World-wide experts on coral reef biology, ocean, marine, and related science(s) can be found here:
coral-list@coral.aoml.noaa.gov
An excellent collection of links to state-of-the-art information, current marine biology/science work(s), (hands-on) reef building and more, can also be found here:
http://www.globalcoral.org
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock International Corp.
Honorary Research Fellow, Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, Centre for Marine Sciences,
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
goreau@bestweb.net
http://www.globalcoral.org
http://www.biorock.org
Skype: tomgoreau
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thomas Goreau <goreau@bestweb.net>
Date: Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 10:54 AM
Subject: Restoring damaged reefs
To: coralreef-freeforall@yahoogroups.com
Cc: "ventura.domenica" <domenica.ventura@gmail.com>
Coralreef-freeforallers should be aware of Domenica Ventura's remarkable web site:
http://www.provitapaxmarineresearch.org/index.html
Which promotes simple methods to rescue dying marine organisms and turn them back into complex ecosystems. Great work!
In many ways what she has rediscovered has been long known to indigenous fishing communities in the Pacific, but has become a lost art almost every where. Many islanders used to pile up rocks in shallow sea areas to create fish habitat, then after a few years they would dismantle them, catch the fish, and build a new one.
The Governor of the remote Palau island of Hatahobei, near New Guinea, Indonesia, and Philippines told me that they used to do that, but it has not been done for several generations, only the old people remember hearing about it from the elders when they were small.
I have photographed this being done in the small poor fishing village of Molocaboc, on mangrove island north of Negros in the Philippines. A small pile about 5 feet across yielded an astonishing crop of lapu-lapu (groupers) and of rabbitfish. The photographs are in an article I wrote on fisheries habitat restoration in The Green Disc: New Technologies for a New Future (the nearly 60 chapter 2nd Edition will be launched in a few weeks at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro as a free web publication).
The critical key is an ethos to restore habitat, not to destroy it. The world famous filmers of white sharks, Ron and Valerie Taylor, told me that when they were starting out in the 1960s they met my father on the Great Barrier Reef, following a Belgian expedition that had walked over the reef flat turning over rocks to see what was hiding underneath. My father was turning all the rocks back over to their original position so as to restore the destroyed habitats of all the sea creatures that had lost their homes.
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD President,
Global Coral Reef Alliance President,
Biorock International Corp.
Honorary Research Fellow,
Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory,
Centre for Marine Sciences,
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
goreau@bestweb.net
http://www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
"No one can change the past, every one can change the future".
coral-list@coral.aoml.noaa.gov
An excellent collection of links to state-of-the-art information, current marine biology/science work(s), (hands-on) reef building and more, can also be found here:
http://www.globalcoral.org
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock International Corp.
Honorary Research Fellow, Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, Centre for Marine Sciences,
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
goreau@bestweb.net
http://www.globalcoral.org
http://www.biorock.org
Skype: tomgoreau
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thomas Goreau <goreau@bestweb.net>
Date: Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 10:54 AM
Subject: Restoring damaged reefs
To: coralreef-freeforall@yahoogroups.com
Cc: "ventura.domenica" <domenica.ventura@gmail.com>
Coralreef-freeforallers should be aware of Domenica Ventura's remarkable web site:
http://www.provitapaxmarineresearch.org/index.html
Which promotes simple methods to rescue dying marine organisms and turn them back into complex ecosystems. Great work!
In many ways what she has rediscovered has been long known to indigenous fishing communities in the Pacific, but has become a lost art almost every where. Many islanders used to pile up rocks in shallow sea areas to create fish habitat, then after a few years they would dismantle them, catch the fish, and build a new one.
The Governor of the remote Palau island of Hatahobei, near New Guinea, Indonesia, and Philippines told me that they used to do that, but it has not been done for several generations, only the old people remember hearing about it from the elders when they were small.
I have photographed this being done in the small poor fishing village of Molocaboc, on mangrove island north of Negros in the Philippines. A small pile about 5 feet across yielded an astonishing crop of lapu-lapu (groupers) and of rabbitfish. The photographs are in an article I wrote on fisheries habitat restoration in The Green Disc: New Technologies for a New Future (the nearly 60 chapter 2nd Edition will be launched in a few weeks at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro as a free web publication).
