[Coral-List] Biofouling of Coral Nurseries

Fri Oct 2 09:36:12 EDT 2015

Austin, while you are at it (re your earlier post), I would be interested in the papers showing that water quality was not related to coral survival.

On Oct 2, 2015, at 4:36 AM, Sarah Frias-Torres <sfrias_torres at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> Austin,would you be so kind to list the peer-reviewed papers where in multiple sites and multiple countries it has been shown well situated coral nurseries do not require maintenance for biofouling due to the presence of animal-assisted cleaning, and of those papers, the ones that quantified the effect of animal-assisted cleaning?
> We cited all the peer-reviewed papers we found dealing with such topic in our paper which were available to us a the time of writing and reviewing the manuscript. 
> Also, the recommendations you suggest in your email might not be applicable to all coral reef restoration projects. In the Indo-Pacific we must be prepared for the presence and coral eating habits of Humphead Parrotfish (Bolbometopon  muricatum). We were thrilled to have this endangered fish in our marine reserve at Cousin Island, Seychelles but at the same time we were cautious in designing our field experiments keeping an eye for possible coral damage from the Humpheads.
> 
> Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D. Twitter: @GrouperDocBlog: http://grouperluna.wordpress.comhttp://independent.academia.edu/SarahFriasTorres
> 
> 
>> Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2015 08:13:00 +1200
>> From: abowdenkerby at gmail.com
>> To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Biofouling of Coral Nurseries
>> 
>> Regarding Sarah Frias-Torres' post:
>> 
>> We have learned from multiple sites in multiple countries over multiple
>> years that well-situated coral nurseries do not require maintenance for
>> biofouling.
>> 
>> We are consistently using simple metal bar structures with corals suspended
>> from ropes, and for these types of nurseries juvenile and adult fish clean
>> the ropes and bars of algae, hydroids, etc., saving much time and money.  I
>> describe these methods and conditions in the recently released handbook:
>> Best Practices Manual for Caribbean Acropora Restoration, which I have
>> recently put on Researchgate.net
>> 
>> I summary, we recommend that rope nurseries be located in shallow waters
>> (2-4M deep) on sand or rubble, if possible behind reef structures that
>> offer protection from prevailing storm waves.  The critical factor is
>> placement within 1-2 meters of good juvenile fish habitat (sea grass or
>> branching coral colonies), or if further away (or in hindsight) to create
>> bridges of good shelter habitat to enable the fish to cross into the
>> nursery.  Juvenile fish will not cross expanses of barren sand, but then
>> neither do most coral predators, so a bit of gap is quite important.
>> 
>> Bowden-Kerby, A. 2014.  Best Practices Manual for Caribbean Acropora
>> Restoration. Punta Cana Ecological Foundation, 40pp.
>> 
>> The work was Funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank.
>> 
>> Austin
>> 
>> Austin Bowden-Kerby, PhD
>> Corals for Conservation
>> P.O. Box 4649 Samabula, Fiji Islands
>> https://www.facebook.com/C4Conservation
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009j6wb
>> 
>> Sustainable Environmental Livelihoods Farm
>> Km 20 Sigatoka Valley Road, Fiji Islands
>> (679) 938-6437
>> http://permacultureglobal.com/projects/1759-sustainable-environmental-livelihoods-farm-Fiji
>> https://www.facebook.com/teiteifarmstay
>> 
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2015 02:29:54 -0400
>> From: Sarah Frias-Torres <sfrias_torres at hotmail.com>
>> Subject: [Coral-List] Reef fishes reduce biofouling cleaning time in
>>        coral   nurseries
>> To: coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
>> Message-ID: <SNT148-W27A8A7ADC298D796F453AA814E0 at phx.gbl>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
>> 
>> Dear all,
>> Our first peer-reviewed article on the large scale coral reef restoration
>> project I lead in Seychelles was born today.
>> I would like to draw your attention to our recent article in African
>> Journal of Marine Science:
>> Reef fishes recruited at midwater coral nurseries consume biofouling and
>> reduce cleaning time in Seychelles, Indian Ocean
>> In coral reef restoration, coral gardening involves rearing coral fragments
>> in underwater nurseries prior totransplantation. These nurseries become
>> fish-aggregating devices and attract biofouling. We hypothesisedthat: (1)
>> the presence of corals at a nursery is critical to recruit fish assemblages
>> and (2) the recruited fishassemblages control biofouling, reducing
>> person-hours invested in nursery cleaning. Three midwater coralnurseries
>> were deployed at 8 m depth for 27 months within the marine protected area
>> of Cousin Island SpecialReserve, Seychelles, Indian Ocean. Each nursery
>> consisted of a 6 m ? 6 m PVC pipe frame, layered with a recycled5.5-cm-mesh
>> tuna net. Human cleaning effort was calculated based on daily dive logs.
>> Nursery-associated fishassemblages and behaviour were video-recorded prior
>> to harvesting corals after a 20-month growth period andseven months
>> post-coral harvesting. The density (ind. m?2) of blue-yellow damselfish
>> Pomacentrus caeruleus was12?16 times highe
>> r when corals were present than when corals were absent at the nurseries...
>> Fish assemblagesrecruited into the nurseries included three trophic levels,
>> from herbivores to omnivores, in six families: Ephippidae,Pomacentridae,
>> Labridae (Scarinae), Gobiidae, Siganidae and Monacanthidae. Higher
>> abundance of large fish (totalnumber of individuals) resulted in 2.75 times
>> less person-hours spent in nursery cleaning. These results haveimportant
>> implications for cost-effective coral reef restoration.
>> Authors: Sarah Frias-Torres, Henry Goehlich, Claude Reveret, Phanor H
>> Montoya-MayaInstitutions: Nature Seychelles, Republic of Seychelles,
>> Smithsonian Marine Station, USA, University of Rostock, Germany, CREOCEAN,
>> France
>> Full pdf accesshttp://
>> www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.2989/1814232X.2015.1078259
>> VideosHumphead parrotfish encounterhttps://
>> www.youtube.com/watch?v=525P_2MY3hk
>> Fish at midwater coral nurserieshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3XgSqe4d3M
>> 
>> Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D. Twitter: @GrouperDocBlog: http:/
>> /grouperluna.wordpress.comhttp://independent.academia.edu/SarahFriasTorres
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Risk, Michael
riskmj at mcmaster.ca