Easter Island – Enduring world

CORAL, KRILL AND WHALES

Blue whales feed almost exclusively on krill, though they also take small numbers of copepods. The species of this zooplankton eaten by blue whales varies from ocean to ocean. An adult blue whale can eat up to 40 million krill in a day. The whales always feed in the areas with the highest concentration of krill, sometimes eating up to 7,900 lbs of krill in a single day. The daily energy requirement of an adult blue whale is in the region of 1.5 million kilocalories. Blue whales gorge on krill in the rich waters of the Antarctic before migrating to their breeding grounds in the warmer, less-rich waters nearer the equator.

THE HISTORY OF EASTER ISLAND

Early European visitors to Easter Island recorded the local oral traditions about the original settlers. In these traditions, Easter Islanders claimed that a chief Hotu Matu’a arrived on the island in one or two large canoes with his wife and extended family. They are believed to have been Polynesian. There is considerable uncertainty about the accuracy of this legend, as well as the date of settlement. Published literature suggests the island was settled around 300-400 AD, or at about the time of the arrival of the earliest settlers in Hawaii.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

Research has been ongoing on for some time to help prevent the erosion of the island from choking off and killing the coral. Easter Island coral reef is one of the world’s most productive ecosystems, providing complex and varied marine habitats that support a wide range of other organisms. Fringing reefs just below low tide level have a mutually beneficial relationship with mangrove forests at high tide level and sea grass meadows in between: the reefs protect the mangroves and seagrass from strong currents and waves that would damage them or erode the sediments in which they are rooted, while the mangroves and sea grass protect the coral from large influxes of silt, fresh water and pollutants. This level of variety in the environment benefits many coral reef animals, which, for example, may feed in the sea grass and use the reefs for protection or breeding.

BECOMING A VOLUNTEER

The Cousteau Society will focus on working with local community groups and schools with help from teams of international volunteers to reform the Poike Peninsula, recognized as one of the most eroded and degraded areas of the island. Along with the planting of 1,400,000 trees, The Cousteau Society has prepared an environmental education program for children and a training program for adults so they learn how to best care for their land. Volunteering for the Cousteau Society program in Rapa Nui will allow them to demonstrate that what they can do “for the small island in the middle of the big Ocean,” we can do for “the little planet Earth in the middle of the big Universe.”

MEDICAL DISCOVERIES

In medicine, chemical compounds from corals are used for cancer, AIDS, pain, and other uses. Coral skeletons, e.g. Isididae are also used for bone grafting in humans. Coral Calx, known as Praval Bhasma in Sanskrit, is widely used intraditional system of Indian medicine as a supplement in the treatment of a variety of bone metabolic disorders associated with calcium deficiency.

POSITIVE DISCOVERIES OF CORAL

The Amazon Reef (also referred to as the Amazonian Reef) is an extensive coral and sponge reef system, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of French Guiana and northern Brazil. It is one of the largest known reef systems in the world, with scientists estimating its length at over 970 kilometres (600 miles), and its area as over 9,300 km2 (3,600 sq mi). Publication of its discovery was released in April 2016, following an oceanographic study of the region in 2012. Evidence of a large structure near the delta of the Amazon River dated from as early as the 1950s.