Coral Fincas on Playa Soldado

These photos feature a coral restoration technique developed in Puerto Rico by local marine biologists. The technique uses stabilizers seen in these photos to propogate coral fragments for tranplant to natural reef. The platforms seen in the photos below are collectively called by the local name coral finca or coral farm. This method has allowed the scientists to investigate disease, and investigate clone specific immunity of certain fragments. The photos in this project feature two species of corals (Acropora cervicornis and Acropora prolifera) that are now candidates for the endangered species list. Once predominant reef building corals in the Caribbean, these species have undergone an historically unprecedented decline. There has been an 80% loss in Caribbean acroporid corals over the past three decades. Coral disease and predation linked to coastal water pollution and overfishing of reef fish have been implicated. Tragically, these are preventable human impacts, but regulation has proven inadequate. Impacts from development that results in coastal runoff of sediment contaminating coastal waters, although illegal, continue causing irrepairable harm unenforced.The photos below show a coral farm created and monitored by Dr. Edwin Hernandez Delgado just off of Playa Soldado on the island of Culebra. Project partners include La Asociacion de Pescadores de Culebra (The Commercial Fishermen's Association of Culebra) and CORALations. The Finca concept was originally developed by Antonio Ortiz of ReefScaping in Puerto Rico.