As some of you may know, as part of our non-profit organization (501c3) requirements, we donated $1000 to Rutgers - Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS). With that donation, we also expressed our interest in helping the school with future projects and possibly providing certain coral frag specimens for the program to do some tests on.
Well, I was just contacted today by Frank Natale, Lab Researcher III, with a request for specimens of Fire Coral. Instead of rewording his email, I'll just copy/paste it here so that you all can get the same details that I was provided for this possible project.
Hey George,
Frank here from the IMCS (Rutgers University). We've been contacted by a local high school who has a senior interested in doing a project involving the effects of fire coral stings on human tissue. As you can image, my biggest concern is getting this proposal to pass all necessary safety and bio hazard level requirements. However, I still wanted to reach out to you all to see if anyone in the club might have some fire coral nubbins they might be willing to part with for this student's proposed research project assuming we can actually do something like this. (The "human" tissue will be in culture of course, no stray hands or arms intentionally getting stung by fire coral).
Thanks,
Frank
As you can see, this is not a definite go because there is some safety / red tape to get through, but in case this gets approved I wanted to reach out to our members to see if anyone has any frag samples they would be willing to donate.
I'm not an expert when it comes to scientific names of corals, but from my quick research I see that "Fire Coral" is in the Millepora genus. I know that many of has have "milli's" but I don't believe all of them would be considered Fire Coral. Upon further research, I found that the 3 most dominant types that are considered Fire Corals in the Caribbean are: Millepora Alcicornus, Millepora Complanata, and Millepora Squarrosa. There may be more of them, but at a minimum these 3 would be acceptable specimens and would likely be what some of you may have in your tanks.
So, if you do have any of these available, please reply here and when the time comes we will contact you to work out getting them to the school.
I also plan to contact some of our sponsors/vendors to see if they might be able to help with this venture too. I'll report back if I get any positive responses from them.
Well, I was just contacted today by Frank Natale, Lab Researcher III, with a request for specimens of Fire Coral. Instead of rewording his email, I'll just copy/paste it here so that you all can get the same details that I was provided for this possible project.
Hey George,
Frank here from the IMCS (Rutgers University). We've been contacted by a local high school who has a senior interested in doing a project involving the effects of fire coral stings on human tissue. As you can image, my biggest concern is getting this proposal to pass all necessary safety and bio hazard level requirements. However, I still wanted to reach out to you all to see if anyone in the club might have some fire coral nubbins they might be willing to part with for this student's proposed research project assuming we can actually do something like this. (The "human" tissue will be in culture of course, no stray hands or arms intentionally getting stung by fire coral).
Thanks,
Frank
As you can see, this is not a definite go because there is some safety / red tape to get through, but in case this gets approved I wanted to reach out to our members to see if anyone has any frag samples they would be willing to donate.
I'm not an expert when it comes to scientific names of corals, but from my quick research I see that "Fire Coral" is in the Millepora genus. I know that many of has have "milli's" but I don't believe all of them would be considered Fire Coral. Upon further research, I found that the 3 most dominant types that are considered Fire Corals in the Caribbean are: Millepora Alcicornus, Millepora Complanata, and Millepora Squarrosa. There may be more of them, but at a minimum these 3 would be acceptable specimens and would likely be what some of you may have in your tanks.
So, if you do have any of these available, please reply here and when the time comes we will contact you to work out getting them to the school.
I also plan to contact some of our sponsors/vendors to see if they might be able to help with this venture too. I'll report back if I get any positive responses from them.
