Special Seminar on Acropera White Syndrome Outbreaks in Indonesia
Acropora White Syndrome Outbreaks in the North Coast of Java Sea, Indonesia
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Ir. Agus Sabdono
Sabdono, A.1,2 , Ambariyanto1,2, M. Helmi2 and A. Wirasatriya2
1) Marine Science Department, FFMS, Diponegoro University, Indonesia
2) Center For Coastal Disaster Mitigation and Rehabilitation Studies (CoReM), Diponegoro University
This special seminar will be held in CAS 132 at 3pm
Coral reefs are experiencing a recent period of severe decline due to emerging coral diseases. Acropora White Syndrome (AWS) has been reported worldwide with increasing dramatically in the number of host species and geographic ranges. However, little is known about how AWS is caused. This disease is now recognized as one of the major causes of reef degradation and coral mortality in Indonesian waters. Several strategies have been attempted to stop spreading and progressing of coral diseases. However, those approaches were none have been tried with any success on a large spatial scale. Our primary objectives of this research were to investigate the prevalence, spatial distribution, and variability at temporal scales of AWS in polluted and unpolluted areas; to isolate, characterize and identify the bacteria associated with AWS and healthy corals; to investigate the causative agents of AWS coral diseases; to screen anti-pathogenic property of bacterial healthy coral symbionts against the causative agents of AWS and to develop pellets of anti-pathogenic AWS bacterial consortia.
To achieve these objectives, integrated methods of survey, explorative, laboratory and field experiments in the field major of oceanology, pathology, marine microbiology, marine biotechnology and ecology were used. This study was started by conducting surveillances, coral sampling, and underwater documentation, oceanographic measurements, isolation and purification of bacteria associated with diseased and healthy corals, postulate Koch’s experiments in the laboratory and fields, screening of anti-bacterial symbionts against coral pathogenic strains via soft agar overlay and agar diffused method. The experiment was finished by conducting polyphasic identification. The developing pellets of anti-pathogenic bacterial consortia are still ongoing study. The results of the research are expected to be used as ‘embryonic’ marine industry for ‘biocontrol agents’ pellets on a large scale in the future regarding enhancing management, conservation, and protection of coral reef ecosystems.