Pictured above is a very tiny (10mm) shrimp that lives commensally with Ricordea florida polyps.

Over the past several years I have occasionally encountered fleeting glimpses of tiny shrimp that live amongst the pseudo-tentacles of Ricordea florida. On all the previous occasions that encountered one, I had never been properly equipped with a super-macro camera  kit. A dive this past September finally warranted a good photo. Ricordea shrimp are tiny (8-12mm) and nearly transparent, making them very difficult to detect. It is unlikely that these might be juveniles of a more common commensal species (e.g. Periclimenes pedersoni, P. rathbunae, or P. yucatanicus), as it is clear from the photo above (and from recently collected specimens) that they are mature egg-bearing females at this small size. If you look closely at the photo, you’ll notice in the upper left-hand side of the photo that there is another pair of eyes. At the time of the photo I didn’t notice that there were several other tiny and completely clear shrimp living with this female. It was only while viewing the photos close-up that I noticed these other shrimp. Most likely they are male or juvenile females living colonially. On subsequent dive trips I have found several groups (3-5) of these tiny shrimp all living on the same R. florida colony.

Today we are sending off a preserved specimen to Periclimines shrimp expert Dr. Stephen Spotte for taxonomic inspection. He will be able to determine whether this shrimp has been previously identified, or whether we are dealing with a new species altogether.

An unusual colony of Discosoma sanctithomae with perfectly spherical vesicles from the Florida Keys at 10m of depth.  Note the turbid sea floor, characteristic of this species’ preferred habitat.

The unusual spherical vesicles of these Discosoma sanctithomae polyps once gave this morph a separate species designation Orinia torpida by Duchassaing & Michelotti in 1860. Despite several other taxonomists re-examining the single preserved specimen in the Zoological Museum of Turin in the first half of the 20th century, it was the late great corallimorph taxonomist J. C. Den Hartog who finally corrected this error in 1980. It is understandable that such confusion could occur. Until the advent of scuba diving, many taxonomists would never actually observe the living marine animals they classified. Instead these Euro-centric scientists would rely on preserved specimens sent back to them from various collection missions around the world. With few specimen samples to compare with, morphologic oddities like the pictured polyps could easily be considered to be something entirely new.

Success! The Quest is complete.

For the third dive we had a definitive lead on where we’d find the Corynactis viridis. My friend Laurent Foure is the curator of the public aquarium in Cap d’Agde; about 2.5 hours westward along the coast of the  Mediterranean. Laurant is an avid diver, and is very familiar with the marine environment nearby his aquarium. He was able to connect us with a dive operator who could take us by boat to a dive spot inhabited by Corynactis viridis.

(more…)

This neon green Ricordea florida polyp displays a few abnormally large tentacles. This is an unusual characteristic not yet observed before in the Coral Morphologic Lab.

We were disheartened to receive a call from our good friend Lauren Reskin, owner of Sweat Records, this past Sunday with the news that her store had been broken into, thieved, and trashed. The worst karmic act committed was the wanton destruction of the Red Sea Max that we installed and maintained as a gift to her store and our friends that frequented it. We set up the aquarium at the very end of November 2007 for the opening of Sweat’s third incarnation here in Miami.

According to the police, the thieves cut through the security gates of the store’s back entrance early Sunday morning and proceeded to steal the store’s computer, electronic equipment, several pieces of art from the walls and… knock over the aquarium.

This what we arrived to find (minus the live rock and corals that we had already gathered up by this point in our effort to revive what we could.

Sweat Records was closed on Sunday, so it wasn’t until almost 9 pm Sunday night that Lauren happened to be driving by her store and noticed the break in. It is likely that the contents of the aquarium were dry for over 18 hours.

We arrived at Sweat Records in a daze, unable to believe that someone would go through the trouble of destroying an aquarium just for the thrill of instant destruction, until we saw it with our own eyes. We were expecting the worst; that nothing could possibly still be alive.

All of the fish were dead. We hypothesize that the impact and subsequent shock-wave of the aquarium shattering against the floor must have killed them immediately as there was several inches of standing-water still on the floor that could have otherwise provided them with refuge.

However, there was some good news. Both of the harlequin serpent stars and a porcelain crab showed minimal signs of life, despite being nearly dry. When plopped into a plastic bag with water, they revived within a few minutes. The snails and blue leg hermit crabs all survived. We were initially highly skeptical that the Discosoma sp. corallimorphs would survive 18+ hours out of water, but we gathered up all of the pieces of live rock and brought them back to our facility anyhow. We didn’t want to put them into our holding or grow-out systems, as we were afraid that if they died as we expected, they would only foul the water. Instead, we placed them in two 18 gallon mortar tubs with heavy aeration and a power head and hoped for the best.

The severed arm of a harlequin serpent star is seen above. Fortunately, the serpent survived the ordeal and more than 18 hours out of water. It will regenerate this arm in short time. The fish weren’t so lucky.

