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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanArchive for the ‘Hard Corals’Jan 20, 12 Comments Off
Hi friends, Here is one of the coolest most over-looked corals on the reef, it’s called an Artichoke Coral or Scolymia cubensis. This animal is also known as a Solitary Disk coral, Smooth Disk coral, Doughnut coral, Flat Brain coral, Modern Meat coral, or just Meat coral, Atlantic Mushroom coral, and Tooth coral, talk about a animal with a whole lot of names! When I say “Meaty Coral” the meaty association is a reference to the polyps’ fleshiness and also to the common red coloration. This coral is found in the Atlantic waters in deeper habitats. They are solitary and grow up to four inches in diameter, and form a saucer shape. They have a smoother surface than S. lacera and is a solid green, red or brown with very little of any other colors. I believe this is a juvenile Artichoke coral because of the brownish/maroon ring on the outside, the adults are more one color. Underneath this beautiful green fleshy creature is a skeleton made entirely of calcium carbonate with it’s own unique designs and patterns. Other more popular Stony corals like Sheet corals, Brain corals, Star corals, Pillar corals and Finger corals just to name a few also have their own unique calcium carbonate skeletons underneath. These small, colorful corals generally inhabit deep reefs and walls but can be occasionally found shallower. They prefer shaded areas on rocky substrates and also grow in low-light conditions under ledge overhangs and in cave openings. During the night the polyp tentacles will emerge and the animal will feed by grabbing plankton and particles as they pass by.
All is well here, have a wonderful weekend!! Cheers, Barry
Nov 24, 11 Comments Off
Good morning friends, Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the States. I sure wish we could join you all today for the food fest and festivities but fear not we will be dining ourselves tonight under the palm trees. Yesterday I took the day off to spend with Aimee. We both ended up being trapped at home almost all day because of non-stop rain and at times it came down so hard it flooded the driveway and yard! I made the most of it by hauling my chop saw and tools upstairs and building another driftwood bookcase which I almost got finished by the end of the day.
I had a question about Fire coral the other day and found this photo last night. Besides the low growing clumps of Pencil Coral, what you see is a sea of Fire coral! Fire coral can be found in such a large variety of shapes and sizes and completely decorates almost every part of the reef. Fire corals have a bright yellow-green and brown skeletal covering and are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical waters. They appear in small brush-like growths on rocks and coral. Divers often mistake fire coral for seaweed, and accidental contact is common. Upon contact, an intense pain can be felt that can last from two days to two weeks. The very small nematocysts on fire corals contain tentacles that protrude from numerous surface pores (similar to jellyfish stings). In addition, fire corals have a sharp, calcified external skeleton that can scrape the skin. Fire coral has several common growth forms; these include branching, plate and encrusting. Branching adopts a calcerious structure which branches off, to rounded finger-like tips. Plate adopts a shape similar to that of the smaller non-sheet lettuce corals; therefore erect, thin sheets, which group together to form a colony. The latter; “encrusting”, is where the fire coral forms on the calcerious structure of other coral or gorgonian structures.
I need to feed the dogs and make some coffee, have a wonderful Holiday today and please eat something just for us and say, “this one is for Aimee and Barry”!! Cheers, Barry
Oct 29, 11 Comments Off
Good morning, I apologize for yesterday and those of you who tuned in to see me and the sub underwater, we were there but not at the correct given times. I ended up being underwater three times yesterday, first at 9:35, then at 11:30 and again at around 4:00, we will try again next week.
Here is a single polyp of Orange Cup Coral, one of the hands down most beautiful corals we have on the island. Orange Cup Corals are believed to be the only species of stony coral introduced to the Western Atlantic. The species was first recorded in 1943 from Puerto Rico and Curacao. Interestingly some specimens collected in the Netherlands Antilles between 1948-1950 came from a ships hull. Since that period the species abundance at these localities has been increasing. During the day this coral is very plain and just looks like an orange bumpy mass but at night the show the begins! The beautiful polyps open once the sun goes down and generally feed most of the night on passing planktons and seem to be more active on nights with current and murky water.
I was really hoping to get the dogs out on a nice long Saturday morning walk but it started pouring here at around 4:00 in the morning and I think it is still going. I have a model shoot today with our cute intern Wendy, she wanted photos of herself in her Halloween costume which she will be wearing tonight to some big island party, so of course I said yes!
