Coral Conservation Project
The Coral Reef Conservation Project will assess how a number of common local stressors (e.g., pollution, sedimentation) negatively impact the health of coral. This project will go on from exhibition to the end of the year and hopefully for the next 11th grade class. For this project we've been working with QuikScience to make videos, research papers, lesson plans and services. The project began within the first 4 weeks of school so we can be prepared for the upcoming assignment. The first thing we needed to do was make the tank racks. Our first prototype was made out of fiber glass, then we started our second prototype, which ended up becoming our final product. The material we used for the final draft of the racks were made out of Steel, then we welded the metal bars together to for the racks, then we added our lights, the tank itself (that was donated to us), then we applied our sump, and air filter to the rack. The sump was made out of a 5 gallon bucket we got from Home Depot.
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Light High: How Does High Amounts of Light Affect Coral Mass
Authors: Isabella Flynn, Jaden Alston, Mitchel Hooper, and Zack Purdy
Abstract:
Coral is an animal that also constructs of a rock like skeleton and has algae inside of it. We are studying different environmental stressors so we can stop the disappearance of coral reefs our specific group was assigned to study what would happen when a high amount of light is shone on the coral reef we are observing. Coral provides more than 25% of marine life with somewhere to live. Photosynthesis is essential in order for the coral to survive in its environment. The zooxanthellae that photosynthesise also provide the color for the corals.
Introduction:
Coral reefs are essential to human life. They Provide a safe habitat to many different type of fish, coral reefs provide more than 25% of marine life with somewhere to live. Reefs supply humans a place to hunt for fish therefore providing a food source. They also are very important to medicine, since coral is an animal that doesn’t move around they have evolved defences against disease and infections. Humans are also able to use these chemicals to help combat different things such as cancer, heart disease, and arthritis. Coral reefs are also staggeringly beautiful and provide a lot of tourism to many places which means a lot of money for them.
Corals from Birch aquarium walk through.
(Photo from High Tech High North County (HTHNC))
What is a coral? A coral is an animal that constructs a rock like skeleton and has algae inside of it, which gives the coral its colors. The corals animal feature is its individual polyps that form a skin on the skeleton each of theses polyps is a different animal so there for a large piece of coral is actually a bunch of different animals living together in a colony. These polyps can feed using their tentacles by pulling food into their mouth. The skeleton that the corals put down is a calcium carbonate structure. This calcium carbonate skeleton grows underneath the corals and expands by laying more and more calcium carbonate down underneath and then adding more polyps to the the outside to form the skin. The algae that is found in coral is zooxanthellae, which has a symbiotic relationship with the coral. The ideal climate for the coral is tropical waters where the water is clearer than most waters which means there's less sediment in the water so the coral can not feed heterotrophically and has to use the sugars produced by the algae through photosynthesis, which is the use of light to create food. The zooxanthellae also provide the color for the corals.
Coral tank at Birch aquarium (Photo from HTHNC)
There are many factors that affect coral and the experiment that the light high group will be conducting will be to subject the corals to a high amount of light and see how that will affect their growth. The way that light can affect coral is by raising water temperature or lowering the temperature. If the temperature is too high for the coral bleaching may occur which means the the zooxanthellae algae leave the coral which then causes the loss of color and leaves the coral with no way of getting optimal nutrients for growth which may result in death if the temperature is too low the coral will die, the temperature that is set in the experiment is about 80 degrees fahrenheit. The light also affects coral through the zooxanthellae algae; if the algae do not get enough light they can not produce enough food for the corals which will result in the coral dieing, some species of coral are much better at feeding without photosynthesis but others rely almost exclusively on the symbiotic relationship between the coral and the zooxanthellae algae.
Authors: Isabella Flynn, Jaden Alston, Mitchel Hooper, and Zack Purdy
Abstract:
Coral is an animal that also constructs of a rock like skeleton and has algae inside of it. We are studying different environmental stressors so we can stop the disappearance of coral reefs our specific group was assigned to study what would happen when a high amount of light is shone on the coral reef we are observing. Coral provides more than 25% of marine life with somewhere to live. Photosynthesis is essential in order for the coral to survive in its environment. The zooxanthellae that photosynthesise also provide the color for the corals.
