Transplanted Acropora tenuis (Dana) spawned first in their life 4 years after culture from eggs

Abstract

About 2000 juvenile colonies of Acropora tenuis had been cultured in cages from eggs in June 2005. They were transplanted with concrete plates onto bommies at Akajima Island, Okinawa, in December 2006 when they had grown to an average diameter of 5.8 cm in the horizontal plane (Omori et al. 2008). The corals grew smoothly until they were deadly damaged by typhoon- driven waves in July 2007. Some survived colonies were seen to have mature gametes when they had grown to 20-25 cm, and more than seventeen 4-year old and 5-year old colonies out of about sixty colonies had spawned on June 8 and 9, 2009, synchronizing with other colonies, the first time in their life. Age at first reproduction of some species of Acropora has been estimated to be 3-5 years from their minimum size of matured colonies (Wallace 1985); the present results are consistent with this. To our knowledge, complete coral culture in open water has been reported twice in the temperate waters of Japan (Misaki 2008; Hayashi and Iwase 2010). This is the first record of successful culture in the subtropical reef area. Although for only one species as yet, it shows a possibility of using this culturing technique to assist local coral reef res toration. Acknowledgement