Invasive corals are getting blown out of the water — with undersea air guns.
While corals around the world are dying in vast numbers due to ocean acidification, climate change, overfishing and disease, invasive counterparts such as sun corals are taking over biodiversity hotspots. Blasts of compressed air can probably rid ecosystems of these rapidly spreading intruders and prevent them from reestablishing, researchers report April 4 in Ecological Solutions and Evidence.
Sun corals (Tubastraea) are “very aggressive,” says Guilherme Pereira-Filho, a biologist at the Federal University of São Paulo. They first reached Brazil in the 1980s, though it’s not clear where they originated. Whenever one arrives at an appealing