Do Coral Love Junk Food? |

Do Coral Love Junk Food?

For a long time, scientists thought that coral ate anything they could reach, but a 2017 study indicates that coral might actually prefer plastic. Surprising as it seems, coral may actually find the taste of plastic…well…yummy! A lot like humans, not everything they like may be good for them.

Plastic is the junk food of the ocean.

Coral use chemical sensors that work like taste buds to decide what to eat. When scientists gave coral the choice to eat tiny pieces of plastic or sand, they chose the plastic.

Well, sure. I mean . . . sand? Not even coral would to try to eat sand.

Then the scientists gave coral a choice between plain plastic and plastic coated in a microbial film. They theorized that the film would make the plastic more appealing to the coral.

Nope. Coral still preferred the regular plastic.

Does this mean that that coral can help solve the problem of plastic in the oceans by eating it? No, probably not. First, the size and amount of plastic consumed by coral is minute. Second, the coral can’t digest the plastic, so they eventually end up spitting most of it back out again. Worse, the plastic that the coral does eat might fill their stomachs, preventing them from eating nutritious food.

Junk food is junk, whether it’s on the land or in the sea, so don’t go thinking that throwing your garbage in the ocean is helping coral. Remember to recycle!

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Curriculum Reference Links

Earth & Space / Sustainability / 7: Students should be able to illustrate how earth processes and human factors influence the Earth’s climate, evaluate effects of climate change and initiatives that attempt to address those effects
Biological World / Sustainability / 10: Students should be able to evaluate how humans can successfully conserve ecological biodiversity and contribute to global food production; appreciate the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems
Chemical World / Sustainability / 10: Students should be able to evaluate how humans contribute to sustainability through the extraction, use, disposal, and recycling of materials

10 Fun Facts: The Hab

1. Aquarius is the the world’s only permanent undersea research station.

2. Most missions last about two or three weeks.

3. Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau, beat his grandfather’s record month-long underwater expedition by spending 31 days on the Aquarius Reef Base in 2014.

4. The lab is used by NASA, the US Navy, and researchers and educators from around the globe for training and research.

5. The internet connection is better in the Hab than at many places above the water.

6. You have to swim underneath the facility in order to enter it.

7. Crew members are called aquanauts (NOT aquaNUTS!)

8. In 1994, a crew of scientists and divers had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up a rescue line to the surface in 15-foot seas after one of the habitat’s generators caught fire.

9. Aquarius was featured in the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon in 2012.

10. The Hab was originally built in Texas.

10 Fun Facts: Coral

1. Reefs usually grow up on the east shore of land masses.

2. Parts of a coral reef can be harvested to make medications to treat cancers and other illnesses.

3. A coral reef isn’t a single organism; it’s actually a community of life that lives and thrives in one location.

4. Only about one percent of the world’s oceans contain coral reefs. That’s about the size of France.

5. Coral reefs are the largest biological structures on earth.

6. Corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

7. There are over 2,500 species of corals. About 1,000 are the hard corals that build coral reefs.

8. Reefs grow where there are stronger wave patterns and currents to deliver food and nutrients.

9. The Great Barrier Reef is 500,000 years old.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10 Fun Facts: Invasive Species

1. To be considered invasive, a species must adapt to a new area easily. It must reproduce quickly. It must harm property, the economy, or the native plants and animals of the region.

2. Some invasive species are introduced accidentally, but others are brought deliberately.

3. Ship ballast water transports between 3,000 and 7,000 foreign species daily around the globe.

4. The total loss to the world economy as a result of invasive non-native species has been estimated at 5% of annual production

5. Invasive species have contributed to 40% of the animal extinctions that have occurred in the last 400 years.

6. Rodents are some of the worst invasive species.

7. There are an estimated 50,000 wild ring-necked parakeets in parks across London and southeast England.

8. Black and Norway rats annually consume stored grains and destroy other property valued over $19 billion.

9. Northern Pacific seastars reproduce very quickly. In one area where they were introduced, their population reached an estimated 12 million seastars in just two years.

10. Starlings were introduced to New York in the late 1800s, as part of an attempt to bring animals that were mentioned in Shakespeare‘s work to America.

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