Coral Line by: Catherine Joyce, David Joyce, Maria Joyce & Angela Rawlinson
Message: “For Jim: Now your presence will always be in the Maldives”
Coral Type: Branching
Coral species: Acropora selago
Note: Being the only line of this species, we are interested to see how it is growing. A. selago was a very fragile species to fragment. Myself and Vaidas had 2 hypotheses for this line: 1) We believed it would grow very quickly to make up for it’s brittle skeletal structure, and 2) it would likely have a high mortality rate, as it may suffer more from fragmentation stress. With a 67% survival rate after just 3 months, and a further drop in survival after 6 months, it looks like our second hypothesis was correct, but 6.2mm growth per 3 months so far is very slow growth, which does not conform with the usual ‘weak skeleton, fast growth’ rule that appears to be true for other species such as A. aspera.
