[Coral-List] update on Elkhorn coral spawning in Puerto Rico

buiscuil pascal.mege at gmail.com
Tue Aug 26 20:17:19 EDT 2008


Dear coral listers,

working with Edwin Hernandez, I ought to bring a small update on the August
spawning at Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Colonies of *Acropora palmata *were
observed at the Vega Baja site mentioned earlier by Edwin, from Tuesday 19th
of August to Saturday 23rd of August 2008.

- On Tuesday 19th*,* as mentioned by Edwin, no spawning was documented,
although only isolated colonies in shallow water (0.75 to 1.75 m) were
observed. Edwin also described the spawning we observed together on
Wednesday 20th on a shallow reef with dense thickets (1.5 to 2.25 m) around
the same site.

- On Thursday 21st, small thickets of large colonies in extremely shallow
water (0.5 to 1.25 m) were observed but no spawning occurred although a
local snorkeler mentioned the presence of egg bundles in close-by colonies.

- On Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd, at the same shallow reef with dense
thickets (1.5 to 2.25 m) observed on Wednesday 20th, mass spawning occurred.
While the spawning on the 20th was significant, spawning on the 23rd was
more important, and release of egg bundles seemed to reach a peak on this
reef on the 22nd. On the 22nd and 23rd, most of the spawning activity was
concentrated between 21:15 and 21:45 with a peak around 21:25-21:30.
Observation of overturned and reattached colonies were concordant with
Edwin's observations.

Hoping the best for these coral babies,

Pascal Mege, PhD candidate
Department of Biology
Univ. of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras



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