A new disease that rapidly kills coral has been sweeping through reefs in the Caribbean. Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) causes serious damage to corals, which are already stressed by increasing ocean temperatures and acidity. It hit the island of Curaçao in 2023 and is expected to kill 25% of already depleted reefs there.
The disease kills stony, reef-building corals very quickly. There is no known way to save infected coral. That means that currently, the only ways to fight this scourge are to stop the spread (some places are applying antibiotic pastes to uninfected corals) and to grow more coral.
To help repair some of the damage inflicted by this novel disease, Seacology made a grant to Reef Renewal Foundation Curacao. It is building a simple coral nursery and will grow corals there for later outplanting.
There is an urgent need for a new nursery. Previous coral restoration efforts focused on staghorn coral, which is highly endangered but fast-growing. SCTLD, however, primarily affects massive and boulder corals. Little work has been done to determine the best ways to cultivate and outplant these kinds of corals. This project will try different techniques, analyze progress, and share the results with researchers and conservationists worldwide.
