Saturday, June 18, 2011

UNC Wilmington Scientists to Document the Increasing Importance of Sponges on Florida Reefs


UNC Wilmington Scientists to Document the Increasing Importance of Sponges on Florida Reefs
6/13/2011 12:24:34 PM
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The corals that built Florida's reefs are now mostly gone, victims of a combination of disease, storms, pollution and climate change. Sponges are now the dominant habitat-forming organisms on most reefs, but little is known about these diverse and colorful animals.

From June 13 to June 24, 2011, University of North Carolina Wilmington marine biologists will become the first aquanauts of the 2011 research season to use the undersea habitat Aquarius, located at a depth of 60 feet in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary near Key Largo, to gather fundamental information about the sponges that now cover Florida's reefs.

Beginning in 1997, a team led by UNC Wilmington marine biology professor Joseph Pawlik used the extended diving capabilities provided by Aquarius to set up the first and only permanent stations for monitoring the survival and growth of the giant barrel sponge, Xestospongia muta. After gathering more than a decade of data, Pawlik and his co-workers determined that the common oil-drum-sized sponges, often called the "Redwoods of the Reefs," were hundreds of years old, and that their populations are increasing rapidly -- good news for the shrimp, lobsters, fishes and other marine life that call the reefs home.

Pawlik will be available for media interviews throughout the mission.

Pawlik is back this year with collaborator Chris Finelli, UNCW marine biology professor, to extend the monitoring program to include other species, and to determine how filter-feeding sponges affect the water quality above the reef.

Finelli and co-workers are experts in the field of hydrodynamics, the study of water flow. The research team will use sophisticated instruments to determine the amount of water that passes through the bodies of the many sponges that populate the reef. Sponges may be critical to maintaining water clarity, and they may prevent blooms of the harmful microscopic algae that cause red tides by eating them before their populations explode.

Like corals, however, sponges are threatened. Pawlik's group has documented an orange-band disease of barrel sponges that can kill a 200-year-old sponge in less than a month. Additionally, monofilament fishing line and abandoned anchor rope easily entangle sponges, tearing through them during storms and leaving them unattached to die in the sand near the reef. The result is the loss of habitat for fish, shrimp and lobsters that inhabit the reefs.

The aquanauts will continue studies of sponge diseases and impacts of fishing debris on sponge survival.

This year's aquanauts are UNCW doctoral students Tse-Lynn Loh and Steve McMurray, and UNCW graduate students Lindsey Deignan and John Hanmer. They will be assisted from the surface by Pawlik and graduate student Inga Conti-Jerpe.

The Aquarius undersea laboratory is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by UNCW's Aquarius Reef Base program, part of its Center for Marine Science. Aquarius is an essential element of the study because the underwater laboratory provides a support base for a special type of diving, called saturation diving, which provides nearly unlimited time underwater to conduct this research.

Aquanauts, the term used to describe saturated divers, will spend up to nine hours a day working underwater in depths of up to 100 feet. In conventional diving, going too deep or staying too long underwater, can lead to a disease called decompression sickness or "the bends," which is typically quite painful but treatable. Saturation diving helps divers stay longer at depth and to decompress safely before returning to the surface.

Live Web cameras, expedition blogs, images and videos are available on the Aquarius website at http://aquarius.uncw.edu.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.508.3127 or fischettid@uncw.edu


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Source: http://appserv02.uncw.edu/news/artview.aspx?ID=3175

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