More than 4,600 corals have been transplanted into the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador) after being raised in nurseries, known colloquially as “day care centers”to repopulate the seabed of the archipelago, after the serious mortality caused in recent years by the climate phenomenon of The boy.
In the periods 1982-1983 and 1996-1997, this phenomenon caused “the mortality of 95% of living tissue in coral reefs, due to the anomalous increase in sea temperatures in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, unbearable for these life forms.
The remains of this devastation can be seen in places such as Rosa Blanca Bay, in San Cristóbal, the easternmost island of the archipelago, where thousands of fragments of stone coral skeletons completely cover a nearby cove, deposited by the sea with the passage of the years.
For this reason, the Galapagos National Park (PNG) undertook a coral restoration project, Estefanía Altamirano, park ranger and marine ecosystem monitoring analyst for the PNG, told EFE.
In the PNG coral nursery, located in Santa Cruz, the central island of the archipelago, they work with two methodologies: high mesh beds for massive corals (which need a fixed substrate to grow), and rope beds for the branched ones (which they grow with branches like a plant).
And they have placed the coral lines at different levels to find out at what depth the corals can best adapt. From the nursery they take the corals to Punta Estrada, on the same island, where there was a large community, now reduced to “a patch”.
It takes a year for the massive corals to grow from one to three centimeters, and the branched ones, between 8 to 10 centimeters, before being transplanted to Punta Estrada.
“We have transplanted,” he said, “around 128 fragments of four species in Punta Estrada,” a still low number because they are focused on knowing which species are resilient to sudden changes in temperature.
Altamirano recalled that, due to the high temperatures in 2023, there was a “small whitening”and the corals lost their vibrant colors.
Second “kindergarten”
Over the last year, the Jocotoco Foundation, dedicated to conservation, has supported the creation of Reef Revival, led by Ecuadorian Nicolás Dávalos, a project in collaboration with the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), and supported by ReWild to restore the coral reef of Isabela Island, the largest in the archipelago.
Paola Sangolquí, a researcher from Jocotoco, explained to EFE that they grow corals in underwater nurseries to transplant them to their area of origin when they reach an optimal size.
“In the last two years, 4,500 corals have been transplanted” and it is expected to add another 2,500 that are now in the nursery, he said.
“Stable situation”
British researcher Stuart Banks, from the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) scientific station, told EFE that the situation of the corals in the Galapagos “it is stable at this time” after the damage suffered by those in shallow waters due to El Niño in the early 80s and 90s.
The scientist recalled that, even now, in many areas they see “old skeletons” of corals affected in the aforementioned years.
Monitoring of Galapagos corals has revealed different reactions in different corals in warm waters (El Niño) and colder waters (La Niña): while “one coral suffers from the heat, another is fine, and vice versa.”
New deep reefs discovered
Banks was concerned about the disappearance of certain species, but, at the same time, he was pleased that some pristine coral reefs were recently found in the deepest waters of the reserve, “that are thousands and thousands of years old”next to which accumulations of fossil corals have been found.
Using chemical tests on samples of deep-sea corals and fossils, scientists carry out various studies.
“This gives us a window into what our ocean climate was like in the past to compare with how quickly it is changing under future climate change scenarios,” Indian.
He highlighted the importance of natural reserves for species such as corals, which are slow growing.“very vulnerable” and as an example he said that the anchor of a ship, “In a single move, he can destroy hundreds of years of growth, in a single day.””.
“International waters suffer from not having the attention that we have given to a place like the Galapagos,” He pointed out, for what he sees in the ratification of the Ocean Treaty, signed last year within the framework of the UN, a tool to protect them.
But so far, only Chile and Palau have ratified the treaty, and the signature of at least 60 countries is required.
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Source: Gestion
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