Introduction:
Coral reefs are essential to human life. They Provide a safe habitat to many different type of fish, coral reefs provide more than 25% of marine life with somewhere to live. Reefs supply humans a place to hunt for fish therefore providing a food source. They also are very important to medicine, since coral is an animal that doesn’t move around they have evolved defences against disease and infections. Humans are also able to use these chemicals to help combat different things such as cancer, heart disease, and arthritis. Coral reefs are also staggeringly beautiful and provide a lot of tourism to many places which means a lot of money for them.
Corals from Birch aquarium walk through.
(Photo from High Tech High North County (HTHNC))
What is a coral? A coral is an animal that constructs a rock like skeleton and has algae inside of it, which gives the coral its colors. The corals animal feature is its individual polyps that form a skin on the skeleton each of theses polyps is a different animal so there for a large piece of coral is actually a bunch of different animals living together in a colony. These polyps can feed using their tentacles by pulling food into their mouth. The skeleton that the corals put down is a calcium carbonate structure. This calcium carbonate skeleton grows underneath the corals and expands by laying more and more calcium carbonate down underneath and then adding more polyps to the the outside to form the skin. The algae that is found in coral is zooxanthellae, which has a symbiotic relationship with the coral. The ideal climate for the coral is tropical waters where the water is clearer than most waters which means there's less sediment in the water so the coral can not feed heterotrophically and has to use the sugars produced by the algae through photosynthesis, which is the use of light to create food. The zooxanthellae also provide the color for the corals.
Coral tank at Birch aquarium (Photo from HTHNC)
There are many factors that affect coral and the experiment that the light high group will be conducting will be to subject the corals to a high amount of light and see how that will affect their growth. The way that light can affect coral is by raising water temperature or lowering the temperature. If the temperature is too high for the coral bleaching may occur which means the the zooxanthellae algae leave the coral which then causes the loss of color and leaves the coral with no way of getting optimal nutrients for growth which may result in death if the temperature is too low the coral will die, the temperature that is set in the experiment is about 80 degrees fahrenheit. The light also affects coral through the zooxanthellae algae; if the algae do not get enough light they can not produce enough food for the corals which will result in the coral dieing, some species of coral are much better at feeding without photosynthesis but others rely almost exclusively on the symbiotic relationship between the coral and the zooxanthellae algae.
Exhibition role:
For exhibition, I was a docent, a QuikScience promoter, and a promoter for my coral tank. For my group, I helped build our R.O.V, made our group video, conducted an interview, and helped with the research paper. As a docent, my job was to show people around our exhibition and discuss on what we learned in the 4 months of work that went into exhibition. As a QuikScience promoter, when people walked on by to see the QuikScience poster we had on the wall, I would tell them about the QuikScience competition. As a promoter for my tank, when people walked by my tank I would show them what we built, the coral in our tank, and what our research was on and why we were doing the project in the first place. For my part in our groups partake in the project, I helped do the interview. For the interview we had to find someone that has a field experience in working with coral, so I called up the Maui Ocean Center in Maui and spoke with a woman named Eden, so me and Isabella asked her some questions about her job and how we can get other people to get involved in saving corals. For the video I talked about at the top of the page. For the research paper I sited all of our sites we used in our research. Some skills I used for this project are communication and time management.
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Maui ocean center- Eden December 7th,2012
1st Question: Why do you think your work is beneficial to coral in any way?
The work we do here is Coral World International, they really started the innovative process of rehabbing coral. And why its important is because in different parts of the world, they are able to transplant fragmented pieces of coral back out to the reef, therefore continuing their life and allowing them to grow out in the wild. Here locally in Maui we are part of a really special program, the state of Hawaii asked us to partner with them because we were going to have local pears be destroyed to rebuild pears for boats to come in. What they asked us to do is to come in and actually remove the coral pieces that were living there and bring them back to our facilities and basicly babysit them for about a year until the new pear is built. Its important because we are saving existing coral and giving them a fighting chance to get back out to the wild and continue to thrive and reproduce. This becomes a small part of helping the reef out there. Here in our facilities we have live coral which is pretty unique for aquariums, they usually have fake coral or other structures for them. But what I think is important is in education department our folks are able to explain to people what coral really is and show them first hand how its really an animal and explain how beneficial coral reefs are to our existence, getting the word out and conservation methods I think allows us in many ways to help the coral.
