[Coral-List] Please somebody, eat these slimy cyanobacteria all over the reefs

Esther Peters esther.peters at verizon.net
Sun Mar 9 18:50:50 EDT 2008


   Dear Martin and List,
   I apologize for the very belated posting in relation to Martin's notes
   on reintroducing Diadema antillarum on the reefs.
   Whenever it happens, it is going to be important to monitor the health
   of the cultured stock and those reintroduced.  Way back in the 1980s I
   ended  up  with  a  series  of  tissue  sections for histopathological
   examination.   None of the specimens came from the Caribbean-wide mass
   mortality of 1982-1983.  However, some were collected by Bob Carpenter
   from  St. Croix during a couple of subsequent die-offs and sent to Rob
   Scheibling  who had studied green sea urchin diseases off Nova Scotia.
   Because  of  my  interest  in  diseases  of  coral  reef organisms and
   invertebrate  histopathology,  I tracked these down, and also obtained
   apparently  healthy long-spined urchins from the coral reef exhibit at
   the  National  Museum  of  Natural History, and samples taken during a
   die-off  near  Key  West in 1991.  The results of my observations were
   reported in this book chapter:
   Peters,  E.C.   1993.  Diseases of other invertebrate phyla: Porifera,
   Cnidaria,  Ctenophora,  Annelida,  Echinodermata.   In Pathobiology of
   Marine  and  Estuarine Organisms, ed. J.A. Couch and J.W. Fournie, pp.
   388-444.  CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
   Tissue   changes   were   found,   but  microbiological  studies  were
   inconclusive.   I  had  hoped  to  get  these  slides  archived in the
   Registry  of  Tumors  in  Lower  Animals (RTLA); however, the National
   Cancer  Institute  quit  funding  it  and  the  collection  is  now in
   storage.   I  do  think these urchin slides are a valuable collection,
   and  perhaps  there  is  someone  out  there  studying tropical urchin
   diseases  who  would  benefit  from  having these histoslides?  Please
   contact me if you would like to discuss obtaining them.
   Esther Peters, Ph.D.
   George Mason University
   Martin Moe wrote:

Dear Tom,


Well, I can't set the Diadema loose, at least not in the
wild at this point. It used to be that one could pretty much do as one wished
with release of farmed and/or exotic animals into natural waters. I recall back
in the early 60's (Ah, those were the days when, with a shiny new BS from FSU, 
you
could pass a state test, and be an ichthyologist and a fishery biologist all in
a couple of weeks) when the commercial fishing interests from the rural
counties controlled the State Legislature and most anything went if it seemed
to have the potential to advance the yield of the commercial fisheries. Back
then we wanted to enhance the commercial fisheries of Florida
Bay and so the Director at that time
imported about 200 live Samoan crabs, Scylla serrata, and released them in the
southwest area of north Florida
 Bay. The introduction did
not succeed, fortunately, but there were a few very surprised crab fishermen
that found themselves challenged for control of their boat by a fast moving cra
b
with a two foot claw spread. 


 




Times have changed and an introduction of exotic (well that's
not going happen any more, at least not by design) or hatchery reared animals
into the wild for fishery or environmental enhancement requires a great deal of
ecological and biological research. The mantra of the medical profession, First
Do No Harm, is now the uppermost concern. The need has to be demonstrated, the
organisms have be shown to be free of all disease and of a genetic composition
that will not change the genotype of the naturally occurring populations. This
is all a very scientific, expensive, and time consuming process, but it can and
is being done with a variety of animals. Mote Marine Laboratory is in forefront
of this work, they understand the scientific requirements for stock enhancement
and they are also working with me on Diadema research. Things are on the upswin
g, however. We had a Diadema workshop, sponsored by Mote, recently in Key West 
and many scientists are now working together to advance research into to possib
ility of restoring the key herbivore, Diadema, to Florida reefs.
 


