“The Osborne Laboratories of Marine Sciences, which is connected with the Aquarium for Wildlife Conservation in Brooklyn, NY, has set up a Coral Cultural Laboratory. Most of the coral work that has been done has been done in the field, which is very hard to control. It’s hard to control just one factor to run an experiment. So, the purpose of this laboratory is to look at various factors under controlled conditions — factors such as temperature, ultraviolet radiation, the effects of various chemicals, to find out what levels it actually takes to kill corals, or to affect them.”
The results of these experiments will guide scientists in how to best rehabilitate the remaining coral reefs as well as how to grow coral in the laboratory.
“Another purpose of the laboratory is to gain information on how to propogate corals. Corals are being imported into the aquarium trade in larger and larger volumes. And because of that, we believe that it’s important to try to determine how to grow corals because they really can be grown like plants in that you can break them off and propogate them.”
And the more corals that are grown in the lab, the fewer that are being harvested from the ocean for aquarium use. Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. I’m Jim Metzner.