2nd Question: Is your work helping the coral in any way?
Yes, I think getting the message out there about what it is, why its important is a big help because allot of people don’t understand why coral is important and why the coral reefs is so important to all ecosystems, to allot of our success on land too, I think its important in that way. In the territorial department we are physically taking care of the coral, feeding it, cleaning the tanks that there in, removing any algae that has grown over it things like that.
3rd Question: Do you think if you get the message out to our future generations that it can help them?
Yes! Because I think once people understand something and can see it and experience it and begin to appreciate it, then they want to protect it and getting the word out and why its important and what they can do to protect it I think is key for the protection of it.
4th question: What else do you need to accomplish for your work for it to be beneficial? How do you care for the coral?
The coral itself we have a special permit we operate under for thats in the state of Hawaii and so we are allowed to collect a certain amount of live coral. So you can do that just by chipping off the base of it with a hammer and chisel and then attaching it to some kind of hard substrate like underwater cement or golf tees and are relatively inexpensive, or even make a stand out of recycled materials like different pieces of plastic. So theres a lot of ways to set up your tank, of course you need a tank. Here we have the luxury of having our water being pumped in straight from the ocean and we have a filtration that makes sure there are no contaminants or itchy that would get in. That allows the coral to thrive as well, the same temperature of the ocean water and chemistry. And also you need the right lighting, so out in the wild coral animal itself is fed by a algae that lives inside its tissue. And that algae needs to photosynthesise, so it needs that sun energy in order to produce the energy to feed the coral. Here obviously were in doors and don’t have the sunlight, so we have to replicate that with different lighting in here. It can be accomplished through different ways, LED lighting, fluorescent lighting, metal halide lights, a particular wave length the coral really seem to like is the Blue wavelengths and they seem to be really successful under that, so you have to make sure you got that light down than what they would normally have out there in the wild, so you need all those little resources to care for them.
5th Question: Now do each specific coral need a specific kind of lighting, or can they all use the same type of lighting?
For the most part you can use similar lighting, but again it's kind of the experimental to see which ones do better under a certain lighting and the intensity, you don't want the light too close to the water and overheat the coral or even burn them a little bit. But for the most part all our reef building corals do really well with similar lights.
6th Question: Do you think that because you have water coming straight in from the ocean you have more of an advantage?
I do, I think there is an advantage to that. Because when you are having to make your own salt water there is that delicate balance of all the chemistry that goes into it and the balancing is making sure its not too salty or too much fresh water in there and so the fact we just have natural ocean water is really helpful.
7th Question: Why is your job important to the coral? Can you go into a brief description of what you do exactly?
Here at the aquarium, what I do is I am responsible for mainly the reef building that houses our reefs animals and the majority of the coal we have at our facility. I'm responsible for doing the tank maintenance, thats basicly removing the algae every day from the windows and the walls. You want to make sure that there is nothing covering the coral themselves, because again they need to photosynthesise and if algae is growing on the outside of it that can actually block it, if any sand or debris has gotten on the coral you have to brush that away and keep it free and clear so it can continue to thrive in there. We are also responsible for feeding all the animals, that does include the coral and we do that about three times a week. WIth a mixture of oysters and spirulina and shrimp can go in there, so its a little concoction of what we feed them.
8th Question: Is there anyone in your field thats action is towards coral conservation?
Here at our facility we don’t have a key person thats designated to that, however all of us are passionate about that subject and do our own on our own time and do to make effort to spread the word about coral conservation. Now our paired company Coral International they definitely get the word out there about coral conservation. The state of Hawaii has a position that's just deals with coral and its there job to do trainings and teach people to recognize coral diseases, identify a crodation and a disease, other animals on the reef that may be harmful like crown of thorns and and seastar. Which one or two is fine but when you have an outbreak of a thousand they actually eat the coral and can really devastate a reef. So governments I know have people that are particularly focused just on that.
9th Question: If one of your corals ends up getting sick, what is it that you do so that it doesn't spread and affect the other coral?