That’s about it, have a wonderful weekend! Barry
Sep 21, 11 Comments Off
Good evening friends, as promised here are two photos of the same colony of Massive Starlet Coral releasing sperm and tiny eggs into the water. The top photo was just seconds after it started and the bottom one is the cloud of sperm that covers the reef on this one special night!! This is called; Broadcast Spawning. It’s were one species of coral like these Starlets release their eggs and sperm at one time into the water column and with luck will cross-fertilize somewhere out in the liquid darkness. With this coral the eggs are super tiny, unlike the Star Coral I sent out yesterday, therefore they have less chance of being eaten and a better chance of becoming baby corals. On our swim back last night we saw these corals spawning almost everywhere we looked and soon the whole reef had this “cloudy look” to it and at times we couldn’t see where we were going!
Today we first took the dogs to Saint Joris for an hour walk then went with Sal and Patty in their rental car for a fun afternoon tour of the West end of the island. I ended up taking a bunch of fun photos so be on the lookout for those later this week.
Sorry so short, I am very tired and I need to get my bike ready for ride with the fastest rider on the island tomorrow morning, I am giving him a tour of our trails! See ya, Barry
Sep 21, 11 Comments Off
Good morning friends, I am back! Sorry about the “no blog” yesterday, I just didn’t have time! Aimee and I are about as tired as a human can be after two nights of very late diving and not getting home till the wee hours of the morning. Monday night was absolutely crazy! We arrived at the launch area at 9:15 just as two big dive boats showed up with no less than 20 people each all equipped with lights wanting to see the coral spawning. This immediately changed our plans! We quickly got ready and jumped into the ocean at around 9:20 and swam in the darkness on top of the water until we had passed the boats and everyone involved, we wanted to be left alone to our own area of reef. Our plan ended up working perfectly and at 10:09 we saw our first star corals spawning. After seeing that we continued the search for even better spawning and hit the jackpot and at 10:12 they went off along with everything else. This was by far the “weakest” spawning we have ever witnessed here in Curacao, and I am guessing it’s due to last years terrible coral bleaching episode! Here you can see Boulder Star Coral, Montastraea annularis releasing it’s “eggs” or bundles in hopes of re-populating the reef and keeping it’s species alive! Once the eggs are released as you see here it’s an automatic buffet of floating food for so many species of fish and creatures, it’s a wonder any of these eggs ever make it back to the reef to become new corals of their own! We did get a few shots of the ultra shy brittle stars grabbing eggs as they were being released but for the most part it was a lost cause. After this was over we quickly swam in search of other corals spawning and came across the Massive Starlet Corals, Siderastrea siderea starting to spawn at 10:45 as well. This turned out to be one of the best photos of the evening! These corals were shooting out large amounts of sperm and within moments the corals looked like they were “smoking” or on “fire”, it was so cool! We hovered in disbelief and watched these corals spawn literally until I couldn’t see them anymore, they became enveloped in a spermy fog!! I had such a hard time trying to focus on this event but with the help of Aimee shining a light on them it ended up helping a lot!! I will send you that photo out tonight, it’s to cool for words! There had to have been at least 60 people in the water with us but thanks to years of knowing this reef we never saw a one of them!! I also got a really cool photo of a very illusive Viper eel and some more fun octopus shots, those are on the way as well! Our plan once we got out was to go and shoot the bundles again but they just don’t stay together long enough! Look carefully at the photo below and you can see the bundles breaking apart just a split second after being released! I think this is the only photo I have ever taken that not only shows the bundles being released but also a bunch of the gametes as well, we didn’t realize they break apart so fast! We ended up exiting the water at 11:15 and the Starlet corals were still spawning when we left, it was such a great night!
Our company is doing great, they have been diving our “Sea Aquarium House Reef” every day and seem to be having a wonderful time!! The sub will not be diving today, it will be under Thursday, Friday and Saturday so we watching the www.seesubmarine.com link when you can! Aimee and I are taking our guests on an island tour today and yes, I am taking my camera gear so hopefully I can find something really fun for you all!
