[Coral-List] Strange algae reported by divers

Bill Allison allison.billiam at gmail.com
Fri Mar 1 14:11:20 EST 2013


T. hoshinota is the sponge I had in mind.
There was a discussion on the list a few years ago.
I have since revisited sites with high T. hoshinota cover on mostly coral
and rubble that was dead before the sponge showed up. The sponge had all
but disappeared several years later.
Bill

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Bastiaan Vermonden <
bastiaan.vermonden at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear coral-listers,
>
> Thanks everyone for helping with the identification. The two main
> suggestions are:
>
> Its a sponge
> Possible species
>        Terpios hoshinota
>        Trididemnum
>
> Or Its a tunicate
>        didemnid tunicate
>
> Most people seem to suggest its a sponge. I would like to restate that I
> found this question in a Linkedin discussion and so I am unable to do any
> kind of field analysis (unfortunately). I am currently not working on coral
> reef related topics or anywhere near a tropical destination. (also nowhere
> near coldwater coral formations)
>
> But I would like to pose some additional questions because I have not come
> across a lot of literature regarding sponges or tunicates killing corals.
> Most literature on coral reef degradation refers to bleaching, algae
> overgrowth, diseases, COTS, etc.
>
> So my question or maybe start of a discussion if people are interested is:
>
> 1. Are these sponges and/or tunicates a significant contributor to reef
> degradation (a quick search brought up this
> http://www.wcs.org/press/press-releases/microbes-sponges-worms.aspx)?
> 2. If this is a (major) contributor to reef degradation is the occurence of
> this phenomena increasing? (Thomas Goreau suggests it is)?
> 3. What are the (hypothesized) causes of this phenomena? (eutrophication?)
>
> And since I know there are people with blogs, magazines etc reading this,
> should they report on this and if so how?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Bastiaan
>
> PS.
>
> My apologies if this has all already been thoroughly discussed, for me this
> is new.
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>



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________________________________
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