Sometimes there are some certain things you can do, and sometimes there isn't anything you can do. When there is tissue loss on the coral, you can actually use neosporin depending on the situation believe it or not at the edge of the tissue loss and that will prevent it from spreading. But you have to be careful it doesn't get on the live coral tissue because that will then suffocate those animals. The reef building corals live in colonies, it takes one polyp to land on something hard and reproduce A sexually and clone itself, so its this whole colonie connected by this tissue and thats how they share the nutrients. So you can stop that tissue loss and save the colonie. We can also remove it and put it in a separate tank, make sure we are watching the water qualities and the lighting and that might be a situation where we need to switch the lighting for them and can be too high or too low. Coral is a resilient animal. Temperature is a stressor for coral.
10th Question: How did you get into your job that you are into today?
I have a bachelor's degree in communications, then did another career for a while and have always been passionate about the ocean. So I decided to move out to Maui to pursue and started taking classes for a minor in marine sciences and was able to get that and actually started out in the education department here. So I was on the outside of the exhibit and was answering peoples questions and volunteered at many organizations, interned, did whatever I could to gain that knowledge about our local marine life and eventually when there was a opening the back I was able to get that job.
11th Question: Do you think future generations will be as interested if you keep promoting coral and they will want the job you have?
I hope so, one of our goals is to really inspire people and I think people are becoming aware. The ocean really is our lifeline, water is what makes this planet “it” if you will. So this is where most of the life is or comes from. I think people are more aware, it seems like students are more award and not as afraid to approach this job.
12th Question: Where did you study for your bachelor's degree?
Colorado Christian University and my minor I got from the University of Hawaii, Maui College.
13th Question: Do you think life outside of the ocean affect coral?
Absolutely! Its all connected that's effecting our ecosystems, weather its on land or in the ocean. What we do on land absolutely effects what goes on in the ocean, and a big hot topic now is ocean acidification. The ocean has acted as a buffer, absorbing all the oil and driving all the cars things like that. The ph scale, the ocean is getting overwhelmed and is acidifying and that is hurting the coral because how they built their structure is threw a calcium carbonate. the acidification is making it weak and thats effecting any animal that uses calcium carbonate. Clams, mussels are getting weak and have less of a chance to reproduce and grow. The little things we can do is what can make a difference. (California academy of the sciences)
14th Question: For people like us, trying to preserve them. What can we do to educate others?
Get people to understand and appreciate it, once they appreciate it they are more willing to protect it. Really how cool they are, make it in a fun way, make them provide something for us. Coral is a natural storm barrier and helps the economy grows and give them a what's in it for me.
Maui ocean center- Eden December 7th,2012
1st Question: Why do you think your work is beneficial to coral in any way?
The work we do here is Coral World International, they really started the innovative process of rehabbing coral. And why its important is because in different parts of the world, they are able to transplant fragmented pieces of coral back out to the reef, therefore continuing their life and allowing them to grow out in the wild. Here locally in Maui we are part of a really special program, the state of Hawaii asked us to partner with them because we were going to have local pears be destroyed to rebuild pears for boats to come in. What they asked us to do is to come in and actually remove the coral pieces that were living there and bring them back to our facilities and basicly babysit them for about a year until the new pear is built. Its important because we are saving existing coral and giving them a fighting chance to get back out to the wild and continue to thrive and reproduce. This becomes a small part of helping the reef out there. Here in our facilities we have live coral which is pretty unique for aquariums, they usually have fake coral or other structures for them. But what I think is important is in education department our folks are able to explain to people what coral really is and show them first hand how its really an animal and explain how beneficial coral reefs are to our existence, getting the word out and conservation methods I think allows us in many ways to help the coral.
2nd Question: Is your work helping the coral in any way?
Yes, I think getting the message out there about what it is, why its important is a big help because allot of people don’t understand why coral is important and why the coral reefs is so important to all ecosystems, to allot of our success on land too, I think its important in that way. In the territorial department we are physically taking care of the coral, feeding it, cleaning the tanks that there in, removing any algae that has grown over it things like that.
3rd Question: Do you think if you get the message out to our future generations that it can help them?
Yes! Because I think once people understand something and can see it and experience it and begin to appreciate it, then they want to protect it and getting the word out and why its important and what they can do to protect it I think is key for the protection of it.