The critical key is an ethos to restore habitat, not to destroy it. The world famous filmers of white sharks, Ron and Valerie Taylor, told me that when they were starting out in the 1960s they met my father on the Great Barrier Reef, following a Belgian expedition that had walked over the reef flat turning over rocks to see what was hiding underneath. My father was turning all the rocks back over to their original position so as to restore the destroyed habitats of all the sea creatures that had lost their homes.
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD President,
Global Coral Reef Alliance President,
Biorock International Corp.
Honorary Research Fellow,
Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory,
Centre for Marine Sciences,
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
617-864-4226
goreau@bestweb.net
http://www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
"No one can change the past, every one can change the future".
Below are some pictures of Provitapax's initial plantings in Lemon Bay, Englewood, Florida and Boca Grande, Charlotte Harbor, Florida, USA. The recovery and survival response was remarkably successful considering everything was sunbaked and dry from the high tide beach wrack zone. I hope other communities start their own "recovery, hatching zones, and sea gardens".
Background: How ProVitaPax came to be:
As a child, I grew up in Miami from the mid-50's,playing and swimming in the ocean, lakes, canals and wetlands. Summers were spent at the beach, in the Everglades, or the Florida Keys, fishing, diving, surfing and snorkeling.
As a Brownie in the Girl Scouts, we went to camp in the Florida Keys. It was the 1960's, the reef flush with sea level at low tide, all the way to the shore. During high tide we waded in about 2 feet of water on the reef walking a small row boat with us. We wore sneakers because sea urchins were everywhere.
Spiny lobsters were gathered by simply pulling them out of the rocks by their antennae and tossing them in the row boat. One day a Park Ranger saw us and the row boat full of Florida Spiny Lobster (panulirus argus). He told us lobster were "out of season" and also, about the $500 fine for each animal. We did not understand what "season " or "poaching" meant. He told us not to do this anymore and took away all the lobsters.
My point is: lobsters were so abundant right up to shore, that in order to get all you wanted, you didn't need traps. They could simply be gathered, like fruit from trees.
In my early teens, during summer, I became a lifeguard at the local swimming pool and taught swimming lessons. Flipper, the TV show, was filmed within walking distance from my house. Years later, I became an avid board-sailor (windsurfer), and taught board-sailing.
At one point, later in life I got a license to carry passengers for hire on boats, learned navigation, safety laws, and began to study about farming fish, clams and shrimp (aquaculture). One decision was to decide what to raise, how and where, and what method to use. Aquaculture is practiced all over the world, and may be the way of the future, but must be done without destroying existing habitat or using chemicals, hormones, or antibiotics that are do not occur naturally.
Librarians gave me as many reference and textbooks, as I could read. After much thought, I felt it was too big an undertaking for me as an individual; but, I had been asked if I wanted to volunteer in a local laboratory, at Gulf Coast Crustacean Research. I watched with fascination as injured exotic, non-indigenous marine corals bought from local coral and fish shops responded to various methods of healing in their contained tank system. I personally bought 6 tridacna gigas (2" big, they grow into the giant clams from the south pacific) for $50 each and every one of them died. Maybe they could not thrive, were in shock from the different water properties in the Gulf of Mexico water, with a different climate, or light spectrum.
This led to collecting seaweed, rocks, sponges or whatever washed up on the beach, as a volunteer, for Gulf Coast Crustacean Research, and being given two dedicated tanks. I transported many huge buckets and tanks of seawater at least two or three days a week for their contained tank system.
Laws govern what can and cannot be collected at the beach. Collecting any live coral even, out of the water and on the beach where waves throw them, in the "wet" zone is not allowed. At the time, up to 3 buckets of seaweed per day was permitted to be collected. To the present day, collect only from areas landward of the high tide line: dry, crispy egg capsules, seaweed, sea whips, rocks, and so forth. If you have any questions, ask the authorities.