I'm sure that in the case of Diadema, it must seem that I'm
a broken record (for you younger folks this refers to the old vinyl records whe
re
the needle would skip a groove and repeat a note endlessly) in my quest to
stimulate research into investigating the potential to use of these urchins in 
Atlantic
coral reef research and ecological restoration. But Diadema are a very valuable
 tool in the arsenal
of coral reef management that should be aggressively researched. Sure, return
of this urchin, if it can be done, won't solve all the problems, but if populat
ions
of normal, before the plague densities, can be restored and maintained, even on
only a few small areas, these areas will be living coral reef laboratories for
ecological research, areas where coals can settle and grow without gross macro 
algae
competition, areas that due to a healthier ecology would be more resilient to
decline, and hopefully serve as areas that can contribute reproductively to
broader areas. So this is what I choose to work on, at least as long as what I
do is constructive, and until there are once again serious, well funded,
research efforts in this direction. Tom Capo, and Alina and Margret, began this
 culture work a number of years ago but there have been no culture efforts exce
pt for my dabbling since then. I have had number of forced spawns and two
natural spawns of captive brood stock and last year I got consistent survival o
f
large numbers of larvae up to 24 days or so (up to over 80,000), to the
beginning of the development of the adult rudiment, and a goodly number of
larvae to the point of metamorphosis and one through to the juvenile stage. Thi
s
is a good beginning, and I think now I have an understanding of what is needed 
in
the way of physical and nutritional requirements for large scale culture and
hopefully, if I'm right, we will have the basic elements in place for large
scale culture some time this year.


 


Incidentally, I don't think that Diadema need to be able to
eat a particular alga to keep it from overgrowing open substrates when they are
present in normal population densities. (OK, what's a "normal" density? In my o
pinion,
it depends on the geology and ecology and physical structure of the area, but
certainly at or greater than 1 per sq. meter.) In my tanks there is no growth
of any algae on the rocks or the sides of the tank despite an apparently high n
utrient load, and on the few reef areas
where large numbers are present algae growth is much reduced. That said, my tan
ks are not the reef. Natural reef areas, with their highly variable human impac
ts and nutrient components cannot all be put in the same basket. Diadema would 
be helpful in many instances and not so in others. There are so very
many research and restoration projects that can be done with Diadema, projects
that will help us better understand coral reef ecology and help in restoration
efforts, but first there has to be a very large supply of healthy, reef
competent juveniles available for such work.



Martin
 




----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Goreau [1]<goreau at bestweb.net>
To: Todd Barber-Clear [2]<reefball at reefball.com>
Cc: coral-list coral-list [3]<coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 3:01:33 PM
Subject: [Coral-List] Please somebody, eat these slimy cyanobacteria all over t
he reefs


Dear Todd,

I fully agree with you (almost all aquaria except the very cleanest
have them), except for these little worms that seem to thrive in it
(Nematodes?). But where are they when we really need them?

You can see cyanobacteria spreading almost everyplace with known
nutrient inputs, and it is getting steadily worse every place I go.
The top-down herrbivory control folks can't explain these blooms:
wherever you find them without an obvious nutrient source there are
almost always subtle nutrient sources that you hadn't yet recognized.
I use them in many resort areas to tell me exactly where the septic
tanks are leaching through the beach or bedrock, for example in
resort islands in the Maldives or in front of the hotels in Bonaire.
In Southeast Florida they don't only mark the sewage outfalls: Dan
Clark has found they allow you to pinpoint precisely where the deep
well injected sewage is coming up through cracks in the overlying
formations above the "boulder zone" and starting to kill reefs from
the offshore side.

A few years ago in Grand Cayman I found that North Sound was being
killed by nutrients leaching from the garbage dump and golf course
fertilizers, that the western area in front of 5 Mile Beach had large
round patches of cyanobacteria on the sand that were certainly where
the septic tank drainage was finding its way into the sea, and that
the northwest was being killed by weedy algae and coral diseases
where all the turtle farm effluent flowed into the sea, perhaps soon
to be made worse with captive dolphin poop. And there were
cyanobacterial blooms on the staghorn corals on the south side too.
There was no place I looked at without an algae problem. So the
Department of the Environment decided to cheer me up with a last dive
on their very best reefs, far from any human impact, on the
northeast. The shoreline was completely free of weedy algae, but the
deeper we went to the drop off, the worse the cyanobacteria blooms
were. My DOE colleagues were shocked, they had never seen that before
at their favorite dive site. I think it was just their bad luck to
have taken me there after an upwelling event of nutrients from below
the thermocline, which is known to be driven by seasonal internal
wave breaking by solitons propagating across the Caribbean along the
pycnocline density boundary......

I agree with you, the only way we know to control them is to starve
them of nutrients! Unless someone finds a cunning parasite, virus,
or  other way of killing them economically without side effects?

Best wishes,
Tom

On Jan 20, 2008, at 2:24 PM, Todd Barber-Clear wrote:



Hi Tom,

Cyanobacteria is a VERY common problem in salt water marine reef
tanks.  It quite simply happens in tanks that don't have the best
filters.  The Reef Ball Coral Team uses the presence of
Cyanobacteria in our biological monitoring work as one of the most
precise measurements of general water quality.  It corelates better
to man made pollution run off (especially sewage and fert. run off)
than even an accurate Mott test kit for ammonias/nitrates/nitrites
(probably because biological sensors are not a point reading but a
continous one).