To attest to the ruggedness of the Red Sea Max, the hood and even the light bulbs remained undamaged despite the brute force impact. Likewise, the RSM’s silver stand escaped even minor scratches despite landing face down. The two return pumps were the only other parts of the RSM beside the actual glass aquarium that had to be thrown out. Because the electrical cords never pulled out of the wall, they continued to run dry after the fall.  This caused them to overheat and melt together! The Current 1/10hp chiller managed to unplug itself and therefore survived with nary a blemish.

We were relieved the following morning to find that most of the corallimorphs were recovering nicely. Now, almost a week later, they have nearly made a complete recovery. We did lose a few polyps, but I’d estimate at least 80% survivorship.

Unfortunately, we did lose about half of the pink coralline algae from the live rock. Coralline algae does the most amazing thing when it dies; it fluoresces a bubble gum pink color. While temporarily beautiful, it soon turns to a dead white bleached state within a day or so. If anyone knows why this phenomenon occurs, please inform us. To lose this much coralline algae cover from your live rock after nearly a year of cultivation is a real bummer.

You can see a fluorescence photograph of the live rock below:

The dying pink crustose coralline algae fluoresces after death. The photograph was taken under blue wavelength (450 nm) light to maximize fluorescence. Several gold and green Discosoma sp. can also be seen fluorescing, despite 18 hours out of water.

While dismayed at losing this aquarium, and just as it was maturing into an exceptional little reef aquarium, we are not deterred. Sweat Records will be holding a series of benefit concerts in the next several weeks to help raise money for a better security system and a new aquarium. We hope to have another aquarium up and running by the time of Sweat’s first anniversary of being in their current location. We’ll keep you posted.

Here are a couple of articles written by local blogs about the break in:

Miami New Times

ARTLURKER

There has been recent interest in the corallimorpharians by marine biologists, due to genetic studies that demonstrate that some hard corals (Scleractinia) are actually more closely related to corallimorphs than to other members of Scleractinia. This has resulted in several papers that suggest that corallimorphs once had a Scleractinian ancestor with a calcium carbonate skeleton. Prior to these genetic studies, it had been suggested (through taxonomic studies) that corallimorphs were in fact more closely related to sea anemones (Actiniaria).

To explain why the loss of this skeleton may have occurred, researchers have been suggesting that increased levels of carbon dioxide during the Triassic period (from about 200-240 million years ago), would have caused a reduction in oceanic pH, which resulted in a decreased ability by hard corals to build a calcium carbonate skeleton. These conditions would therefore select for corals that could adapt to live without their skeletons. And voila!, the corallimorpharians were born. Unfortunately, the fossil record of corallimorpharians is minimal due to their lack of calcium carbonate skeleton, making this claim hard to prove. It is certainly a very seductive argument, especially now that atmospheric levels of CO2 are once again rising to levels that may soon have a detrimental impact on hard corals and their ability to continue reef building. This has some scientists positing that in the future as hard corals start dying off, soft bodied anthozoans will once again have an adaptive advantage, resulting in their proliferation.

An interesting poster entitled “Mechanisms of Microhabitat Segregation among Corallimorpharians”, examined the ability of two common Red Sea corallimorphs to handle UV light stress. One species Rhodactis rhodostoma, is commonly found in shallow-water reef flats where light intensity is very high. The other, Discosoma unguja, is common at deeper depths in shaded areas. The researchers exposed both species to identical conditions of light with several variable treatments (high light, shaded, etc.).

To understand what the researchers were looking for, as far as “light stress” is concerned, one must understand what happens within the corals’ tissues and zooxanthellae during photosynthesis. To summarize, one byproduct of zooxanthellae photosynthesis is the formation of highly reactive and potentially damaging oxygen ions. The coral must deactivate these harmful byproducts in order to prevent tissue damage. Fortunately, corals have evolved certain enzymes that are capable of deactivating these oxygen radicals. This is the reason why it is very easy to “light shock” your corals by rapidly increasing the amount of light they receive. The coral is simply unprepared to deactivate all of the additional harmful byproducts of the increased photosynthetic activity.   typical emergency reaction by the coral is to expel its zooxanthellae  (bleaching) so that no further damage can occur.

Anyway, back to the study at hand. When the Discosoma unguja were placed under full strength light, they showed a decided inability to handle the affects of increased photosynthetic activity. Instead of an enzymatic ability to deal with high light, they expressed an ability to move away from the light source. Crafty little creatures.

Rhodactis rhodostoma, on the other hand, proved to be resilient to high levels of light. Tissue analysis showed much higher levels of the enzymes necessary for deactivating harmful oxygen ions than in D. unguja.

What the study did not mention however, was whether the Discosoma unguja could be acclimated to higher light over a long period of time. And if so, would they be capable of gradually increasing their enzymatic abilities? If the Discosoma were taken from a shaded location and immediately exposed to high light, one could only expect a rapid stress response.   But as we aquarists have learned, corals can be highly adaptive to unnatural conditions so long as the conditions do not rapidly fluctuate.

This study seems to reinforce the hypothesis that as climactic and atmospheric conditions become more extreme, the corallimorphs are poised to be able to adapt (some might even say morph) swimmingly to changing water chemistry, nutrient and temperature increases, even as hard corals decline.

To those in the 305 area code (786 too!), we’ll be leading the first edition of the Sweat Science Club. Get urself blinded by science!