An Habitat Creation Experiment
Eventually the contained system reached maximum capacity, but I still had a bucket of dead sponges, sea whips, rocks, dry seaweed with eggs attached and so forth, still soaking in seawater with nowhere to put them. Marine plants, animals, and egg cases being newly re-hydrated expel lots of ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, nutrients, and other necrotic detritus, throwing the chemical balance "out of whack" in a contained system. The system can only take a finite amount of acidic and nutrient "shock" before the desired chemistry that keeps everything alive goes beyond acceptable levels, and can go toxic. When adding newly re-hydrating plants and animals to a contained system, the pH goes acidic, algae blooms can occur and protein levels increase, among many other things. That one bucket I had left simply could not go into the contained system.
Not wanting to throw them away, my parents gave me permission to relocate them in Lemon Bay, Florida, under and around their dock. Amazing things started to happen. They began to heal and grow by themselves without being put in the fast flowing, highly oxygenated current in the tank system at Gulf Coast Crustacean Research. Growth and healing rates could be compared between the contained system, and in the wild, letting nature take it's course. One other difference: what I planted was indigenous, naturally occurring local "life".
Many specimens attached to rocks, eggs hatched, sponges multiplied and restarted their life cycle. Schools of fish appeared, and a thriving reef-like live zone of filter feeding invertebrates evolved, doing their job of consuming algae, bacteria and nutrients. Water clarity improved, biomass and pH increased. After fish moved in, dolphins started visiting also...
As a child, I grew up in Miami from the mid-50's,playing and swimming in the ocean, lakes, canals and wetlands. Summers were spent at the beach, in the Everglades, or the Florida Keys, fishing, diving, surfing and snorkeling.
As a Brownie in the Girl Scouts, we went to camp in the Florida Keys. It was the 1960's, the reef flush with sea level at low tide, all the way to the shore. During high tide we waded in about 2 feet of water on the reef walking a small row boat with us. We wore sneakers because sea urchins were everywhere.
Spiny lobsters were gathered by simply pulling them out of the rocks by their antennae and tossing them in the row boat. One day a Park Ranger saw us and the row boat full of Florida Spiny Lobster (panulirus argus). He told us lobster were "out of season" and also, about the $500 fine for each animal. We did not understand what "season " or "poaching" meant. He told us not to do this anymore and took away all the lobsters.
My point is: lobsters were so abundant right up to shore, that in order to get all you wanted, you didn't need traps. They could simply be gathered, like fruit from trees.
In my early teens, during summer, I became a lifeguard at the local swimming pool and taught swimming lessons. Flipper, the TV show, was filmed within walking distance from my house. Years later, I became an avid board-sailor (windsurfer), and taught board-sailing.
At one point, later in life I got a license to carry passengers for hire on boats, learned navigation, safety laws, and began to study about farming fish, clams and shrimp (aquaculture). One decision was to decide what to raise, how and where, and what method to use. Aquaculture is practiced all over the world, and may be the way of the future, but must be done without destroying existing habitat or using chemicals, hormones, or antibiotics that are do not occur naturally.
Librarians gave me as many reference and textbooks, as I could read. After much thought, I felt it was too big an undertaking for me as an individual; but, I had been asked if I wanted to volunteer in a local laboratory, at Gulf Coast Crustacean Research. I watched with fascination as injured exotic, non-indigenous marine corals bought from local coral and fish shops responded to various methods of healing in their contained tank system. I personally bought 6 tridacna gigas (2" big, they grow into the giant clams from the south pacific) for $50 each and every one of them died. Maybe they could not thrive, were in shock from the different water properties in the Gulf of Mexico water, with a different climate, or light spectrum.
This led to collecting seaweed, rocks, sponges or whatever washed up on the beach, as a volunteer, for Gulf Coast Crustacean Research, and being given two dedicated tanks. I transported many huge buckets and tanks of seawater at least two or three days a week for their contained tank system.
Laws govern what can and cannot be collected at the beach. Collecting any live coral even, out of the water and on the beach where waves throw them, in the "wet" zone is not allowed. At the time, up to 3 buckets of seaweed per day was permitted to be collected. To the present day, collect only from areas landward of the high tide line: dry, crispy egg capsules, seaweed, sea whips, rocks, and so forth. If you have any questions, ask the authorities.
