Science Research Paper

Aspergillosis and Patchy Necrosis

Coral diseases, like all animals corals can get diseases. Coral diseases can be huge a problem to coral reefs. Just one disease can wipe one whole part of a coral reef. Coral diseases happen when a coral isn’t in a good condition. Coral diseases can happen from physical damage, bad water, algae, sea temperature, excess nutrients, etc.

Coral diseases generally occur in response to biological stresses, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and non-biological stresses, such as increased sea surface temperatures, ultraviolet radiation and pollutants. Unfortunately coral diseases have been going up in the last 10 years and many corals have died. Every single coral disease has different symptoms and capabilities. The worst of diseases can completely get rid of whole colonies of corals.

The diseases Aspergillosis is most frequently occurring in gorgonian corals. Coral diseases most frequently happen from bad nutrients in the water because of people throwing trash into the sea. Very little is known about what causes coral diseases. For the few coral diseases that are known only a few of their causes are known. Unfortunately some people don’t care about what they dump into the water and it’s causing major trauma for the marine life.

One factor that is believed to be a threat to coral reefs is the climate change. In order for some corals to grow, those need to keep the temperatures between 73 and 84ºF. Rising sea levels cause these corals to end their growing. This causes them to die and end reproduction. Also, the burning fossil fuels can cause the ocean’s acid levels to increase making the coral reefs an uninhabitable place for marine life. This will cause the marine life unhealthy and will probably cause extinction of corals in about 10,000 years.

Another way that corals can die are from pollution. Coral reefs can be strongly hurt by the human’s pollution. The fact that people visit the coral reefs with boats which contain gasoline can affect their ecosystem. Creatures that survive in the reefs can die caused to us leaving plastic bottles, nets etc. the same way reefs are the homes to fish, a house is our home. We should treat their home in a respectful way because we don’t see fish throwing eggs at our houses so let’s not throw trash at their.

Another way is coral bleaching. It results from the loss of symbiotic zooxanthealae and/or a reduction in photosynthetic pigment concentrations in zooxanthellae residing within scleractinian corals. Coral reef bleaching is caused by various anthropogenic and natural variations in the reef environment including sea temperature, solar irradiance, sedimentation, inorganic nutrients, or many more. Coral bleaching events have been increasing in both frequency and extent worldwide in the past 20 years. Global climate change may play a role in the increase in coral bleaching events, and could cause the destruction of major reef tracts and the extinction of many coral species.

There are many ways we can prevent coral reefs to die from diseases. One of the ways are by not using boats with gasoline. Instead, using solar power. Satellite technology is also used to detect harmful algal blooms that can smother reefs and to monitor elevated sea surface temperatures, which can cause coral bleaching. We can end this by actually going there in a solar powered boat to study the corals by snorkeling.

Aspergillosis is a lesion producing fungal infection of Caribbean soft corals. It affects 6 species of sea fans and sea whips and is widespread throughout the Caribbean. The pathogen is Aspergillosis sydowii. That pathogen is a terrestrial fungus that infects the gorgonian coral after germination of spores on the corals surface. The disease later infects hyphae in the coral tissue. This causes lesions takes the corals tissue and

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