Thanks for stopping by,
as we say 'ALOHA'
to a hardy band
"A truly rich man
is one whose children run into his arms
when his hands are empty."
Anonymous
"She sits composedly sentinel, with paws tucked under her-" |
 Henry David Thoreau
|
<<>>
Gung Hee Fat Choy!
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")
祝你好运朋友！
Good Luck in the
Year of the Golden Rabbit!
<>
Today they get into the canoes.
Over a thousand of them will be taken offshore.
They have been carefully hand-raised
in a hatchery at Sand Island's Anuenue fisheries research station here on Oahu.
Now they have a job to do:
to restore the natural reef in Kaneohe Bay.
"aggressive seaweed"
is a growing problem for the fragile reef ecosystem
in the bay.
(Incidentally, that is the Kaneohe High School Mascot:
"The Aggressive Seaweeds."
Nah! Just kidding!)
“This is the first time we have been able to raise urchins
in captivity; very few places in the world ever do this,”
said Christy Martin with the Coordinating Group
on Alien Species.
Urchins?
March!
State aquatics resource scientist David Cohen
and his colleagues collected adult specimens from the wild
and used their sperm and eggs
to propagate the microscopic creatures
with a lot of trial and error
transferring the urchins from tank to tank as they grew.
Cohen calls them his babies,
and they eat a lot.
“We give them as much variety as we can.
We use native seaweeds and we fatten them up
until they can get out on the reefs and do their jobs,”
He says.
We needn't worry about the area being overrun with urchins, though,
“We can actually herd these guys like cows and goats.
We keep them where we want them
and if they migrate to
another area,
we pick them up and move them elsewhere,”
Cohen said.
The urchin release later today will happen
in water 2-6 feet deep.
His "babies' are not very poky, Cohen says.
"If you happen to step on them,
you are more likely to hurt the urchin than to get hurt yourself."
Go With God, Little Eco-Warriors!
What's going on in YOUR place today?
Tell us in Comments :) cloudia
