Scientists have shared the magnificent moment corals release their spawn into the water in the hope of producing a future generation. In the alien-like scene, small pink spheres drift up to the surface against a pitch background.
Although coral spawning usually happens in tropical reefs, these corals are releasing their peach bundles of eggs and sperm from tanks in south-east London.
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“The majority of corals we're working on are something called broadcast spawning corals,” says Dr Jamie Craggs, principal aquarium curator at the Horniman Museum and Gardens and lead scientist at Coral Spawning International. “They're releasing eggs and sperm, and those float up to the surface.”
Corals usually spawn annually and catching them at the right moment to collect their spawn – to help conservation efforts – is tricky and expensive. This project decided to get around those challenges by designing a system that allows them to study and breed corals in the lab.
“That's opened up an amazing resource for research and things that you simply can't do in in the wild,” says Craggs.
Part of their work involves taking detailed photos of the corals to measure the egg bundles and see whether they’re nearly ready. “When they're orange or pink, they will spawn after the next lunar cycle,” he explains.
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Through the knowledge they’re gathering, the researchers hope to help coral conservation efforts around the world. Through a partnership with Nature Seychelles, they will soon be training scientists in the country on how to replicate their methodology.
“The team in the Seychelles have been given the Canon r5, the macro lenses,” says Craggs, and will be trained on how to image the corals to find out when each species usually spawns. This means they can be ready to collect the spawn and start growing the little corals in the lab until they’re ready to be planted out onto the reef.
Having this extra time to grow before they’re put out into the wild gives them a better chance of survival.
“When they're young, they're really, really delicate, and they very easily predated,” says Craggs. “We can control a lot of that in the land-based system.
Top image credit: Dr Jamie Craggs | Coral Spawning International
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