7 News Belize

Making Coral Nurseries Work
posted (October 10, 2019)

For the past few weeks, we’ve been reporting on SCTLD, Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease and the untold damage it can do to Belize’s reef.

And, the truth is, the reef has been under attack for decades, from coral bleaching in the early aughts, to the Lionfish invasion which has been going on for about 10 years.  

And that’s why the concept of Coral Nurseries is so important. It’s spearheaded in Belize by marine biologist Lisa Carne out of Placencia and a few months ago in San Pedro we met some kids who have taken up her mantle on their island.  They are part of the Kids In Action summer program and they told us about their Coral reef restoration program and coral nursery:

Brittney Garbutt - Instructor, Coral Nursery
"With the coral nursey which is a restoration project where we have 3 of the most endangered species of coral and we're trying our best to restore them, grow them and out plant them to keep them alive. So far, we are quite successful with the growth and it's just waiting a little bit more for the corals to grow until we can plant them out there. The 3 corals we're dealing with are of the acropora genus, the species of them are the Elkhorn, the Staghorn and the Fused Staghorn. Now these 3 corals are kind of like the frame builders of the reef, so once they start building up, they actually bring in more coral, we ended up with brain coral and pillar corals too, they just popped up. There's a disease that affects these particular corals, kind of like bleaching but it's called white band disease, only affects these 3 corals and it whipped out quite a bit of them, so what we have now is all that we have now. So, to prevent from being completely gone, remember these are the frame builders of the reef, so if you want to think of it like a foundation of a house, they're the foundation, you start bottom up. If you remove the bottom of the house, it crumbles. These guys are the frame of the reef, so without them, it's a problem right because we have them here for now, what if they don't exist 10, 20 years down the road? We're here to make sure what we have now, lasts for the rest of the generation."

Liandra Bodden
"The cleaning of the corals is like I said how special they are to marine life. It was something pretty to see, even though the fishes got together like down there. They know that it's a big role, so they all gathered together and protect the coral; it was like something really beautiful and awesome. It's something that I do see myself doing in the future; I have a big passion for marine life and would love to see my future grow."

That interview was conducted in July.  

Brittney Garbutt is now pursuing her degree in marine biology at UB.

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize