Check out this video some of my students put together

I saw this on FB and watched it twice! I need to see that for myself! I wish I lived closer, I'd LOOOVE this class!

Hey I know that rbta!!! great vid things are definitely growing well!!

Sent from my SCH-I535 using ProBoards

Very cool and I am 100% supportive of captive propagation as well as well regulated collection. I just wish that the causes of reef degradation were presented and weighted appropriately. Collection is so far down the list of activities that damage reefs...

- Construction and development causing silting and nutrification can destroy whole reefs
- Construction and development using coral as a raw ingredient. Coral is used to make concrete or as fill, say for new airport runways. Can't find the article, but I read somewehere (Aquarium Magazine I think) that tens of thousands of square meters of reef were destroyed to build runways at Singapore Int'l Airport. The article put this into context next to collection...it would take hundreds of years of collection to equal this damage done in a few months.
- Acidification through CO2 emissions impacts corals' ability worldwide to lay down strong skeletons
- Global Warming creates stress on the corals or outright kills some species
- Disease wiping out key species (Diadema antillarum in the Caribbean)
- Etc

Thanks for the great work Christian. Keep educating people to the value of the natural world.