The culture, transplantation and storage of Montastraea faveolata, Acropora cervicornis and Acropora palmata: What we have learned so far

Coral explantation provides new colonies for ship-grounding sites while mai ntaining the complexity and diversity of the donor site. In our studies, ex plants included branches (Acropora palmata and A. cervicornis) and cores (M ontastraea faveolata). Maintaining explants in closed aquaria, an open seaw ater system, or on arrays out on the reef was compared. Closed aquaria allo w controlled and potentially optimized conditions, however, diseases can qu ickly eliminate corals. Open seawater systems were found to be viable in th e Bahamas (Lee Stocking Island), but less successful in the Florida Keys wh ere nearshore waters are subject to wide temperature variations and turbidi ty. Corals placed on arrays or directly on the reef substrate had similar s urvival rates that were not significantly different (M. faveolata 2.5 cm, 9 mo: array 100%, substrate 75%; A. cervicornis, 7 mo: array 91.7%, substrat e 75%). We have begun to examine minimum size requirements for M. faveolata explants, Although a single apical polyp of A. cervicornis or several poly ps of M. faveolata survive in aquaria, they are unlikely to do so on a reef . In different experiments, survival rates of 2.5 and 5.1 cm diameter cores of Vf. faveolata on substrate were 75% (11 mo) and 86.1% (12 mo), respecti vely, and on arrays for 9 mo were 100% and 91.6% (inshore array) - 95.6% (o ffshore), respectively. With no clear differences apparent, the minimum via ble size may be smaller than 2.5 cm in diameter. An ongoing experiment is r eexamining this issue with explants of differing size from the same parent colonies.