florida zoanthid pics

[CiXeL]

a long time ago i promised some people in the midwest id post pictures of our florida zoanthids exposed at low tide so they could see their natural habitat
here they are
http://www.cixel.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=24

 

[Anonymous]

Oh wow that is so cool. I remember back in 2000 I took a trip to Florida and one thing I wanted to see was corals, now I didn't know where to look and the locals I asked (even a park ranger!) had no clue where a good place to snorkle would be.

Are those in a "secret" location? Or is a tide pool type area where people can climb the rocks and look?

 

[CiXeL]

other people know where that is but i wont disclose the location. the reason for this is there are unethical aquarium stores down here that harvest stuff from the wild and resell it in the stores. i talked to one guy awhile back who said he saw an aquarium store owner pilfering gorgonians right out of john pennekamp coral reef state park's mangrove lagoons out in full view of everything. its really sad. we have barney fife protecting the keys. oh crap here i am getting on my soapbox... i better get off it before i rant about the state of the reefs here and how nothings being done that would actually help fix things.

if youre interested look up the diadema urchin. the #1 thing that could save the caribbean would be a huge effort into propagating it. you can propagate and transplant as many acros as you like but if you dont have a clean substrate for them to encrust on its pointless since the algae will choke them out. in the '80s a disease came in through the panama canal and wiped out the vast majority of the urchins. the reason they havent recovered it because their larvae arent very viable. it will take a long long time for them to recover and until then youll only see more and more reefs getting choked out by algae. ok fine... *gets off soapbox*

 

[Julius]

Im not sure if Propagating urchins is the answer to florida's problems. The reefs in Hawaii that have suffered damage are carpeted with a variety of different urchins. These areas are nothing but barren dead coral covered with urchins. Perhaps all the urchins do not allow coral planulae to attach and cement themselves in before the urchin kicks them off the rock during it foraging.

 

[CiXeL]

hawaii doesnt really have alot of damaged reefs. first of all hawaii's reefs are very young but will continue to grow as the islands gradually erode into atolls. most of their loss has been boat damage or snorkeler damage and the always present natural level of bleaching. there is a undeniable connection between urchins in the caribbean. the difference was immediate and you can literally see algae choking out reefs where the algae would be chomped down upon by urchins normally. the fact that there are alot of fishermen out here makes it worse because they eat fish that would oftentimes forage off the reefs or fish them for sport and maim them. hawaii's reefs are very clean due to their urchins. caribbean reefs are dirty. the only cleaning they get of deritus and macroalgae is following hurricanes which then the reef thrives for a period of time before it builds up again.

 

[cjsrch]

looks like the corals at the boca inlet jetty not worth collecting since they need such high light initialy and also you get banged up bad if the waters rough lol

( i never personaly collected them, i was just there while some other people were)