4th question: What else do you need to accomplish for your work for it to be beneficial? How do you care for the coral?
The coral itself we have a special permit we operate under for thats in the state of Hawaii and so we are allowed to collect a certain amount of live coral. So you can do that just by chipping off the base of it with a hammer and chisel and then attaching it to some kind of hard substrate like underwater cement or golf tees and are relatively inexpensive, or even make a stand out of recycled materials like different pieces of plastic. So theres a lot of ways to set up your tank, of course you need a tank. Here we have the luxury of having our water being pumped in straight from the ocean and we have a filtration that makes sure there are no contaminants or itchy that would get in. That allows the coral to thrive as well, the same temperature of the ocean water and chemistry. And also you need the right lighting, so out in the wild coral animal itself is fed by a algae that lives inside its tissue. And that algae needs to photosynthesise, so it needs that sun energy in order to produce the energy to feed the coral. Here obviously were in doors and don’t have the sunlight, so we have to replicate that with different lighting in here. It can be accomplished through different ways, LED lighting, fluorescent lighting, metal halide lights, a particular wave length the coral really seem to like is the Blue wavelengths and they seem to be really successful under that, so you have to make sure you got that light down than what they would normally have out there in the wild, so you need all those little resources to care for them.
5th Question: Now do each specific coral need a specific kind of lighting, or can they all use the same type of lighting?
For the most part you can use similar lighting, but again it's kind of the experimental to see which ones do better under a certain lighting and the intensity, you don't want the light too close to the water and overheat the coral or even burn them a little bit. But for the most part all our reef building corals do really well with similar lights.
6th Question: Do you think that because you have water coming straight in from the ocean you have more of an advantage?
I do, I think there is an advantage to that. Because when you are having to make your own salt water there is that delicate balance of all the chemistry that goes into it and the balancing is making sure its not too salty or too much fresh water in there and so the fact we just have natural ocean water is really helpful.
7th Question: Why is your job important to the coral? Can you go into a brief description of what you do exactly?
Here at the aquarium, what I do is I am responsible for mainly the reef building that houses our reefs animals and the majority of the coal we have at our facility. I'm responsible for doing the tank maintenance, thats basicly removing the algae every day from the windows and the walls. You want to make sure that there is nothing covering the coral themselves, because again they need to photosynthesise and if algae is growing on the outside of it that can actually block it, if any sand or debris has gotten on the coral you have to brush that away and keep it free and clear so it can continue to thrive in there. We are also responsible for feeding all the animals, that does include the coral and we do that about three times a week. WIth a mixture of oysters and spirulina and shrimp can go in there, so its a little concoction of what we feed them.
8th Question: Is there anyone in your field thats action is towards coral conservation?
Here at our facility we don’t have a key person thats designated to that, however all of us are passionate about that subject and do our own on our own time and do to make effort to spread the word about coral conservation. Now our paired company Coral International they definitely get the word out there about coral conservation. The state of Hawaii has a position that's just deals with coral and its there job to do trainings and teach people to recognize coral diseases, identify a crodation and a disease, other animals on the reef that may be harmful like crown of thorns and and seastar. Which one or two is fine but when you have an outbreak of a thousand they actually eat the coral and can really devastate a reef. So governments I know have people that are particularly focused just on that.
9th Question: If one of your corals ends up getting sick, what is it that you do so that it doesn't spread and affect the other coral?
Sometimes there are some certain things you can do, and sometimes there isn't anything you can do. When there is tissue loss on the coral, you can actually use neosporin depending on the situation believe it or not at the edge of the tissue loss and that will prevent it from spreading. But you have to be careful it doesn't get on the live coral tissue because that will then suffocate those animals. The reef building corals live in colonies, it takes one polyp to land on something hard and reproduce A sexually and clone itself, so its this whole colonie connected by this tissue and thats how they share the nutrients. So you can stop that tissue loss and save the colonie. We can also remove it and put it in a separate tank, make sure we are watching the water qualities and the lighting and that might be a situation where we need to switch the lighting for them and can be too high or too low. Coral is a resilient animal. Temperature is a stressor for coral.
10th Question: How did you get into your job that you are into today?
