By Kendyl Berna | Founder- Beyond The Reef
Greetings donor family, and happy new year!
Since we send these reports out every 3 months, I don't have any major news for you, but here are a few updates!
We have continued pushing ahead with the treatment of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) throughout the BVI. In the past 5 weeks we have unfortunately spotted it for the 1st time in the Horseshoe Reef of Anegada which is the largest reef in the BVI, and one of the largest barrier reefs in the Caribbean. There are certain areas that seem to have been heavily affected and others completely unaffected.
The affected areas seem to jump around quite a bit leading us to believe that there are currents at play that we aren't totally aware of, but we are hoping to study this as well. Additionally, reef cleaning fish such as Parrot Fish may be transporting the disease, so there are many factors in why it may be more prevalent in some areas than others. While we sadly can't save the entire reef with our team or resources, we have picked several areas that contain very large Stony Corals, such as big beautiful Brain Corals that we have been monitoring and treating to ensure that some of the most impressive ones are saved.
In addition to SCTLD, we have been monitoring our artificial reef dive sites. Both the Willy T and Shark Airplanes are doing great, but the airplanes recently required some maintenance to secure the wings for a while longer! We have also noticed some juvenile corals growing on the planes which indicates a recent coral spawning event nearby. As a side-note to this, I have included a link to a video of nighttime coral spawning that we recently captured which is really beautiful if you want to take a look.
Lastly, we have just pulled our shark-tag recievers out of the water. They are currently in a soap bath to get the algae off before we pull the card out and download the data this week. We will include those findings in our next report and hopefully have more data on that then.
And finally, we have applied for our own 501c3 in the US, so be on the lookout for "Beyond The Reef International" soon!
Links:
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