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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED APRIL 24 - DISPATCH BY BRIAN COUSIN 
April 24th, 2002. Early on this picture-perfect Key Largo morning, Harbor Branch's
Kevin Gaines loaded a precious cargo of coral reef cuttings onto a 42-foot dive boat
for a journey six miles out into the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. There on
the reef, assisted by ORA Research Assistant Dustin Dorton, he and Sanctuary biologist Harold Hudson 'planted'
the coral specimens on the damaged reef.
The dive boat, provided by Kelly's by the Bay/Aqua-Nuts moored over the shallow reef before 8 a.m. in ideal weather and sea conditons. A persistent east wind had dropped the day before, but was predicted to pick up again by afternoon. Seas ran 1-2 feet, with minimal surge affecting the reef crest. In the water, Dorton ferried football-sized loads of special cement preparation from the surface to Dr. Hudson, who pushed it into PVC forms placed in predetermined locations on the reef. A masonry nail hammered into the bottom helped anchor the mixture. Gaines pushed his cultured coral plugs into each of the rings, and Dr. Hudson troweled the cement to a smooth finish. In under one-and-a-half hours, all of the coral plugs had been successfully situated. With all divers safely aboard, the boat returned to Kelly's, navigating through a spectacular mangrove stand hemming the shore. Thanks to Harbor Branch's Public Relations Director, Geoff Oldfather, for organizing media coverage of the event. Local news stations aired stories the same day. CBS Sunday Morning will air a special segment nationally in May or June - the date will be posted on this site when it is finalized. Thanks again to Dave Rosenthal and Kelly's by the Bay for their participation, and to the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund who provided the financial support to make this very worthwhile project a practical reality. 
UNDERWATER MISSION FOOTAGE - QUICKTIME FORMAT
MARK SCHROPE - @SEA CORRESPONDENT Hoping to help stem the rapid decline of coral sea fans in the Florida Keys, researchers from HARBOR BRANCH have recently planted aquarium-raised sea fans at the site of a ship grounding that destroyed a huge swath of reef near Key Largo. The project is jointly funded by HBOI and the Disney Conservation Fund. It began four years ago when Kevin Gaines, a marine biologist with the Harbor Branch subsidiary Ocean Reefs & Aquariums, and his colleagues, collected 80 clippings from sea fans in the Keys to study and grow at HARBOR BRANCH. 
Small clippings of sea fans, which are really colonies of tiny soft corals called Gorgonia
ventalina, can grow to form new colonies. In addition to such "asexual" reproduction,
sea fans in the wild also reproduce sexually by releasing fountains of fertilized eggs as
many corals do, but this has never actually been observed and the full reproductive cycle
is not known. "It's amazing how little information there is on these animals that live right
off the beach," says Gaines.
In April, Gaines transported tank-raised sea fan clippings offshore to a reef damaged when a ship ran aground near South Carysfort Reef off Key Largo. Gaines and his assistant, Dustin Dorton, managed to plant 20 clippings in 10 feet of water. Meanwhile on the surface, members of the press, including reporters from National Geographic and CBS News Sunday Morning, were waiting in the dive boat to hear the outcome of dive. The story aired on CBS Sunday, July 21. "We're definitely happy with how it went," Gaines said after the dive. "The seedlings will have to adapt to their new home and to the currents, something I couldn't simulate in a tank, but we're optimistic. That is the biggest challenge, to see if they can withstand the surge in potentially rough seas and shallow water." Kevin will be going back routinely to examine the plantings and, with another 60 cuttings ready to go, is planning for additional reseeding trips.The sea fans are raised in shallow water tanks with conditions such as temperature precisely controlled to support them. The main food source for sea fans and most other corals is symbiotic algae that live within them. The system also includes water jets that come on intermittently to simulate ocean currents. This supports sea fans' secondary food intake system, which is to gather marine life in the web formed by their fans. Gaines' team has been experimenting with different foods to see which can help the sea fans grow fastest. They have tried algae and commercial aquarium foods, but so far, minute marine organisms called rotifers have worked best. 
The
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary has already done extensive work to repair the site,
mainly by armoring the damaged areas with slabs of concrete embedded with limestone chunks
to mimic as well as possible the natural reef and allow animals to recolonize it. Left
unrepaired, reef wounds typically will not heal because the damaged area increases each time
it is battered by a large storm.
Harold Hudson, a reef restoration biologist with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary who is working with Gaines, says repair of damaged reefs is critical, particularly in light of current declines. "Just like a human patient is less able to recover when they are already sick, a reef that's under stress is less able to recover from an additional insult." The sea fan transplanting will become part of this larger effort. The hope is that the "planted" sea fans will mature and then reproduce sexually to populate the reef with countless new sea fans. Gaines says that reseeding with cultivated, or aquacultured, sea fans rather than waiting for natural recolonization by wild sea fans could shave years off the time it takes for them to recover in the area. "It is a most intriguing experiment," says Hudson, "I'll really be watching this with great interest." 
The Keys sea fan population has been declining rapidly, not only because human factors such
as pollution can harm or kill them, but because of a disease called Aspergillosis that has
been infecting an increasing number of them. Researchers do not yet know how the disease,
caused by infection from the Aspergillus fungus, made it to the sea fans, as it normally
afflicts plants on land. One theory is that the fungal spores made it into the ocean in
freshwater runoff. Another stranger idea, but one increasingly supported by research, is
that the spores arrived on dust blown across the Atlantic from Africa.
In the long run, Gaines hopes that soft and hard corals grown at aquaculture facilities such as those at HARBOR BRANCH might be used to reverse the decline of Keys reefs that could even lead to the disappearance of some species in the foreseeable future. However, until problems such as pollution from septic tanks leaking into the ocean are brought under control, reseeding cannot be accomplished effectively. "Culturing [corals] is great, but putting them back into an environment where they are going to struggle is not going to help." 
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