Aquarists can occasionally see the coral spawning in their closed system, but it is not controlled by the system, it’s more of happenstance but Innoqua has researched how they can manipulate coral spawning in the aquarium. In Japan, corals are spawning once year around June but what Innoqua achieved is to make Montipora digitata spawn in winter by controlling the water temperature.
Fire corals resemble typical stony corals but are actually close relatives of jellyfish; hence their wicked sting. They have the ability to grow either as sheets—expanding as a flat coating across rocks and other surfaces—or as “trees,” sprouting upward with a stem and branches. More than 40 years ago, Jeremy Jackson, an ocean biologist with the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, proposed that this plasticity would give fire corals an edge as Caribbean reefs experienced global warming and hurricanes. Edmunds now concludes Jackson was right.
Eleutherobin is used by soft corals as a defence against predators, with the chemical disrupting the cytoskeleton – a key scaffold in cells. However, laboratory studies have shown that the compound can also inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) have been observed queueing up in natural environments to rub particular body parts against selected corals (Rumphella aggregata, Sarcophyton sp.) and sponges (Ircinia sp.) in the Egyptian Northern Red Sea. It was hypothesized that the presence of bioactive metabolites accounts for this selective rubbing behavior. The three invertebrates preferentially accessed by the dolphins, collected and analyzed by hyphenated high-performance thin-layer chromatography contained seventeen active metabolites, providing evidence of potential self-medication.
Researchers are using probiotics on coral to counter disease. Corals grown in aquaculture have high mortality rates. Other scientists say successful coral transplants will only buy time and that greater action on climate change is needed. A project investigating the possibility comes at a time when reef restoration efforts to address Great Barrier Reef challenges such as salinity, runoff, fishing, and climate change are in the spotlight.