief here in
> Key West.  It is a ~48 acre site on the south side of the island and fronts
> Higgs beach, Dog beach, and extends from the duval street pier east to the
> white street pier, (Gene is probably familiar with the area) anyway, years
> ago the county/city put in a new pier at Higgs Beach and left portions of
> the old one behind.  These submerged portions of the old pier are made of
> iron, and there are corals attached to this iron substrate in amazing
> numbers and diversity, and they are all in very good health, I can send
> pictures if you contact me by my email, the water depth is 12 foot max on a
> spring tide, so we know that during the summer months the temp probably
> reaches the upper 80's  these corals show no signs of disease, alga
> overgrowth, bleaching,  like I said in really good health.  Any ideas?  the
> genera we have found include:  montastrea, siderastrea, porites, diploria
>  (several sp) meandrina, oculina, among others, all in good health all
> attached to iron,    ideas?
>
> Rudy S Bonn
> Director of Marine Projects
> Reef Relief
> 631 Greene Street
> Key West, FL 33040
> 305-294-3100
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>



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PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA


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