Times of the Islands Fall 2022

green pages newsletter of the department of environment & coastal resources
The Turks & Caicos Reef Fund (TCRF) has been monitoring
and documenting this disease since mid-2019 and
has been fighting this disease since early 2020. It has
been a hard fight though, as each infected coral head
must be treated individually while scuba diving. This is a
very labor intensive and costly process, but a necessary
effort in hopes of preserving the biodiversity of the TCI
reefs.
There are rarely single-focused answers though,
and even less so with biological/environmental work. To
enhance our ability to preserve our reefs, the TCRF has
added another weapon to our armory in the battle against
this aggressive and deadly disease. TCRF has established
the first land-based coral nursery in the Turks & Caicos
Islands which will serve as the pilot for a large gene banking
program the organization is planning. Funded by a
grant from the John Ellerman Foundation in the UK, the
pilot project was built in June 2022 and is already housing
live stony corals. The SCTLD-threatened coral colonies
currently in the nursery were salvaged from the Blue
Haven Marina docks that were scheduled to be removed
and taken to the dump.
This project is an effort to create a species survival
program for stony corals that have been severely affected
by Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease. The nursery is located
at the TCRF office at South Bank Marina. The facility was
built with the assistance of coral nursery specialists from
The Reef Institute of West Palm Beach, FL and it is open
to visitors.
SCTLD has exacted a terrible toll and several species
are already functionally extinct on TCI reefs due to the
disease. Without this gene-banking effort, many of these
coral species could be lost forever. The pilot nursery will
enable TCRF staff and volunteers to learn coral husbandry
and coral tank maintenance. Already, they are learning
that running a land-based coral nursery is a complicated
process. Corals, which are animals, must be fed and their
water quality must be maintained within very stringent
parameters. And, the tanks must be kept clean. But fortunately,
with the help of trained volunteers, TCRF is
quickly learning the ins and outs of farming coral on land.
TCRF’s long-term goal is to expand the land-based
coral nursery program which will allow us to propagate
thousands of these important reef building corals and
ultimately restore them to the reefs around the Turks &
Caicos Islands. Working with the developers of the South
Bank community, TCRF hopes to expand this effort on a
much larger scale within the next two years. The expansion
will also include a coral research and education
center.
The office is open to the public and interested parties
should contact Alizée via email on alizee@tcreef.org to
arrange a visit. “Coral Ecology 101” school visits can be
arranged as well. a
TURKS & CAICOS REEF FUND
The new coral nursery is located at the TCRF office at South Bank Marina. It is open to visitors.
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