Have a great day, I have to get going!! Barry
Sep 19, 11 Comments Off
Good morning readers, I am waking up as tired as a person can be after one crazy, fast paced weekend, again!! Saturday night our friends Sal and Patty arrived safe and sound and once checking them into pick up their rental car and getting home it was Christmas in September!! Sal immediately started pulling out goodies he had bought for us and stuff I had ordered and had sent to him to bring, including more yummy Highlander Groog Coffee!! The next day Sal and Patty went with Aimee at 8:00 in the morning for a swim with the dolphins and I dressed up and took off on a fast two and a half hour bike ride around the North East tip of the island! I ended up getting home at a time when it was so hot and I was almost out of water, that will teach me to leave so late! My highlight of the ride was passing a large group of girls on their bikes, I went by them at Mach-10 and for all they know I was World Champion Bart Brentjens, hey it’s the little things in life that bring so much pleasure!! After that I took Sal and Patty to the Substation where they did a reef dive by them selves while I stayed inside preparing cameras for the busy night ahead. While Sal and Patty were diving I looked out and spotted Wild Dolphins in front of Royal Resorts and to my surprise a snorkeler was with them? Turns out Aimee had the best day of her whole life getting to swim and be with a pod of 50 Offshore Bottlenose for close to two hours! She said they were all around her and the closest one came within 6 feet!! When I saw this I bolted inside and grabbed a camera and rushed out to see them as well but by the time I got out and underwater they were gone or I scared them away with my scary camera?? Aimee exited the water with a permanent smile glued to her face and just ran up and gave me a big hug saying, “that was the coolest thing I ever experienced”!! I am so glad she got to do that!! I ended up doing two separate dives in search of the dolphins and I swam far offshore and far out to sea, I could hear them but never found them. After my dives I washed gear with Sal and Patty and we all went home for a nap, if I would not have taken an hour rest I never would have made it to coral spawning which started at 9:30.
So at 8:30 I met Aimee and our friend Eveline at Substation and we all worked hard at getting dive gear and cameras ready for the nights activities. We had to get all the gear from Substation to Sea Aquarium which required making a few trips with the cars and then pushing the rest of the stuff via carts to the entry exit area. We jumped in at 9:35 and off we went and almost immediately I found one colony of Star Coral that was already releasing it’s eggs but not worth shooting. At 10:12 we started seeing coral spawning almost everywhere and I mostly tried to get some close-ups of the eggs being pushed out but had a very hard time getting close enough because of the colonies being in such a hard area to get to. We looked and looked for brittle stars eating eggs but didn’t see a one and every fish I tried to shoot eating eggs just took off scared of the lights. I did get this fun shot of six bundles releasing gametes, The bundles are what everyone refers to as the “eggs”, they are the six big blobs in the photo. Inside each bundle are gametes, and as you can see there are lots of them and they are so tiny!! Each gamete contains a possible new coral colony, but most will never make it back to reef as they get eaten by just about everything but a few lucky ones will find a spot to settle on the reef and start growing.
I have to cut this short, I need to get to work! It is pouring outside right now most likely because I washed our car last night! Have a great week, more spawning photos tonight, Barry
Jul 10, 11 Comments Off
Good evening friends, how was your weekend?? Mine was finally relaxed, I spent both yesterday and today doing big dog walks in the mornings to make up for the lack of exercise last week and relaxing during the day. Today I went with our friend Christina to the West end of the island to a place called Wattamula. While out exploring the island on her own this week she found this cool place where there is a blow-hole in the rock along the coast and with every wave it shoots water high into the air, it was super cool. I’ll send a photo tomorrow.
Here is another really cool reef scene that most divers wouldn’t give a second look but I thought it was one of the best things I found on the dive. This is toppled over big colony of Pillar Coral, Dendrogyra cylindrus with new growth starting to take off. I’m guessing this fell many years ago by the looks of the old colony laying dead and sideways on the bottom of the reef. If you look closely there are other Pillar coral heads as well behind this one all starting to grow. I found this at Mushroom Forest or what’s left of Mushroom Forest, that reef is in serious trouble! If you can see in the background of this photo, all the once beautiful big mounds and colonies of Star coral are now completely dead and covered in some kind of yellow slime and algae!! I am asking all my local divers to just stay clear of this reef, it needs time to heal and really can’t with boat-loads of divers each day. I almost cried passing thru there, I did a photo shoot here about two and a half years ago and it was nothing like it is now. How did it suddenly get like this you ask?? Mainly from a few big storms we had that just covered the reef in sand and the worst year ever of coral bleaching. That’s why I was so glad to see the Pillar corals starting to come back, it’s something very positive but takes a long time to grow. There are other stony corals like the endangered Elkhorn and Staghorn that have the unique ability to regenerate new growth from fallen or broken pieces, the trick is the pieces must fall where they can not move and they must be touching some kind of rock or substrate.