An Habitat Creation Experiment
Eventually the contained system reached maximum capacity, but I still had a bucket of dead sponges, sea whips, rocks, dry seaweed with eggs attached and so forth, still soaking in seawater with nowhere to put them. Marine plants, animals, and egg cases being newly re-hydrated expel lots of ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, nutrients, and other necrotic detritus, throwing the chemical balance "out of whack" in a contained system. The system can only take a finite amount of acidic and nutrient "shock" before the desired chemistry that keeps everything alive goes beyond acceptable levels, and can go toxic. When adding newly re-hydrating plants and animals to a contained system, the pH goes acidic, algae blooms can occur and protein levels increase, among many other things. That one bucket I had left simply could not go into the contained system.
Not wanting to throw them away, my parents gave me permission to relocate them in Lemon Bay, Florida, under and around their dock. Amazing things started to happen. They began to heal and grow by themselves without being put in the fast flowing, highly oxygenated current in the tank system at Gulf Coast Crustacean Research. Growth and healing rates could be compared between the contained system, and in the wild, letting nature take it's course. One other difference: what I planted was indigenous, naturally occurring local "life".
Many specimens attached to rocks, eggs hatched, sponges multiplied and restarted their life cycle. Schools of fish appeared, and a thriving reef-like live zone of filter feeding invertebrates evolved, doing their job of consuming algae, bacteria and nutrients. Water clarity improved, biomass and pH increased. After fish moved in, dolphins started visiting also...
Thank you to all who volunteered, donated or have helped our work:
Domenica Ventura, Donor, Founder, Volunteer
Joseph D. Ventura, (R.I.P. 12-14-2208, my Dad) allowing first site experiment on his property/Donor
Melinda Judy, Volunteer, Donor
www.Globalsoundstream.com, Donor, Volunteer
Lyndie Diamond, Volunteer
Esther Svelling Cummins, Volunteer
James L. Bach, volunteer
PC Users Group Sarasota, Laptop Donor, & Volunteer Software Assist for microscope stage viewing digital camera problem
Gulf Coast Crustacean Research: providing two dedicated tanks for Provitapax at their lab and volunteer training opportunity
Lynn Davis, Volunteer
Linda Risley, Volunteer
Shirley Gillis, SV Molly Brown, volunteer
Patricia Springstead, Donor
Danny "Donoto" D'Addario, Volunteer
David DiGiorgio Home Services, Englewood, FL (941-460-3935) volunteer: custom shelves/guard rails on research vessel
John D. Stromberg, Volunteer: mobile repair work: diesel, hybrid, (any) engine repair, maintenance, electrical, troubleshooting, systems checks: (941)468-8409
Susie Coble DiGiorgio, LPN, volunteer computer work and driver
The librarians that chose educational reading material for me, and many more individuals, but especially the little children that like to be helpers, when we are collecting on the beaches...
Domenica Ventura, Donor, Founder, Volunteer
Joseph D. Ventura, (R.I.P. 12-14-2208, my Dad) allowing first site experiment on his property/Donor
Melinda Judy, Volunteer, Donor
www.Globalsoundstream.com, Donor, Volunteer
Lyndie Diamond, Volunteer
Esther Svelling Cummins, Volunteer
James L. Bach, volunteer
PC Users Group Sarasota, Laptop Donor, & Volunteer Software Assist for microscope stage viewing digital camera problem
Gulf Coast Crustacean Research: providing two dedicated tanks for Provitapax at their lab and volunteer training opportunity
Lynn Davis, Volunteer
Linda Risley, Volunteer
Shirley Gillis, SV Molly Brown, volunteer
Patricia Springstead, Donor
Danny "Donoto" D'Addario, Volunteer
David DiGiorgio Home Services, Englewood, FL (941-460-3935) volunteer: custom shelves/guard rails on research vessel
John D. Stromberg, Volunteer: mobile repair work: diesel, hybrid, (any) engine repair, maintenance, electrical, troubleshooting, systems checks: (941)468-8409
Susie Coble DiGiorgio, LPN, volunteer computer work and driver
The librarians that chose educational reading material for me, and many more individuals, but especially the little children that like to be helpers, when we are collecting on the beaches...