Eat more algae

Who would have thought that coral have haemoglobin in them – you know that protein that carries oxygen around in our blood?

Apparently it’s the resident microalgae that have haemoglobin genes.

Coral and microalgae have a mutually beneficial or symbiotic relationship, like Mrs Polly Mer and I do with the lovely seaweed growing on the floor of our coastal home.

The seaweed provides us with a lovely carpet and we provide it with nutritious detritus and care.

The microalgae in coral are protected and fed and they, in turn, produce oxygen, remove waste and feed the coral.

When corals are stressed, like when the temperature goes up or oily bilge waste pollutes the water, the algae try really hard to mop up toxic gases with their haemoglobin - but if this doesn’t work they abandon the coral.

This means the corals are deprived of their main source of food and they whiten or bleach – getting ready to die if things don’t improve.

I guess that’s why Miss Coral Bleaching looks so anemic all the time. I must tell her to get some algae into her.

The microalgae are pretty sensitive and fast workers, they start making haemoglobin pretty quickly when they realise the coral is stressing out. Now that we know this we might be able to get the algae to give us a readout on how stressed a coral is in time to reduce their stress levels and help them get on with building reefs.

May your week be stressless 

Mrs Polly Ester 

Polyps, polymers and participation

Mrs Polly Mer and I are pretty excited to hear that Margaret Wertheim is presenting the 2013 Templeton Lecture at Sydney University on Monday the 18^th of March.

The title of Margaret’s talk, ‘We are all polyps now: a meditation on art, science and collectivity in the age of global warming’, gives you an idea of the breadth of her work as a science writer and exhibition curator.

One piece of work Margaret is perhaps most well known for is the Crochet Coral Reef project. This involves getting people involved in crocheting pieces that mimic coral as a way of addressing global warming – a hands-on informal fashion of collective engagement. We love to practice this ourselves in our underwater home.

As we amphibious water-loving ones well know, coral reefs are fragile ecosystems. Small increases in sea temperature, murky run-off from the land, violent storms or cyclones and the flippers of snorkeling humans reaching for a foot-hold can cause irreparable damage to the coral polyps that make up the reefs.

Like a single nerve cell in the amphibian brain, each coral polyp is insignificant on its own. Yet when networked these minute creatures collectively produce structures like the Great Barrier Reef – like networked nerve cells creating consciousness in a brain. 

Margaret, and her twin sister Christine, founded the Institute For

Figuring, a 'Los Angeles-based organisation devoted to public engagement with the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics’ – check it out www.theiff.org

Yours collectively

Mrs Polly Ester

Biodiverse knitting

Biodiversity is one of the things we are passionate about here in the KnitPiC network. It's no secret that there is an extinction crisis going on here on the planet. This is because habitats are being lost at a rate of knots. And human activities have a lot to do with this.

We have been knitting furiously in an attempt to understand what these extinctions mean. If three-quarters of all species thought to live on Earth do so in rainforests, and rainforests are being cut down at the substantial rate of about half a percent per year, what happens to this percentage when there’s a catastrophic fire or a meteorite explosion in the forest?

In our knitting and sewing, our darning and crochet, we are working on a pattern for the ecosystems. We rely on them as much as other creatures on the planet and we want to keep them strong. 

Yours in song

Mrs Polly Ester

Bundanon residency

Mrs Polly Mer and I are having a great time here at Bundanon on our second residency. We are very grateful to the Bundanon Trust for their generous support. 
We're looking forward to entertaining some guests for lunch today having spent the week working away on KnitPiC business. Mrs Mer has made some delicious gazpacho and I plan to make a chic pea and broccoli salad to save with toasties. I'd better go and help in the kitchen.
all the best
Mrs Ester