Explorers find hundreds of undescribed corals, other species on familiar Australian reefs

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 1 day (esciencenews.com)

Hundreds of new kinds of animal species surprised international researchers systematically exploring waters off two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia -- waters long familiar to divers. The expeditions, affiliated with the global Census of Marine Life, help mark the International Year of the Reef and included the first systematic scientific inventory of spectacular soft corals, named octocorals for the eight tentacles that fringe each polyp

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Coral-killing starfish curbed by fishing ban

lavrock submitted, created time 3 months 3 weeks (environment.newscientist.com)

IF YOU want to save coral reefs from rapacious starfish, you should ban fishing.

The crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci, preys on corals in some of the most biodiverse and threatened reefs in the world, dwarfing coral losses from storms and bleaching. The predator is less devastating in "no-take zones" of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, however, where fishing has been banned since 1989 (Current Biology, vol 18, p R598)

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Fishing Bans May Save Corals from Killer Starfish

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 3 weeks (www.sciam.com)

Good news for the world's vanishing corals: a new study shows that commercial fishing bans in Australia's Great Barrier Reef kept a lid on coral-gobbling starfish.

"This is definitely good news for coral," says John Bruno, an associate professor of marine science at the University of North Carolina (U.N.C.) at Chapel Hill.

Researchers found that there were as many as seven times fewer outbreaks of coral-killing crown-of-thorns starfish—which can have up to twenty spike-covered arms and grow up to two feet (0

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Ocean acidification may make algae flourish

Darkfrog submitted, created time 7 months 3 days (www.nytimes.com)

For many of the smallest marine life forms, the biggest issue on the block isn't global warming, it's ocean acidification. Acid in the oceans can dissolve the calcium carbonate that makes up coral's support structure. It was thought that the shells of coccolithophores, a type of algae that forms the base of much of the ocean's ecosystem, would be dissolved as well, and one study says that they will

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Taking the Heat Off Coral

davidd submitted, created time 9 months 1 week (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Researchers have found a control mechanism in the western Pacific Ocean that seems to be protecting coral reefs from global warming. The discovery is a welcome bit of good news, the scientists say, because it suggests that some of the most diverse ecosystems in the world might not be in as much jeopardy as previously thought.

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Researchers study coral threats

sumsung submitted, created time 9 months 3 weeks (edition.cnn.com)

The year of the reef is a "campaign to highlight the importance of coral reef ecosystems and to motivate people to protect them," Conrad Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at a briefing.

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