Coral Health and Disease in the Pacific: Vision for Action

Fish bites: This was manifested by wellcircumscribedlocalized loss of tissueaccompanied by bare eroded skeleton (Fig.4). On histology, these lesions werecharacterized by fragmentation of coraltissue with depletion of zooxanthella fromgastrodermis.Figure 4. Montipora sp. fish bite. Notecharacteristic erosion of skeleton andloss of tissue.Subacute tissue loss: This was manifestedby complete tissue loss of single polypsrevealing bare intact skeleton completelycovered with algae. Only Lobophyllia sp.was sampled with this lesion (Figure 5).Figure 5. Lobophyllia tissue lossAcute tissue loss: This was manifested by a well-circumscribed diffuse area of tissueloss revealing intact white skeleton. The tissue loss usually encompassed the edge of thecolony. On histology, the major changes seen included no lesions, tissue fragmentation,or hypertrophy of calicoblastic epithelium. In some cases, this tissue loss was associatedwith presence of corallivorous snails. Tissue loss in P. rus was attributed, on microscopy,to infestation with sponges associated with necrosis. (Fig. 6).200