Well, have a great evening or a wonderful Monday, be back soon, Barry
Jun 26, 11 Comments Off
Good evening friends, did you have a fun filled weekend?? I finally took a photo that friends have been asking me to send for years and that is, a close-up of the stinging hairs on Fire coral. Fire corals are colonial marine organisms that look like real coral however they are technically not corals; they are actually more closely related to jellyfish and other stinging anemones. They are members of the phylum Cnidaria, class Hydrozoa, order Capitata, family Milleporidae. Fire corals have a bright yellow-green and brown skeletal covering and are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical waters. They appear in small brush-like growths on rocks and coral. Divers often mistake fire coral for seaweed, and accidental contact is common. Upon contact, an intense pain can be felt that can last from two days to two weeks. The very small nematocysts on fire corals contain tentacles that protrude from numerous surface pores (similar to jellyfish stings). In addition, fire corals have a sharp, calcified external skeleton that can scrape the skin. Fire coral has several common growth forms; these include branching, plate and encrusting. Branching adopts a calcareous structure which branches off, to rounded finger-like tips. Plate adopts a shape similar to that of the smaller non-sheet lettuce corals; therefore erect, thin sheets, which group together to form a colony. The latter; “encrusting”, is where the fire coral forms on the calcareous structure of other coral or gorgonian structures. If your stung by this nasty stuff 1st rinse with seawater and avoid using fresh water because it will increase pain. I tell everyone keep the wound in seawater for as long as you can, it will help in the long run. 2nd, you can try to remove the tentacles with tweezers, but be warned they are so small and see-thru that you most likely won’t get them all! 3rd, immobilize the extremity because movement may cause the venom to spread and last apply hydrocortisone cream 2-3 times daily as needed for itching. Discontinue immediately if any signs of infection appear. Also be warned that the use of vinegar can cause even more damage! If your bound and determined to go this route you must dilute the vinegar with water or dilute with sea-water, that’s even better, 25% vinegar to 75% water. After a few hours of burning pain has passed we have tried ice-packs and it does seem to work, I think it’s different for everyone, take my advice, just stay away from it! I have been working on my Calabash trail all weekend, it’s just a plain mess! Saturday morning my buddy Stiyn helped for a few hours but today it was just me and the hound dogs. I was going to go riding tonight but a strong afternoon rainstorm came out of no where at the last minute and put an end to that, will have to go tomorrow now instead. Hope all is well out there, off to bed, Barry
Apr 28, 11 Comments Off
Good evening readers, as promised here is a before and up to date photos of the severe coral bleaching we experienced here in the Caribbean this year! The top photo was shot around the beginning of November last year and the bottom photo we took yesterday. The first thing I noticed yesterday while out re-shooting all these coral heads was that the corals are still not back to normal, they are still slightly bleached. The bottom coral should be completely dark but as you can see it still has a lot of light brown color, it’s healing, but ever so slowly. As I have said before, coral bleaching is the whitening of diverse invertebrate taxa, resulting from the loss of symbiotic zooxantheallae and/or a reduction in photosynthetic pigment concentrations in zooxanthellae residing within scleractinian corals. You may want to read that again, slower this time. Coral bleaching is caused by various anthropogenic and natural variations in the reef environment including sea temperature, solar irradiance, sedimentation, xenobiotics, subaerial exposure, inorganic nutrients, freshwater dilution, and epizootics. Coral bleaching events have been increasing in both frequency and extent worldwide in the past 20 years. Global climate change may play a role in the increase in coral bleaching events, and could cause the destruction of major reef tracts and the extinction of many coral species. I am personally really shocked at how long these corals are taking to heal, remember my big coral face?? I see that one everyday and it’s still only at around 75% back to normal, I will send you a shot of that one as well. Remember we can all do our part to help this global warming such as; recycle, car-pool, ride your bike to work, use less heat and air conditioning, change your old light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL), plant a tree, and encourage others to conserve, that’s just a few.
I have a ton to do this evening, thanks a million for all the comments! Bye now, Barry
Apr 27, 11 Comments Off
Hello from way down South! Curacao continues to warm up more and more everyday, I think it’s safe to say it’s going to be a dry year. This island is so strange, they get 3 months of rain during the winter and then the rest of the year can be very dry and everything that was green will soon turn brown. The remarkable thing is under the soon to be loose dry desert soil are seeds and grasses that just wait all year long for rain, and even though our desert can look dead at times most plants, trees and bushes just become dormant. The cactus here absorb and store as much water as they can for the dry months ahead. I remember years past here that even late in the summer the cactus looked like they were dying but amazingly with just one big rain most were able to regenerate, much like the corals that just went thru that terrible coral bleaching period.
