Open Reply to P Collinson (nubbin growth)

[Daniel Bucher]

Peter, 

        A friend forwarded your request for information on coral nubbin 
growth studies to me.  You may remember me from the ISRS conference in 
Townsville.  I was just starting up my experiments then as part of the 
ENCORE program. I now have some results of growth (by weight, linear 
extension and volume) of Acropora longicyathus and A. aspera nubbins 
exposed to two levels of N, P and NP pollution over two years at One Tree 
Island.  I have also attempted some measurements of Porites porites whilst 
on Barbados last year (damned parrot fish thwarted much of that!!).  Ove 
Hoegh-Guldberg at Sydney Uni. <oveh at bio.usyd.edu.au> has been following 
growth of Pocillopora damicornis and Andy Steven at the Great Barrier Reef 
Marine Park Authority <Andy_Steven at quickmail.macnet2.gbrmpa.gov.au> has 
data for Acropora palifera from the same experimental design.  Contact me 
if you would like to discuss my results.  I have not published yet as the 
experiment is only just concluding.  So far my results support 
recently-published work from Hawaii that nutrients ALONE may not depress 
coral growth (indeed they may even enhance it in some circumstances). 

However, far from being benign (or even beneficial) nutrients do have 
deleterious effects on other processes important to reef survival and 
recovery.  Selina Ward's work on the same colonies as mine has demonstrated 
effects on most stages of the sexual reproductive cycle.  My own work has 
hinted at some other processes that might be affected (but it needs a lot 
more work to confirm it). 

                                Danny 

P.S.  can someone tell me how to subscribe to this list? It sounds like 
there's some useful discussion going on there. 


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                            DANIEL BUCHER         * 


                      Associate Lecturer in Biology/Ecology 
                           Centre for Coastal Management 
                       SOUTHERN CROSS UNIVERSITY 
             P.O. Box 157, Lismore, N.S.W. Australia, 2480 
                Phone: +61+66 203665   Fax: +61+66 212669 
                           E-mail: dbucher at scu.edu.au 



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