Cyanobacteria are notoriously "untastey" to others so I doubt we
will find a predator to take them out.  The only way to control
Cyanobateria in an aquarium is to improve water quality or
completely starve it from silicates (something you could never do
in an the real ocean).  NOBODY has found any marine life that could
exist in an aquarium that will eat the stuff that we have ever
encountered.

In fact, Cyanobacteria once ruled the planet and have kept their
successful primative form munching on basic chemical energy sources
combined with the sun.  It is helpful to think of any mass of
cyanobacteria to be a smoking gun for a (perhaps nearby) point
source of human pollution (especially sewage or fertilizer run off).

Thanks,

Todd R. Barber
Chairman, Reef Ball Foundation
252-353-9094

Skype name: toddbarber
Cell Phone 941-720-7549

3305 Edwards Court
Greenville, NC 27858

Inbox protected by ClearMyMail
[4]www.ClearMyMail.com {c2509d95650d4b87a5a76fe30c468363}




----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Goreau
To: Todd Barber
Cc: coral-list coral-list
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Set the Diadema loose!

Dear Todd,

Thanks for these observations. The rapid spread of cyanobacteria
may be helped along by the refusal of Diadema to eat it, eventually
resulting in Diadema starving out. The surgeon fish seem to avoid
the cyanobacteria in Barbados too.

Dan and Stephanie Clark who worked with volunteer divers to haul
huge masses of cyanobacteria of reefs in Broward County, Florida, a
few years ago, found them full of some sort of thin white
worms........

Best wishes,
Tom


On Jan 20, 2008, at 11:38 AM, Todd Barber wrote:



Hi Tom,

Just my two cents worth but Diadema will not eat cyanobacteria.
(At least in captivity even when there are no other food sources
present. My experiance is with the red and near black varieties of
cyanobacteria).

-Todd





----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Goreau"
[5]<goreau at bestweb.net>
To: "Martin Moe" [6]<martin_moe at yahoo.com>
Cc: "coral-list coral-list" [7]<coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>;
"Reef Rescue" [8]<Etichscuba at aol.com>; "Henry Breck" [9]<hrbreck at the-
ark.com>; "Eliane Polack" [10]<elianepolack at caribserve.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:03 AM
Subject: [Coral-List] Set the Diadema loose!


Dear Martin,

Andrew Ross says that at Doctors Cave near Montego Bay, Trididemnum
solidum and Echinometra occur in the same habitat, but are mutually
exclusive, so maybe there is something to this.....

It will be very interesting to use your pet Diadema herd for


 targeted


experiments! I really hope that they eat every bit of Trididemnum
solidum that they encounter, but I wonder if it is just too toxic


 for


them. One of our reef restoration sites, in Sint Maarten, has very
dense Diadema populations, and there is Trididemnum solidum there
too, but not yet too bad.....

Another place where you need to set your Diadema loose and see what
they do, is on the slimy cyanobacteria that is taking over wherever
there is much nutrients from sewage and other sources. SE Florida


 has


vast patches of this killing corals , spreading outward from the
sewage outfalls, and waxing and waning as they change the amount of,
ummm, ordure (Jim, that's not a banned word yet is it?), that they
pump out, as Ed Tichenor has definitively shown.

Wayne Hunte told me in 1994 that Diadema had recovered to around two
thirds of their pre 1983 densities in Barbados, and you could see
that they and the huge parrotfish everywhere (which Bajans don't
eat)  got rid of the macrophytes but could not control the turf that
was eaten and grew back every day. In the last 5-6 years (according
to Angelique Brathwaite of the Barbados Coastal Zone Management


 Unit)


the turf has disappeared, and been replaced by slimy cyanobacteria
(not the same one killing SE Florida reefs and the areas around the
dolphin pens in Cozumel, another species), and the Diadema have


 again


disappeared. The parrotfish don't seem to touch the stuff, and I'm
wondering if the new disappearance of Diadema is another plague or


 if


they have been starved out because they won't touch the main algae
that is there now?

