These interventions should be used only in conjunction with large scale efforts to minimize our environmental impact and reducing carbon emissions.” “This research gives hope that we can assist the survival of corals, which are highly infected by disease, however, our interventions are only buying time for the corals–we are treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause. “The best thing about this experience was working together with other coral disease researchers to figure out solutions to save this charismatic and rare species,” Warrender says. published preliminary results of the experiment at a poster session presented at Reef Futures 2018 (see below). “So far some of our methods have been successful,” she says, “but only time will tell whether our treatments and the pillar coral colonies at Killer Pillar will survive this outbreak.” She says research officers at DOE are continuing to monitor the results of the experiments. They used chlorinated epoxy to try to stop the spread of the disease, and they treated healthy tissue fragments with a povidone iodine and seawater solution before moving them to a nursery in hopes of preserving them.ĭOE’s Paul Chin salvaging healthy coral from the Killer Pillar Dive Site (c) William Precht “I was very driven to carry out this research, knowing that if we did not intervene, it is highly likely that entire pillar colonies, hundreds of years old, would die.”Īs I described in the Yale E360 article, Warrender and her team salvaged healthy parts of colonies by sawing them off and transplanting them on other reefs. “It was a challenging project using several intervention methods, some of which have never been tried before on this specific species,” says Warrender. Karen Neely (who was also featured in the Yale E360 story). Warrender led the disease intervention effort, working with individuals from the DOE Research Unit, Operations Unit, and other external associates such as Precht, Cayman Ecodivers and Dr. “The disease outbreak at Killer Pillar was already well underway,” Warrender recalls, “and several colonies were highly infected by the disease.” Given that other pillar coral colonies in the Cayman Islands were also showing signs of disease, she was thinking worst case scenario: local extinction. The disease at Killer Pillar was reported to DOE by a local dive company called Cayman Ecodivers. Tammi Warrender working on the diseased Killer Pillar (c) Tammi Warrender Today, it’s estimated that 96 to 99 percent of Florida’s pillar corals have been lost to disease earning the few surviving colonies the epitaph “the last unicorns.” Despite some efforts to mitigate the ravages of the disease, within three years, all but one of those 65 colonies had turned from a vibrant focal point of reef life to a ghost white skeleton soon overgrown with algae. A monitoring program that stretched along the Florida Reef Tract from central Miami-Dade County to southern Palm Beach County tracked 65 individual colonies. Now listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, pillar corals became a focus of scientists responding to the 2014 disease outbreak in Florida. While never the dominant species in the western Atlantic, pillar corals find themselves in an ever more precarious situation. These “hairs” are actually the individual coral polyps feeding, an unusual sight for many divers, as most corals feed largely at night. Grey-brown in color, filtered sunlight paints the pillars a golden hue, accentuating the animal’s uncharacteristic hair-like texture. Rising up in majestic, cylindrical columns from the bottom, the namesake pillars can reach two to three meters in height, dwarfing the surrounding coralscape. (c) NOAAįor those of you who have never seen a pillar coral colony, it is truly a spectacular thing to behold. A juvenile threespot damselfish nestled in a pillar coral colony in St.
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