Japanese Coral Transplanting

[pjf]

According to Associated Press (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JAPAN_REEF_POLITICS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT), Japan plans to spend $7 million to plant more than 50,000 fast-growing Acropora coral fragments on 2 uninhabited rocky outcroppings about 1,060 miles southwest of Tokyo. The coral planting aims to protect the islets from further erosion and maintain Japan’s claim that they are bona fide Japanese islands within an exclusive economic zone.

Since the motive is territorial, I wonder if coral diversity is being sacrificed.

 

[cali9dub]

wonder if it will really work...

 

[ezcompany]

link doesn't work anymore. can acropora grow in temperate water? i believe red sea was the only place they could.

 

[greenbean36191]

Sure. Acropora is native to the Ryukyu Islands in southern Japan. You also find it in other areas of the subtropics like the NW Hawaiian Islands, Florida, the Bahamas, and the northern Red Sea.

 

[kaptken]

Oh, I have read about this before, somewhere? If my memory is still working, I believe the center of the arguement is about international boundary fishing rights. Japan has long claimed this little atol/outcrop as sovereign. and thus laid claim to exclusive fishing rights within the international boundaries of the island. 200 miles?

The problem is, international law is based on an above water land mass. The island is disapearing into the sea, from either subsidence, erosion, global warming sea rise or all of the above.

so Japan has spent tens of millions, or more on trying to keep some portion of dry rock/sand above sea level to continue their exclusive fishing rights claim. which has been things like: building rock break walls and dredging sand to rebuild the tiny rock outcrop.

It has nothing to do with corals, they are just the means to rebuild the submerging barrier reef that protects the island from waves and erosion. If it fails to maintain any portion of dry land above mean high tide, they lose the teritorial fishing rites. which apparently are very lucrative.

They would be better served to try the BIO-ROCK method of coral propogation and artificial reef building to protect and raise the island.

http://www.biorock.net/

I keep trying to figure out how to use this method in my tanks , to electro-plate corals but without ZORCHING myself in the process.

It's also a possible way of growing reefs in increasingly acidic ocean waters. As the electro charge helps the polyps extract and fix calcium into carbonates in lower PH waters. Like a BOOSTER pump.

Hmmmm??? Then I wouldn't have to worry so much about things like PH , and Alkalinity and Calcium levels and such.

Just crank up the DC Voltage!!!

 

[greenbean36191]

It produces Cl gas which makes it useless for captive systems.

It also doesn't solve the acidification problem because it doesn't deal with the issue of aragonite solubility. It helps speed up calcification, but only so long as there is sufficient calcium in the water, which is one of the big problems with acidification.

 

[kaptken]

Hmmm, I think it might produce sodium hypochlorite instead. but in small charge amounts might not do much at all except make the base structure acrete carbonates. which is the basic goal of the the BIO-ROCK project. for reef and break wall harbor building. but the side effect is enhanced coral growth rates.

No, it doesn't do anything to fix the ocean acidification trend. It's just a technical work around. the next fall back step in losing the ecological war.

It could preserve some reefs and species in the future, if and when things get really bad for ocean reef water. let us hope it doesn't come to that. Kind of like having the last living tree in a museum, like in the movie, Soylent Green! After the ocean plankton died.

 

[greenbean36191]

Well it definitely forms Cl and oxygen at the anode. That may go on to form bleach or it may be formed directly, I'm not sure, but wouldn't be surprised at all either way. You're hydrolyzing and plating a soup of ions and salts so who knows all the collateral reactions that go on alongside the desired one. Any voltage that is strong enough to run the rxn and help accrete carbonates will necessarily produce Cl though.

The process doesn't really offer a work around for acidification at all. In the early stages of acidification (like now) while pH and dissolved calcium is still high it helps with the energetics of calcification. When aragonite saturation drops though, not only does calcification cost more energy, but calcium availability becomes limiting. The calcium limited stages are where the real problems lie for most reefs and the bio-rock technique still needs high dissolved Ca to accrete it. The technique also causes locally lowered pH near the cathode that has to be flushed away to keep the process rolling. As pH in the surrounding water drops, the effect of the locally low pH is increased and the accretion slows and eventually stops.

The process is really for restoration of mechanical damage and for artificial habitat creation, not for conservation of marginal areas or those with ongoing problems.

 

[kaptken]

well, bleach is made by electolyzing a sodium chloride solution, but at a bit higher voltage and amperage. which is why bleach is environmentally safe. when it reacts with an organic, it returns to salt water. the bio rock system works with a few solar panels feeding a couple hundred yards of rebar structures with a couple volts and minimal amps. less , overall at any point than static from walking on your carpet with wooly winter socks.

The induced charge is small but enough to overcome even low PH or charge levels in the sea water for deposition. Calcium levels are not the problem, its the alk and PH that are droppin. as good as it sounds, it can only be used in finite areas, that can be wired, not all the reef systems of the world. but it can sustain corals, in limited scope in more acidic seas. like a lone flower with its own drip irrigation in the middle of desert sands.

But still, coral polyps have survived a long time through many ocean changes. They may survive still, but just not where we have become accustomed to. if sea water changes are slow enough they can migrate to more hospitable climes. the only problem with mid pacific island corals is, they are just there, in the middle of no where with thousands of miles to the next shallow sea with better conditions. Its a long stretch to finds a new home. And another theory is, when oceans become too acidic for the polyps to acrete calcium, they may once more revert to free floating poly/squid like forms they evolved from.

But the way things are going , we may well have elkhorn reefs here off the coast of Dela-where? someday in the future. We already have transient populations of southern sea horses in summer, and trigger fish and lion fish that ride the gulf stream north.

Now, Where's Nemo?

 

[greenbean36191]

Even at the low charge densities used for in the bio-rock method, Cl is produced at the anode as the authors indicate in the original papers on the method.

Aragonite saturation is a problem with acidification. As CO2 dissolves in seawater it shifts the carbonate-bicarbonate equilibrium more towards bicarbonate. As a result the saturation state for aragonite decreases. There's just as much, if not more Ca++ in the water, but not enough carbonate to use it to form CaCO3. Carbonate is the ion that's actually limiting, but it's talked about in terms of decreasing states of Ca saturation.
See:
Hoegh-Guldberg, O. 2005. Low coral cover in a high-CO2 world. J. Geophys. Res. 110:

Reefs won't move much further north than they currently extend because the current Ca saturation state isn't sufficient to support reef growth much beyond their current range. As CO2 increases, the band of sufficient saturation will shrink towards the equator, limiting their range even more.
See:
Guinotte, J.M., R.W. Buddemeier, and J.A. Kleypas. 2003. Future coral reef habitat marginality: temporal and spatial effects of climate change in the Pacific Basin. Coral Reefs: 22: 551-558.

Most likely what will happen is the majority of reef-building corals will go extinct with a few survivors becoming naked corals in a process similar to the theorized evolution of corallimorphs.

 

[BecomesOcean]

Greenbean, you've got a PM.