Yesterday I did two nice dives with the camera and my beloved Nikon 105mm lens. This and the 60mm is one of the best macro lens on the planet and well worth every cent you will have to pay or if your lucky enough to have a friend you can borrow one from! I first took my new deep water hermit crab back out to the reef and photographed him and while out there found tons of new things I had never seen before in my own backyard. As I was shooting the hermit I found a baby octopus hiding in a little cave holding a sea shell and using it as his door to the cave, talk about cool, but didn’t have the right lens, I will go back and find him this morning. I found this beautiful Solitary Disk Coral, Scolymia Wellsi as seen in today’s photo and was the first time I had ever seen one like it! These disk corals are in the family Mussidae and are classified as Fleshy/Stony corals. They are a single, large, fleshy, circular to oval polyp with an underlying skeleton often evident in the form of raised radiating lines. They also have central area’s of coralite usually flat to somewhat concave, rarely convex. They can be found in darker shades of gray to brown, green, and blue-green; base color often radially streaked with lighter shades and some may even fluoresce. This is the smallest of the three disk coral species. Positive identification requires magnified examination of erect projections growing from the septa, called teeth. This species has rough, irregular, think, cylindrical teeth. Artichoke Coral has spike or pick-shaped teeth, and Atlantic Mushroom has large, triangular teeth.
I had a great mountain bike ride last night, the trails are super shape right now!! See ya, Barry
Feb 12, 11 Comments Off
Hi friends, how was your sacred Saturday?? Mine went by so fast, I really need a do-over on this day! I started the morning out super early almost “sleep-walking” with the dogs and yawning the whole time. And yes, there are days when even the World famous Highlander Groog coffee can’t wake a person up, today was one of those days. I was up late last night sitting here at my cyber throne getting a large batch of photos sent in the United States copyright office. This is no easy task but something we photographers now have to do to protect our works. I ended up getting into work at around 9:00 and kept very busy until our sub dive at 1:00. For once the water was pretty clear as you can see from the photo I took today below, it has been hazy for what seems like months now. The dive with the sub went really well and after waving good-bye to the lucky passengers I swam over to take my weekly photo of the progress on my Coral Face. You must go to this link below and see how it looked months ago compared to how it looks now, what a difference! I’ll wait while you go check it out. http://www.coralreefphotos.com/bleached-grooved-brain-coral-faces-in-nature/ It’s really great to see this giant head of grooved brain coral coming back from it’s severe case of coral bleaching, not all corals were this lucky!! I did notice today that a little damselfish has moved in and made a little damselfish garden out of the area where I am calling the eye and the back of his head so that’s not good, I will be keeping a close watch out for further damage.
I really can’t believe it’s 7:00pm, “POOF” my day is history! Hope tomorrow lasts a little longer, Barry
Feb 10, 11 Comment (1)
Good evening readers, here is a super cool ball of Giant Star coral that I found a few days ago on our fun night dive. This was a perfectly round ball with it’s polyps out feeding, during the day they are usually closed. During the day this coral is very plain and just looks like a bumpy mass but at night the show begins! The beautiful polyps open once the sun goes down and generally feed most of the night on passing planktons and seem to be more active on nights with current and murky water. If an octopus or a fish brush up against these open corals they will close instantly and re-open for business once they feel the coast is clear and if it’s still dark out. I have even noticed that just using my dive light for an extended period of time or repeated flash will also signal them to shut down, they are very sensitive.
Have to make this short tonight, still have lots to do before my Bonaire trip on the 16th. Please remember I will not be sending out the blog via e-mails but you can still see it online at www.coralreefphotos.com I will try my best to post it each day even if it it’s just a short hello.
Good night all, Barry
Jan 22, 11 Comments Off
Good morning all, it’s weekend time again! I first wanted to send another picture of the big Coral Face so you can see the progress it is making on a daily basis! Check out the other two links below to do your own comparison.
I think this is the first time we have ever spent so much time watching them and photographing the progress but it’s really cool. The water is getting more and more clear by the day and so far staying cool which is great for the corals, remember it’s the warm water that shocks them! We are still getting rain on and off as well but nothing like we have had, so a little is fine we just really don’t need any more major all night downpours!
Yesterday I stayed very busy all day working on photos and doing one dive with a friend from the Dolphin Academy Photoshop who may be able to help on the weekends with the sub, I guess we will find out today at 10:30 how he does.
