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    Reef and Rainforest
    Reef and Rainforest
    Reef and Rainforest
    Ebook242 pages1 hour

    Reef and Rainforest

    By Michael McCoy

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    About this ebook

    Reef and Rainforest is a photographic portrayal of marine and terrestrial life in one of the world's most biodiverse regions – the tropics of north-eastern Australia, together with the South Pacific nations of Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

    The photographs were taken over a period of more than 30 years while the author was living in the Solomon Islands and northern Australia. They depict life on the coral reefs, in the rainforests and in adjacent tropical savannahs. From detailed macro studies to sweeping scenics and aerials, the photographs are impressive for both their technical/compositional expertise and the unique insight they provide into the behavioural nuances of marine and terrestrial wildlife. Almost all the wildlife images are of free-living, non-posed subjects, photographed as they were encountered.

    Along with the stunning photography, the detailed and reflective captions are drawn from the author’s experiences. Reef and Rainforest conveys the richness and diversity of the natural world with maximum visual impact.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCSIRO PUBLISHING
    Release dateOct 1, 2010
    ISBN9780643102125
    Reef and Rainforest

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      Book preview

      Reef and Rainforest - Michael McCoy

      Coral. Even the word has a pleasing sound to it. Synonymous with the tropics, like hibiscus and frangipani. Coral reefs and clear, warm, sunlit waters—the urban dweller’s vision of paradise. It seems strange to think that the earliest naturalists considered coral to be a type of insect. Yet these early naturalists were closer to the mark than some of their eighteenth century counterparts who thought of corals as plants. For corals, like insects, are indeed animals, and the quarter million square kilometres of the Great Barrier Reef is often cited as the largest living organism in the world. Strictly speaking, this is not really correct, as the Great Barrier Reef is by no means a single reef but a multitude of many reefs and many reef types, some separated from each other by tens of kilometres. Nonetheless, the single organism analogy does serve to instil the idea that a reef as a whole is a living entity; albeit a colony of individual animals.

      Without corals, many Pacific islands would simply not exist, for the lowly coral polyp, forming its limy home of calcium carbonate derived from the surrounding waters has, over the aeons, provided the building blocks, the foundations, the very stuff of which many oceanic islands and atolls are made. And yet most of any coral reef is dead—inanimate limestone. The layer of life is but the thinnest veneer; living coral polyps building on the skeletons of their ancestors.

      If measured in terms of biomass, coral reefs must surely be one of the Earth’s richest biological communities, and yet they exist in seas that are extremely poor in nutrients. Charles Darwin observed and noted this paradox when he cruised the South Pacific in the Beagle, accurately describing coral reefs as oases in the ocean desert. The reason for this apparent paradox is that a healthy coral reef is able to recycle nutrients with a very high degree of efficiency, and such recycling reduces the overall nutrient load required by the reef ecosystem.

      FUNGIA CORAL. GUADALCANAL, SOLOMON ISLANDS

      The food energy utilised by all living organisms on the planet is ultimately fuelled by the sun, and on coral reefs, like terrestrial ecosystems, the sun’s energy is initially harnessed by the plants, the primary producers. In the shallow seas of the tropics, drifting through in the first few sunlit metres of the water, there are billions upon billions of single-celled plants. These myriad species are called phytoplankton, the botanical component of the reef’s planktonic soup. Like any green plant, they photosynthesise, utilising sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. When the phytoplankton is eaten by the zooplankton—their animal counterparts—these carbohydrates enter the food chain. And of course the zooplankton is in turn eaten by small reef animals, vertebrate and invertebrate, which in their turn are then preyed upon by larger animals or parasites and so on up the food chain—all the way to the top predators on the reef, such as the sharks. While herbivorous animals such as algae-eating fish are not a direct link on this very simplified description of a carnivorous food chain, they are certainly one of its side branches, as they are of course preyed upon by the larger meat-eaters, or the myriad of tiny animal parasites. And of course ultimately every living thing on the reef dies, and their dead tissues are consequently broken down by bacteria. This bacterial delay releases trace elements back into the reef ecosystem; trace elements that are essential for the existence of the phytoplankton. And so the cycle renews itself.

