Night Diving for Coral Colonies with SECORE International

Coral colonies provide food and shelter for thousands of fish and invertebrate species in the Caribbean. Their presence is vital, and Shedd—as a leader in conservation and research—is committed to helping restore these crucial yet dwindling populations.

SECORE International is an international organization that started in 2002 based on the coral reproduction research of Dr. Dirk Petersen at the Rotterdam Zoo. It has grown to work with more than 60 supporting partners like Shedd all over the world.

At the project’s inception, the SECORE International team focused its efforts on two of the most important reef-building corals in the Caribbean: staghorn and elkhorn corals (Acropora cervicornis and A. palmata). Both species are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and they were the first critically endangered coral species on the IUCN Red List, an internationally recognized inventory of species at risk of extinction.

After much experimentation with coral-rearing techniques, the group celebrated a big victory in 2016: One of the elkhorn corals that was outplanted to a reef spawned for the first time, confirming that SECORE International’s method could help restore reefs.

Over the last decade the SECORE International team has gathered enough knowledge about elkhorn coral to determine within a few days when these wild corals will spawn. This enables the team to head to the island a week in advance to prepare. As the predicted spawn time approaches, the group begins diving on the reefs and waiting for the big event. In the wake of a strange warming/cooling period that caused some corals to bleach, the team waited longer than anticipated in 2017.

The coral finally started spawning on night nine after the full moon. Shedd expert Keoki Burtonwas in Curaçao with the SECORE International team, ready to swim into action under the waves. “What we’re doing is scanning the reef,” Keoki says, “seeing who’s ‘staging,’ which means the bundles start to bubble up on the coral columns. Once you see that, you cover the coral in a big bag that feeds up to a collection bottle and zip it shut with a bungee cord. All of those sperm-and-egg bundles float up to the top of the bag and collect right into the bottle. Then you just cap it off, put it on your belt and move on to the next colony.” The SECORE International team only collects a portion of the total spawn, allowing some of the corals to spawn naturally.

The swimming is tough going, given the amount of gear each team member is carrying. “It’s a lot of swimming against currents, trying to navigate your way in the dark underwater,” Keoki says. “We’re carrying all this equipment, dragging these giant sacks of nets that you always want to take off because of the current, plus two flashlights. It’s definitely a labor of love.”

Out of the two target species of coral, only elkhorn spawned. Staghorn corals didn’t go off as the team had hoped. Dive teams at other sites around the Caribbean were successful in collecting staghorn bundles.

With the elkhorn coral, the Curaçao team achieved a 95 percent fertilization rate. The team tried a new method to settle the larvae this year. As in past years, the collected bundles were rushed to a lab for fertilization, but this year the team also attempted to fertilize some of them right on the beach.

Keoki continues, “A brilliant idea that Shedd’s coral expert, Mark Schick, and the rest of the SECORE International team had was to set up pools right there on the beach and allow the larvae to settle in their natural water chemistry instead of moving them to an offshore laboratory. So we were right there on the shore in our wetsuits and gear, and we fertilized the bundles on the beach and immediately threw those newly developing embryos into the pools to settle on the tiles.”

The tiles are tetrapod structures that are covered in grooves for the larvae to settle in. Once the larvae do settle, the tiles are thrown back out over the reef. “We can throw them out like sowing a field,” Keoki says. “These tiles are still a topic of discussion, regarding their effectiveness, but we’ve had some trials that did really well and some where they never hook into the reef. So far, though, it looks like it worked fantastically.”

The team produced more than 600 tetrapod tiles with about 23 settling larvae on each. The tiles were outplanted across 10 healthy reef sites, and preliminary observations indicate high survival rates. Better yet, some tiles have already developed small colonies, which are the first steps to building a healthier reef.

―Katie Antonsson