Recifes de Coral de Profundidade: Corais Construtores e sua Distribuição no Brasil

Abstract

Pires, D.O.; Seabra, N.A. & Silva, J.V.C., (2015). Recifes de Coral de Profundidade: Corais Construtores e sua Distribuição no Brasil. Braz. J. Aquat. Sci. Technol. 19(3). eISSN 1983-9057. DOI: 10.14210/bjast.v19n3. Deep-sea coral reefs and coral habitats are hotspots of biodiversity and provide numerous resources for fishing, bioprospecting and science. The deep-water coral reefs and coral aggregates were first discovered in locations off the coast of Norway, in 1865. The increase of commercial operations in deep waters, and the use of advanced technology in offshore areas have revealed the true scale of deep-sea coral ecosystems of Europe, until then virtually unknown. From the 1990's, there was a considerable increase in the number of important scientific contributions on deep-sea coral habitats. So, today is known that the occurrence of coral reefs is not restricted to shallow waters of tropical and subtropical regions and that there are deep-sea coral reefs spread out of the world, including Brazil. The goal of this study was to indicate the existence of potential areas of deep-sea coral reefs/habitats along the Brazilian coast, from records of occurrence of coral reef builders species (Lophelia pertusa, Madrepora oculata, Solenosmilia variabilis, Dendrophyllia alternata and Enallopsammia rostrata). The examination of the records/specimens demonstrated an extensive and almost continuous latitudinal distribution of the coral species along the Brazilian coast.Fishing is the main cause of impact to deep-sea coral reefs in several regions of the world. For more than a decade the deep demersal fishing has been held in Brazil and the extent of the impact caused by fishing nets, used by the boats close to the reefs, is unknown. The data presented here provide a contribution not only to the scientific community, but also to the decision makers regarding the uses of areas of the Brazilian shelf and slope, which represent reservoirs of rich marine biodiversity.

Deep-sea coral Lophelia pertusa laboratory maintenance and exposure to barite using water recirculation systems

“…This effort constituted an unprecedented initiative in Brazil, with major initial challenges regarding a lack of research institutes near sources of good quality seawater, which led to the adoption of a recirculating system instead of a flow-through system. L. pertusa was chosen as the test organism because it is the most widely distributed and well-studied structure-forming deep-sea coral, both in Brazil (Pires, 2007;Pires et al, 2015) and worldwide (Freiwald et al, 2004). These hard corals are sessile filter feeders that lacked symbiotic dinoflagellates (zooxanthellae) which live inside most scleractinian corals (Larsson and Purser, 2011).…”