Coral sampling

Last month I collected some Stylophora fragments to use in my experiment. The IUI created a coral nursery to carry out experiments in situ and also to grow corals for collection without disturbing the natural reef. It consists of a series of metal racks fixed underwater between 6 and 12 meters deep approximately, where there are plenty of fish, sponges, crabs and even big octopus swimming around.

Mother colony number 1 growing in the coral nursery

We dove and collected coral pieces from 4 different mother colonies that were immediately placed in aquaria in an outdoor laboratory with running seawater. I glued them to plastic bases in which I wrote an individual number and painted with different nail polish colours to distinguish between the different mother colonies. After several days acclimating to the new conditions, temperature and pH of seawater in the aquaria was changed and my experiment started.

Aquarium with different coral fragments

Corals from different mother colonies. Note the pink tentacles going out of the skeleton.