[Coral-List] sea urchin removal to prevent bioerosion

Paul Sammarco psammarco at lumcon.edu
Thu Feb 11 15:45:13 EST 2010


Dear Anders and Clement,

Interesting observations.  The comments I made about bioerosion are based on
a series of experiments performed on the Great Barrier 
Reef by Mike Risk and myself.  These have been published and anyone is
welcome to copies, if they want them.  


Best Wishes,

Paul


Paul W. Sammarco, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Association of Marine Laboratories of the Caribbean (AMLC)

and

Professor
Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON)
8124 Hwy. 56
Chauvin, LA  70344
USA

Tel:                1-985-876-2489
FAX:              1-985-851-2874
Email:           psammarco at lumcon.edu
Website:     www.lumcon.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
[mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Anders Knudby
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 1:31 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] sea urchin removal to prevent bioerosion

Hi Clement,

1.5 years ago we started a project on the reef at Chumbe Island, Tanzania,
where we regularly removed all D. setosum from a number of plots on the
reef. We didn't use cages because we were interested specifically in
exclusion of urchin only, not in exclusion of all similar-sized animals
(e.g. large herbivorous fish). The project was meant as a pilot study, to
see what effect we could expect from a full-scale removal of all urchins on
the reef, as had been suggested by some. To my knowledge results are
inconclusive so far, but may be firmed up and made available later.

I would be interested to know your thoughts on the use of cages. Did you
design a cage that would include/exclude only Diadema, or how do you control
for other animals' response to the cages? Or are Diadema the only animals
relevant for your study in the area?

Cheers,
Anders Knudby

knudby at gmail.com
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