NSU Horizons Spring 2016

16 NSU HORIZONS unprecedented in the region. The project between the town and the Coral Reef Initiative will be highlighted this summer on ScubaNation , a television program on Fox Sports Sun channel. Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is a small seaside community of 6,000 residents just north of Fort Lauderdale. “We’re very proud to be working with NSU and think our collaboration will be extremely beneficial,” Mayor Scot Sasser said. “We’re hoping that these replanted staghorn coral fragments, within the next few years, will grow into a significant reef that will help the environment.” The initiative began humbly, with 30 “donor corals” growing offshore. NSU’s oceanographic researchers borrowed branches from corals, which they grew into fully formed corals in their nursery. “We took these small clippings, about the size of your pinky,” said Larson, a Ph.D. candidate. “We started out with 270 of those for our nursery. Now you can estimate we have over 2,000 corals in our nursery that are more than the size of cantaloupes.” “We only had to borrow from natural colonies that one time,” Gilliam added. “The population in the nursery has ex- panded simply by propagating branches from within the nursery itself. It’s completely self-supporting, and when we initially took branches from the donor colonies, we monitored those colonies, and they all recovered. It was only a gain—there was no loss, and that’s rather unique.” So far, the Initiative has planted more than 4,000 corals, with the capacity to plant another 1,000 per year. Mortality rates fluctuate based on environmental factors, but according to the Coral Nursery Initiative’s latest monitoring report in December 2015, corals have enjoyed a 90-percent survival rate after eight months in the high-density Staghorn City colony site. The region with the lowest survival rate is at 57 percent. “I like to say that unlike a lot of science, this particular effort is actually seeable,” Gilliam said. “When we give talks to the general public, we try to highlight the sense that you can meet with us this year, and I could show you some pictures. And within a year we can meet again, and you’ll be able to see a change. That’s very satisfying. You can count the difference that you’re making.” That sense of importance is what drove Correia to the project, which she is using to write her thesis on the sexual reproduction of nursery-reared coral colonies. “It’s all about ocean optimism. It’s not all doom and gloom; there are positive stories happening in our ocean environ- ment,’’ she said. “If you look at it on a global scale, it can be daunting, but if you look at it from a local scale, you can really make a difference. Being able to go out in the ocean and see a site that was devastated by a water tanker Lystina Kabay, graduate research assistant, discusses the Coral Nursery Initiative during an Earth Day celebration at Pine Crest Elementary School. Halmos College students often discuss the coral project at community events, schools, and museums. Below: Kate Correia, research assistant, deploys a collection net to potentially harvest gametes from the mass spawning of nursery-raised staghorn coral colonies.