CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(September 30, 2023 09:30 AM)

@Afroman
Scientists will unleash an army of crabs to help save Florida’s dying reef
With giant pincers and rough, spider-like legs, Caribbean king crabs don’t look like your typical heroes. Yet these crustaceans may be key to solving one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: the decline of coral reefs.
In recent decades, warming seas, diseases, and other threats have wiped out half of the world’s corals and 90 percent of those in Florida. And this past summer, the problem accelerated. A devastating heat wave struck the Caribbean, pushing the reef in the Florida Keys — the largest in the continental US — closer to the brink of collapse.
The decline of coral reefs is an enormous problem for wildlife and human communities. Reefs not only provide habitat for as much as a quarter of all marine life, including commercial fish, but they also help safeguard coastal communities during severe storms. Simply put, we need coral reefs.
Coral reefs, meanwhile, need crabs.
Lucky for them, help is on the way. Scientists are in the process of building a crab army — hundreds of thousands of crustaceans strong — that they’ll unleash on Florida’s reefs, giving this ailing ecosystem a tool to fight back.
The key is in the crabs’ diets: These critters consume enormous quantities of seaweed, also known as macro algae. Algae has been choking reefs throughout the world and especially in Florida, making it hard for them to grow and recover from damaging events like marine heat waves.
Across the Caribbean and in Florida, scientists are pouring their time and resources into restoring reefs by planting (or “outplanting”) bits of coral on the seafloor. Yet without also ridding these ecosystems of algae, Spadaro said, restoration may struggle to succeed.
Enter: crabs.
Caribbean king crabs are voracious algae eaters, eating seaweed at rates “that exceed nearly all other fish or invertebrate grazers in the Caribbean,” researchers wrote in a 2021 study led by Spadaro.
Full article and crab pics here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/scientists-will-unleash-an-army-of-crabs-to-help-save-florida-s-dying-reef/ar-AA1hkGQx