November 7, day of the full moon.

I know you have been talking about basic trophic structure (producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers) in class. I know you've also been diagraming various cycles at your creek sites: dissolved oxygen, nitrogen, water, carbon. I want you all to consider all the cycles that you've learned about and try to imagine how those cycles might be different or similar in a completely different and more complex ecosystem. I've taken some videos of some of the masterfully kept aquarium tanks here at AIMS.

The aquarists at AIMS have created these displays to show different coral reef habitats. This first video is of a tank created to emulate a healthy, inshore reef environment. 

This second video is of a tank that shows what a degraded/unhealthy reef looks like. You can see that many of the corals are dead, bleached or overgrown with algae. Algae appears to be the most dominant organisms in this environment. Think about what cycles might be out of balance to create a situation like this.

This video shows a tank where a crown of thorns starfish (COTS) is kept. COTS are definitely the dangerous animal of the day. These starfish are the second greatest threat to corals. They essentially just chow down on coral tissue and can reproduce in mass amounts. Outbreaks of COTS have devastated reefs all over the Indo-Pacific. You can see here what happens to the corals and the ecosystems around it when COTS are present. They are seriously awful creatures. And those spines are really dangerous to humans. If you get pricked by one of these guys, you could be on antibiotics for up to 6 months because of the bacterial communities associated with these creatures. Because of this, one of the only ways to kill them is to stab them 10 times with a spear, since manually removing them from reefs is nearly impossible. Researchers here and trying to understand the biology of COTS in order to better predict and control outbreaks on coral reefs.  

These 4 videos are clips from a large aquarium that showcases a healthy off-shore reef. Off-shore reefs tend to have higher water quality than inshore reefs, which is due to multiple factors. Inshore reefs have more exposure to run-off from the land and higher turbidity, for example. When you watch these videos keep in mind how all the organisms are connected in a system and what role each species might have in the ecosystem. For example, you'll notice some of the fish nipping at the corals. They are likely eating algae, which allows the corals to grow, respirate and their symbionts to photosynthesize. 

We will be on coral spawn watch tonight. I think it's too early for them to go, but it's important to monitor them and be sure we know that if one does go, not to count on it spawning on a later night.