Coral Restoration in the Keys

 Elkhorn and Staghorn corals in the Keys and Caribbean have experienced a 97 percent decline with a massive impact on fish species and other reef fauna.  Recent works to attempt to mitigate this state of affairs has been chronicled by Kevin Lollar in an article on the newspress.com site.  Researchers are growing Elkhorn (A palmata) and staghorn (A. cervicornis) corals in open-water nurseries and then planting coral fragments on Florida’s reef tract and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. “We’re looking at the ecosystem in 20 years — hopefully, it’s not lost,” said Sean Morton, superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. “We’ve gone from 30-percent coral cover in the Keys to 5 or 6 percent. We’ve got to take a more active role.” Coral restoration in the Keys began in 2000 when marine-life collector and dealer Ken Nedimyer, founder of the Coral Restoration Foundation, started growing staghorn coral off Tavernier. Nedimyer had watched corals dying for more than 20 years, and then the Keys experienced extreme coral bleaching and coral loss in 1998 and 1999. “After ’98, things changed drastically,” he said. “Probably like everybody else, I thought, ‘oh, the scientists are studying this; they’ll come up with a solution.’ “I’m not dissing scientists, but I realized they were just going to study it. I’m not the kind of person who sits back and watches. If somebody has a question and nobody raises his hand, I answer it.”So Nedimyer started growing coral on his live rock farm and developed techniques for growing and planting that have become standard practice. The CRF has undertaken numerous fragging and attachment exercises and in a world where action is needed it is encouraging to see conservation efforts that focus on the practical:  “We put in six fragments to see if they would live,” Nedimyer said. “Now there are 5,000 corals from that.” Anyone interested in the work of the CRF should take a look at the organizations website where you can learn more about the project and adopt a frag or an entire frag ‘tree’. The CRF also operates a volunteer program which allows interested members of the public to be directly involved in growing and transplanting corals. www.coralrestoration.org source: http://www.news-press.com/article/20120521/GREEN/305210019/Florida-Keys-fight-serve-coral-reefs-looking-far-into-future-?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CHome&goback=%2Egde_1875480_member_117682595