      Plants are also more directly involved in maintaining the very existence of a coral reef. One of the most important distinguishing features of the reef-building corals is the presence in their living tissues of millions of microscopic single-celled plants called zooxanthellae. These tiny plants—solar energy cells really—use the energy of the sun to convert carbon dioxide—a waste product of the polyp—into food and oxygen; the same photosynthesis practised by any green leaf. The zooxanthellae provide the coral polyp with perhaps as much as 90% of its nutritional requirements and also enable the polyp to manufacture the calcium carbonate essential for reef-building. Without sunlight the zooxanthellae could not exist and so there could be no coral reef. For this reason, most hard, reef-building corals live only in the upper sunlit regions of the sea, in depths less than around 60 m.

      And it is not only sunlight that is essential for zooxanthellae to survive—they can only live within a narrow range of temperatures. Reef-building corals are found in waters where the temperatures are relatively constant; normally in the vicinity of around 18–32°C, but do best with an optimum range of about 25–27°C. A few degrees rise or fall outside their temperature tolerance, maintained for several weeks, cause the zooxanthellae to become detached from the cells of their coral host. It is the zooxanthellae in the coral polyp’s tissues that gives the coral its colour and when the coral loses its zooxanthellae it also loses its colour, leaving only its white, limy, external skeleton exposed. This is the well-documented phenomenon of coral bleaching, and in recent times is most usually associated with rising sea temperatures supposedly as a result of global warming, though it’s actually a manifestation of any type of environmental stress that the coral is experiencing.

      GALAXEA CORAL. GUADALCANAL, SOLOMON ISLANDS

      Many coral species lack zooxanthellae in their tissues and without the need for light, can live in caves or in the sunless depths—but they cannot build reefs. And although there are corals that live in colder, temperate waters, it is only in the tropics that they form vast reef complexes.

      In the middle of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin devised a simple classification of coral reefs that is still maintained today. Firstly there are fringing reefs. These are young, recent structures built up in the shallow seas at the edge of a land mass. Then there are the barrier reefs which develop in deeper water offshore and are separated from the land mass by lagoons. Lastly, oceanic atolls form on the peaks of extinct submarine volcanoes.

      While the living corals are the obvious major physical component of a reef, they are only a part of a much more complex structure. The coral provides the framework for the reef, but other organisms hold it all together. Many molluscs have a calcium shell, and creatures such as sponges and sea cucumbers have calcium spicules in their tissues. Similarly, many marine algae are rich in calcium. When these animals and plants die, their calcareous remains are carried by waves and currents into the interstices between the corals, the calcium binding and strengthening the reef.

      Corals are cnidarians (the ‘c’ is silent), a group of animals that includes the jellyfish and sea anemones. They have the simplest of body forms—a cylinder ringed at the top with tentacles and a single opening for the entry of nutrients and the excretion of wastes. The tentacles contain specialised cells that contain the stinging nematocysts that are used for immobilising living prey. Although almost all corals are a colony of animals, it is not analogous to say, a colony of bees, where related individuals perform different functions to the common good. Rather a coral colony is a single individual, multiplied many times over.

      In the broadest terms, corals are categorised by the type of structures or ‘skeletons’ that they build. The hard or stony corals form a limestone cup about themselves. They may form branches, plates or mounds. Branching is the preferred form of many of the hard corals. Such shape utilises more available living space on the reef. The form the branching takes is determined by the immediate environment in which the colony lives.

      Those colonies dwelling on the outer seaward slopes tend to develop heavy, robust branches, better able to withstand the wave action. The same species living in a sheltered lagoon tend to a more delicate, finer shape. In contrast to the hard corals, the soft corals do not, on first appearance, seem to have any sort of skeletal structure. However, in their

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