I have a bachelor's degree in communications, then did another career for a while and have always been passionate about the ocean. So I decided to move out to Maui to pursue and started taking classes for a minor in marine sciences and was able to get that and actually started out in the education department here. So I was on the outside of the exhibit and was answering peoples questions and volunteered at many organizations, interned, did whatever I could to gain that knowledge about our local marine life and eventually when there was a opening the back I was able to get that job.
11th Question: Do you think future generations will be as interested if you keep promoting coral and they will want the job you have?
I hope so, one of our goals is to really inspire people and I think people are becoming aware. The ocean really is our lifeline, water is what makes this planet “it” if you will. So this is where most of the life is or comes from. I think people are more aware, it seems like students are more award and not as afraid to approach this job.
12th Question: Where did you study for your bachelor's degree?
Colorado Christian University and my minor I got from the University of Hawaii, Maui College.
13th Question: Do you think life outside of the ocean affect coral?
Absolutely! Its all connected that's effecting our ecosystems, weather its on land or in the ocean. What we do on land absolutely effects what goes on in the ocean, and a big hot topic now is ocean acidification. The ocean has acted as a buffer, absorbing all the oil and driving all the cars things like that. The ph scale, the ocean is getting overwhelmed and is acidifying and that is hurting the coral because how they built their structure is threw a calcium carbonate. the acidification is making it weak and thats effecting any animal that uses calcium carbonate. Clams, mussels are getting weak and have less of a chance to reproduce and grow. The little things we can do is what can make a difference. (California academy of the sciences)
14th Question: For people like us, trying to preserve them. What can we do to educate others?
Get people to understand and appreciate it, once they appreciate it they are more willing to protect it. Really how cool they are, make it in a fun way, make them provide something for us. Coral is a natural storm barrier and helps the economy grows and give them a what's in it for me.
reflection
The moment that summed up exhibition for me was when we finished the R.O.V's, I think that not only did we have coral's for our tanks but I think the R.O.V's were a huge part in exhibition, and to see them finished and operational is a huge success to our work. We use R.O.V's for stuff like this, when the tough gets tough, the R.O.V is on its way to do our job for us. What I did for this project, was the video for our group, the interview I conducted, the R.O.V for our group, and I helped build the tank rack plus the sump for our tank. One significant thing that happened during exhibition was when I showed around Isaac’s family around, his older brother is a school director in Germany, and her mom is a retired principal, his younger brother is also a teacher here in San Diego county. Isaac introduced to me his brother and his mother, and they asked my to show them around the exhibition. Isaac’s brother seem really intrigued with what we had to show for our months of hard work. He was taking pictures of all of our equipment, R.O.V’s, our tanks and everything! I asked him if he was using the pictures for something and he said we’re giving him inspiration for something he can do at his school in Germany. I felt really good about what I was doing then, because our work is something he can use for his German children. I thought it was really cool! His mom seemed interested to learn in what we were doing so I explained everything in little bit of detail so she could understand what it was we were doing. She really loved the R.O.V’s I think, because she was asking me a lot of questions about them like “where did you get these? Who donated them to you?” and when I told her we made them her face lit up like a light bulb! Then I showed them the tanks, they were impressed on how our sump tanks really drew their attention. At this point they wanted to go off and do their own thing. They then thanked me and told me I was doing an amazing job at my work. I was stoked! So that's why significant experience at exhibition. One thing that I learned during this project is time management, like for example I had a lot of work to get done for one class, but we had to get our research paper done by the end of the day when the assignment was originally due, so I did a little of the other work, then a little of the research paper, then back and forth back and forth. Another thing I learned was to control my anger, when I get stressed easily I tend to get really angry at my work and my classmates over the smallest things because of how much stress I bring into the class. A transferable skill I can use in class is communication, I didn't do much communication towards my teachers or my peers lately, I just didn't care about the work at first because of whatever stress I had, so I would automatically shut down and not do anything. But then eventually, when I was calm enough I would ask the kids at my table and ask them what it is we need to get done so that I can still get the grade I was trying to work towards. So I learned that communication is the best asset for me when it comes to getting work done. Even though this project had it's ups and downs, it was still a huge accomplishment to the 1st semester, and will soon be an even greater achievement in the upcoming semester.