I spent the day splitting time with two of the aquarium's departments, animal husbandry and artistic productions. In the morning I spent a lot of time cleaning hair algae off of many of the live coral that is located in the back holding tank. Every few weeks or so the aquarists have to get rid of the algae that likes to grow on the coral because it hinders their ability to grow. In the aquarium, there is only one tank that houses the live coral. This is to help educate the public on the slow reproductive life cycle of coral and how long it takes a coral to form habitable coral reef habitats. So, while cleaning the many species of both soft and hard coral, the divers taught me a lot about what coral needs to thrive and how coral bleaching has a devastating affect on the ecosystem.
-Hard coral is made up of a calcium carbonate shell (CaCo3)
-Hard coral is home to tiny zooxanthellae algae which provides food for coral through photosynthesis, they also give coral its many vibrant colors
-Coral is actually an animal, not a plant
-Both soft and hard coral are part of the phylum cnidaria, invertebrates that have special stinging cells called nematocysts that help to capture prey and protect themselves from predators.
I really enjoyed talking to the divers about the coral reefs because I could see how truly passionate they were about trying to keep the coral healthy to the best of their abilities.
Thursday
Cleaning the coral beds was also a great review for today because I spent a lot of time with the education department teaching school groups about coral reef habitats. In the morning session, we had about 80 fourth graders at the aquarium to learn about everything there is to know about coral; what they are, where they are found, what makes them healthy, what an unhealthy reef looks like, and much much more. After the very informative lesson, we took the kids on a tour of the aquarium so that they could look for different kinds of coral (real and fake) and healthy indicator fish within the exhibits. They got really excited to identify yellow tangs and butterfly fish because they are fish that are good indicators of a strong and healthy coral reef. It was really fun to be with the kids all day because their enthusiasm was just inspiring! It was a really great day.
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