HOW SCIENTISTS IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HELP THE SEX LIVES OF CORAL
Publicado por Paul Hernandez
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Author: Andrew WightContributor
Updated Aug 5, 2024,
Rita Ines Sellares Blasco, CEO/ Dominican Foundation of Marine Studies (FUNDEMAR)Rita Ines Sellares Blasco
Researchers in the Dominican Republic are helping along the sex lives of stony corals to give them a better chance against disease and bleaching events.
A 2019 study showed that coral reefs and their ecosystem services have a value of $1.14 billion per year from just three areas of the Dominican Republic: Punta Cana, Bayahibe and Cayo Levantado. But in 2023, over 90% of the corals in reefs surrounding the Caribbean nation were bleached.
Rita Ines Sellares Blasco, a researcher from Spain and the CEO of Dominican Foundation of Marine Studies (FUNDEMAR) says due to the loss of coral cover, corals cannot reproduce sexually: when they release their gametes (sperm and eggs) into the water, colonies are too far apart.
"Gametes will not encounter each other despite the synchronize spawning," she says, "So with the effort of collecting and fertilizing the gametes we are ensuring their successful reproduction and the production of new recruits that will be planted out into the reefs."
Sellares explains that corals can reproduce asexually or sexually, but researchers have seen that sexual recruits are more resilient to bleaching and stony coral tissue loss disease than clones or gametes from wild colonies.
"If you reproduce them sexually, each new individual will be genetically different, increasing resilience of the colonies," she says, "Genetic diversity is the key for the survival of any species."
Coral reefs have been facing several critical events as bleaching diseases causing an increase decline on their population. 2023 bleaching event combined with SCTLD has caused a loss of 40-60 percent of coral cover and some coral species.
"This is why is so important to ensure assisted sexual reproduction, despite the challenges faced year by year due to loss of coral cover," she says adding that coral reefs are the base of the country's economy including food sources and job opportunities from fishing and tourism.
"Coral reefs are the first protection to face hurricanes and tropical storms, the loss of them implies the loss of protection and an increase of the expenses for flooding and loss of infrastructure after a hurricane or storms, which increase year by year," she says.
Sellares and her team have also been part of a 3-year project funded by CORDAP, the Coral Research & Development Accelerator Platform, scaling up the production of floating coral larvae and seeding over 11,500 substrates with over 500,000 larvae to local reefs across the Dominican Republic and the Carribean island of Bonaire.
Coral Gamete CollectionMarvin del Cid
From Spain To The Dominican Republic
Sellares grow up next to the sea in La Costa Brava, Girona, Spain and after starting her degree in marine science, participated in different volunteer programs.
"I always knew I wanted to dedicate my time to something related to the sea," she says, adding that at the end of her degree, she did a course on coastal marine ecosystems in the Dominican Republic and volunteered there with the humpback whale research.
Sellares explains that this was a key moment, because she met FUNDEMAR founder and professor Idelisa Bonnely, who was known as the "mother of Caribbean marine biology" and passed away in 2022.
"At that moment, I thought my time in the DR was temporary, but Idelisa as a natural leader and mentor, was preparing me to follow in her footsteps with FUNDEMAR," she says, adding that she assumed full direction of FUNDEMAR in 2015.
Sellares says research in the Global South needs to be shared to help to provide solutions to global challenges; each institution or person can contribute to that.
"In our case, we have been able to create an important networks of partners and at the same time a network of collaborations in all the Caribbean, where we share and receive," she says, "we're learning at the same from each site and understanding the importance of local adaption and the creation of local projects."
Outplanting recruits of corals produced sexually.Marvin del Cid
Saving Turtles On An African Island
Another Iberian researcher who ended up in charge of a marine conversation NGO on an island nation is Estrela Matilde, ex-executive director of Fundação Príncipe.
Conservationists in Sao Tomé & Principe, a tiny, biodiverse African island nation are using "GPS in a bottle" to track the plastic pollution that plagues their shores.
The island of Príncipe formed 31 million years ago and its tropical forest is one of the most important bird conservation regions in Africa: 57% of the country’s 49 bird species are endemic according to the Convention on Biological Diversity — but its beaches are also key habitat for sea turtles.
Matilde, says that the NGO helped persuade a generation that it is no longer acceptable to consume turtle meat and advocated for the first marine protected area network in the country, but now turtles face a global threat: plastics.
"Despite our local efforts plastic from elsewhere is washed ashore daily: we find turtles with their system full of plastic every season and 25% of the videos collected from the 10 turtles we video-tagged showed plastic in the vital habitat of Principe's coastal waters," Matilde says.