By the way, despite much urban mythology, Diadema die off had


 nothing


to do with the spread of algae over the reef in Jamaica, which was
caused by eutrophication that coincidentally occurred spanning the
Diadema die off in the Discovery Bay area, but which happened long
before and long after in other parts of Jamaica:
T. J. Goreau, 1992, Bleaching and reef community change in Jamaica:
1951-1991, in SYMPOSIUM ON LONG TERM DYNAMICS OF CORAL REEFS,
AMERICAN ZOOLOGIST, 32: 683-695.

Best wishes,
Tom


On Jan 19, 2008, at 9:04 AM, Martin Moe wrote:



I might be able to do this, I have a brood stock of 19 large and
healthy Diadema and it would be possible to collect a bit of
Trididemnum and see what happens to it in the tank. The result
wouldn't be directly applicable to what might happen on the reef,
but it would be a clue. If I get a chance to do this, I'll let you
know what happens.

Martin

----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Goreau [11]<goreau at bestweb.net>
To: andrew ross [12]<andyroo_of72 at yahoo.com>
Cc: Martin Moe [13]<martin_moe at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 5:20:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] tunicates

Echinometra does not go deep enough to be in Tridemnum habitat.

I very much doubt the Diadema control hypothesis, but it would be
interesting to put some Diadema on a bit of Trididemnum and see
what happens. I hope Martin can try this.




On Jan 17, 2008, at 3:29 PM, andrew ross wrote:



I'm not seeing this tunicate on Echinometra viridis
colonized/cleaned reef areas. Areas without this
urchin/with (plenty of) algae loaded with it. Diadema
control makes sense.
Also Echinometra areas have less/no boring sponges
either.
Andrew


--- Martin Moe [14]<martin_moe at yahoo.com> wrote:



I've been following the tunicate thread with great
interest.
Seems that what's needed to keep them under control
would be an organism that
actually cleans the rock, something that can scrape
and feed on just about anything
that is attached to the upper levels of the
substrate, something that even if
it couldn't actually consume the organism itself
might be able to keep its
growth in check and keep it from invading open
substrates. Too bad that
there isn't anything like that on the western
Atlantic reefs today, at least
not in numbers adequate to do this housekeeping over
extensive areas. But wait,
maybe Diadema could do that job, as well keep algae
growth under control, if
they were abundant once again.  Diadema may
or may not have had an impact on tunicate growth
when they were abundant, I have not seen any studies
on that, but they
were so critical in shaping and maintaining the
ecology of these reefs over
great expanses of time that their loss has
implications for the reefs far
beyond just algae control. There could be an
interesting graduate thesis in such a study. Too be
sure, return of Diadema wouldnâEUR(TM)t solve all
the problems facing these reefs in these perilous
times, but if Diadema could
be returned to the reefs, they would be an essential
element to whatever ecological restoration
of our coral reefs is possible.

Martin Moe





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__
_______________
Never miss a thing.  Make Yahoo your home page.
[17]http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


Thomas J. Goreau, PhD
President
Global Coral Reef Alliance
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
[18]goreau at bestweb.net
[19]http://www.globalcoral.org





Thomas J. Goreau, PhD
President
Global Coral Reef Alliance
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
[20]goreau at bestweb.net
[21]http://www.globalcoral.org

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Coral-List mailing list
[22]Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
[23]http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list


Thomas J. Goreau, PhD
President
Global Coral Reef Alliance
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
[24]goreau at bestweb.net
[25]http://www.globalcoral.org




Thomas J. Goreau, PhD
President
Global Coral Reef Alliance
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
[26]goreau at bestweb.net
[27]http://www.globalcoral.org

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References

   1. mailto:goreau at bestweb.net
   2. mailto:reefball at reefball.com
   3. mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
   4. http://www.ClearMyMail.com/
   5. mailto:goreau at bestweb.net
   6. mailto:martin_moe at yahoo.com
   7. mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
   8. mailto:Etichscuba at aol.com
   9. mailto:hrbreck at the-ark.com
  10. mailto:elianepolack at caribserve.net
  11. mailto:goreau at bestweb.net
  12. mailto:andyroo_of72 at yahoo.com
  13. mailto:martin_moe at yahoo.com
  14. mailto:martin_moe at yahoo.com
  15. mailto:Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
  16. http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
  17. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
  18. mailto:goreau at bestweb.net
  19. http://www.globalcoral.org/
  20. mailto:goreau at bestweb.net
  21. http://www.globalcoral.org/
  22. mailto:Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
  23. http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
  24. mailto:goreau at bestweb.net
  25. http://www.globalcoral.org/
  26. mailto:goreau at bestweb.net
  27. http://www.globalcoral.org/
  28. mailto:Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
  29. http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
  30. mailto:Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
  31. http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list



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