Good news, our friend Bernard arrived safe and sound last night and right on time! It was again like Christmas in January as he pulled out bag after bag of our favorite Highlander coffee from our home town in Rapid City, South Dakota not to mention all the other stuff like goodies from Ikelite, a new lens, shirts from a friend in Tucson and other fun stuff from Rapid City, thank you all!! I am waiting till Aimee gets up to start the coffee so we can celebrate together, please stop in at Dark Canyon Coffee and just say hi to Lori for us and tell her how much we appreciate her sending this to us and try some for yourself. www.darkcanyon-coffee.com
Well, Bernard is still asleep, I am going to take the dogs for their walk and then see what he would like to do. I am guessing since he purchased a brand new Nikon D-90 that he will be wanting to learn how to drive it and I am up for that. The little puppy is doing well considering the shape she is in, will send a photo soon, bye all, Barry
Jan 16, 11 Comments Off
Good evening friends, that weekend sure flew by, I am sitting here trying hard to reflect on all I did and why it went so fast, maybe if I click my heels four times, close my eyes and say “there’s no place like home” I might be granted another day?? Yeah well, I always was a dreamer of sorts! I had another full day of activity starting with my long walk with the dogs. You know if we didn’t have dogs I definitely would not be hiking as much as I do now, they defiantly keep a person in shape! Upon getting home this morning it looked like we were in for one heck of a downpour but somehow it ended up going out to sea and we ended up not getting a drop, fine by me! I worked on the computer a lot today mostly getting photos ready to be sent to the United States Copyright Office. Yes all photos I take including the one below will eventually be sent in for copyright protection, that way if anyone out there in cyber-land steals a photo I have legal means to do something about it, cool huh? During my break today I went to visit the glass beach and brought home a small cooler full in about an hours time, we now have around 300 lbs of beach glass and our goal is 1000! At 3:33 to be exact I took off on a fast hour and a half bike ride thru the wilds of Curacao! Those of you who know me know how much I hate riding on the road as it’s so boring so I spent the whole ride going from one trail to another, the rougher the better, it’s why we call it “white knuckle riding”!
Here is yet another very cool progress photo of how the coral bleaching is getting better here in Curacao. If you missed the first photo and story of when this chunk of beautiful Grooved Brain Coral was solid white go to the link below and first see how it looked a few weeks ago, it’s really starting to come back. The brown patches you see are nice fresh live coral and hopefully real soon it will be completely brown and back to normal thanks to these great cooler water temperatures we are experiencing now! http://www.coralreefphotos.com/brain-coral-bleaching-coral-bleaching-curacao/
Aimee is making authentic red enchiladas upstairs and they smell great, gotta go, Barry
Jan 2, 11 Comments Off
Good evening all, here is a progress photo of the coral bleaching for you all this evening. On November 18th, I sent you this same photo except then it was completely bleached! First check it out at the link below so you can see the difference. http://www.coralreefphotos.com/bleached-grooved-brain-coral-faces-in-nature/ Now as you can see it’s starting to come back to life with small patches of brown all over. As I have said before Coral Bleaching, or the paling of zooxanthellate invertebrates, occurs when the densities of zooxanthellae decline and or the concentration of photosynthetic pigments within the zooxanthellae fall. When corals bleach they commonly lose 60-90% of their zooxanthellae and each zooxanthella may lose 50-80% of its photosynthetic pigments. The pale appearance of bleached scleractinian corals and hydrocorals is due to the cnidarian’s calcareous skeleton showing through the translucent tissues (that are nearly devoid of pigmented zooxanthellae). If the stress-causing bleaching is not too severe and if it decreases in time, the affected corals usually regain their symbiotic algae within several weeks or a few months. If zooxanthellae loss is prolonged, i.e. if the stress continues and depleted zooxanthellae populations do not recover, the coral host eventually dies . This boulder of grooved brain coral which I have named “my big happy coral face” is so far doing great on the road to recovery. I have photographed this coral head almost every day since November 18th and will continue to do so until it is completely back to normal so stay tuned for more.
I had a better day than yesterday. I first took my super cool dogs for a two hour adventure. I ended up spending around 30 minutes repairing my bridge I had made a month ago, it’s still standing and doing what it was built for, I just had to add a whole lot of more big rocks today. I also went to the glass beach and went for an hour and half bike ride, so at least I feel like I accomplished a bit more than yesterday! That’s about it, see you again tomorrow, 2011 here we come!! Barry
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