A short story about corals #3

Deep-sea corals

Dear faithful (or new) reader,
Relax and seat comfortably, it’s time to chill for a while.

Imagine one minute, you are in a nice lagoon, you just finished to drink your fresh coconut cocktail and you decide to go for a swim in the warm water. The sun is hot, you can hear the tropical birds from the island singing in the jungle far away. You have your mask, your snorkel and you start to nicely swim until you get to the reef. You calmly put your head underwater and the magic happens. Structure of incredible architecture and complexity appear, with colour you never suspected the existence, and graceful living forms flying around them. The wonderful ballet of colours stuns you for a while and you have to take back your respiration at the surface, but more by the emotion caused by the surprisingly beauty of this underwater world than from the real need of breathing.

Now will you believe me if I tell you similar paradise exists in the deep water of the ocean with temperature closes to -1° C. I know it sounds less attractive for you but let’s travel up to 6000m under the Ocean surface. Here the light is absent, it’s surprisingly peaceful and quiet. If you light up the place you will see that the cold-water reef doesn’t have to blush in front of his tropical homologue. The diversity of corals species is abundant and if you have followed the previous “short story about corals”, a question should be coming to your mind right now!

The amazing diversity of deep-sea coral reefs

How those corals can survive without sun light? Well, first I must tell you that we don’t  know so many things about deep water corals yet, even if Science is looking at them minutely now. Probably because most scientists prefer to study in a paradisiac place than in the freezing water of the continental shelve… and I am not really in the good position to criticize that.

So, the deep-water corals do not require zooxanthellae to survive in the dark Ocean. They are often orientated in the direction of the current flow and in areas with high current speed. It’s not hazardous, indeed, as a sessile organism, he fed on planktons. Each individual can contain thousands of polyps. When the tentacles are out, if for example a fish larvae wandering in the current touch just once the tentacle, a violent poison is then inoculated in the larvae via specialized cells called nematocysts (Exactly like the jellyfish who is going to sting you this summer). Dinner is ready!
 They are incredibly diverse and old! Yes, old is the correct word. Those fellas can reach more than thousand years old. In Hawaii, researchers showed that a colony of Leiopathes sp. was around 4 265 years old. And it’s not finished! Our dear human in white coats also found that due to the constant regeneration of the polyps some deep-sea corals colonies were still growing after 40 000 years old of existence! When you are that old it’s a sign that you are really though, and if you are though it can be really interesting for us.

 Do you see it coming reader?
The deep-sea corals are a huge interest in medicine. Indeed, some organisms who live among the corals have fascinating chemical compounds with anti-viral, anti-inflammatory and even anti-tumor properties. Maybe the problem of cancer could be solved by looking in our deep cold water. And who knows how many secrets that we can use are hiding the deep-sea corals?

But you know Humans, right? They are able destroy things they don’t even know and that can bring a lot to them. So, worldwide the deep-see corals reefs are already endangered, threatened mainly by the deep sea trawling: a technic that we should seriously banned in all the oceans (it was finally banned in Europe last year, yippee), also oil and gas exploration and are two villains from the previous episode: Global warming and ocean acidification.

A deep reef after a trawling

How can we destroy natural structure old of thousands of years full of knowledge in a second?

“It’s a sad thing to think that nature speaks and mankind does not listen” Victor Hugo

Talk to you soon again!

Léopold

If you are more interested by deep sea corals here a really good website where I find my infos: 
-Lophelia.org
-http://ocean.si.edu/deep-sea-corals

Sources images :
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cache ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fdf%2F09%2Fa3%2Fdf09a319ed1df4e5747f05f45ee0bb75.jpg&f=1

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsafinacenter.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Ftrawled-coral-reef-NOAA.jpg&f=1

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A short story about corals #1

Image
Bonzour everyone, My name is Léopold and I’m the new intern in the Coral nurseries project at Le Méridien Fisherman’s Cove. I’m 22 years old and I’m doing my internship with the Marine Conservation Society in Seychelles (MCSS) for my master of “Marine Biodiversity and Conservation”. I first worked on the terrapins trapping in the South of Mahé and I joined the coral project last week.  I have to say that it’s really nice to be in Seychelles and to participate in this project. I used to be a scientific mediator in the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco during the Summer period. I remembered that it’s there, I really start to be fascinated by corals. The corals occupy less than 1% of the Ocean and they are still the host of approximately 25% of the marine worldwide biodiversity.  In a simple word, coral reefs are the underwater equivalent of the tropical rainforests. A true hotspot of biodiversity ! At first sight for most of the people they just look like a strange colorful rock
Read more

Happy 20th Anniversary to MCSS and ... Coral growing tanks opening!

Image
The 26th September was the celebration of MCSS' 20 years of work from whale sharks, sea turtles, beach erosion, marine mammals, wetlands and terrapins to coral reefs ! David and the five current project leaders (Inga Petelski, Savinien Leblond, Alessia Bacchi, Vanessa Didon and Chloé Pozas-Schacre)  gave a talk remembering all the various projects undertaken by the NGO since and presenting the on-going work.  This anniversary was celebrated at Le Méridien Fisherman's cove as this special day was also the opening of the first ex-situ coral nurseries in Seychelles.  David going through 20 years of work by MCSS Inauguration of the coral growing tanks in the presence of the Minister of the Environment, Energy and Climate change All the MCSS current project leaders, interns and volunteers Two coral growing tanks have been set-up next to the snorkeling kiosk. They are filled with filtered seawater and will supp
Read more

Crown-of-thorns removal mission!

Image
A Crown-of-Thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) The crown-of-thorns ( Acanthaster planci ), is a large, thorned starfish which lives along the shallow reefs of the tropical band of the globe. It has all the fundamental components of any other starfish - a central disk, perimeter by radiating arms - but unlike most, this starfish can have up to 23, regenerative arms (all of which can be replaced in the case of lost limbs) covered with long poisonous spines. Usually found ranging between 25 cm – 35 cm in its adult stage, some individuals can be as large as 80 cm. The crown-of-thorns is a carnivorous predator, feeding on live coral tissue by everting its stomach over their surfaces. As well as hard corals, they can also feed on soft corals, sponges and encrusting organisms. Their presence on a reef give slower growing coral communities (e.g. Favites ) an opportunity to flourish by preferring feeding on branching and plate fast growing corals (e.g. Acropora ) However, the large size o
Read more