SECORE - SExual COral REproduction

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dirk Petersen and Michael Laterveer of the Rotterdam Zoo (Netherlands) are the Co-founders of SECORE a non-profit initiative of public aquariums and coral scientists to create an international network of expertise in coral reef conservation

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SECORE

A recent report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network estimates that more than 25% of the world’s reefs are already gone or severely damaged, and that another 30% are degraded and threatened.Tropical coral reefs are facing serious problems through human disturbances and climate change. Convinced that public aquaria and science together can offer a helping hand in coral conservation, SECORE (SExual COral REproduction) was born in the beginning of 2002. Marine biologists Dr. Dirk Petersen and Michael Laterveer of the Rotterdam Zoo (Netherlands) started working together with a joint mission: promoting the development of sustainable techniques for the sexual reproduction of corals. Primarily, the techniques were aimed at supplying public aquaria with live corals in a sustainable way. Over the years, it became obvious that the established techniques might also play an important role in future coral reef repopulation and restoration.

An important focus of SECORE is to establish captive coral populations using sexual reproduction - a pioneering way of reproducing corals. Contrary to fragmentation of corals (cloning), which is commonly applied in aquaculture and other fields, it has been impossible to control sexual reproduction under aquarium conditions for many years. The advantage of sexual reproduction is that genetic diversity is maintained, thereby ensuring a higher natural fitness of the corals under changing environmental conditions. Looking ahead towards possible applications in reef restoration or establishing coordinated breeding programs for endangered coral species, this is a very worthwhile perspective to work on. In cooperation with the Dept. of Hydrobiology (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), the Marine and Coastal Research Centre (Ochanomizu University, Japan) and the Curacao Sea Aquarium (Netherlands Antilles), techniques were developed to safely handle large quantities of coral larvae for aquacultural purposes. Within three years, basic techniques were available to ship thousands of coral larvae between institutions and continents, to settle these larvae on specific substrate tiles and to raise them to juvenile corals.

By now, SECORE has grown into an international, independent platform improving and spreading practical skills and knowledge of sexual coral reproduction among aquarists and scientists around the world. Public aquarium professionals and associated researchers join the SECORE workshop to practice coral breeding techniques and to develop a theoretical background on coral reproduction. With this basic equipment and the continuous support of the SECORE network, they can start their own undertakings in sexual coral reproduction. Today’s workshop participants might be the initiators of breeding programs of tomorrow, working with corals from the Indo Pacific, the Caribbean or other reef regions of the world’s oceans.

This year SECORE started a 3-year Acropora (staghorn coral) restoration project. This 3-year project aims to develop new methods for saving endangered corals, using sexual reproduction. Therefore, a coral culture system has been built at the Curacao Sea Aquarium (Netherlands). It will be the nursery of thousands of coral babies, which will eventually be reintroduced in the reefs in the future.

You can follow the SECORE team on their latest adventure to Curacao last August during the annual coral mass spawning event : http://www.secore.org/gsp.dll?sid=283&pid=1&p_menuid=180&p_parentmenuid=86

For more information and the dates for upcoming workshops, please visit : http://www.secore.org/gsp.dll?sid=203&pid=1&p_menuid=1