St. Croix #2

Today I went to the lab where they showed me how they regrow coral so that they can be more healthy and also increase in size. This is called Fragmentation, you cut up a large chunk of coral into small pieces (size depends on the kind of coral) and it triggers an emergency growth and regeneration signal in the coral so that they grow rapidly. I would not have suspected that to grow more coral you actually need to cut up a piece of living coral so that they regenerate fast. The pictures below show the start of a coral and the fragmentation process to produce more of them, once the coral gets cut into small pieces, they are placed in a tank of saltwater that has proper proportions of the nutrients they need to be able to thrive.









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