From Plant Press, Vol. 13, No. 4 from October 2010.
In 2005 twin sisters in Sydney, Australia, Margaret and Christine Wertheim, a mathematician and an artist, were contacted by some environmentalists to help them create a display to represent how global warming and pollution is affecting the world’s coral reefs. Since then, the project has spread over three continents and has involved thousands of people. The interdisciplinary project, which combines marine biology, mathematics, feminine handicraft, and environmental activism, continues to raise awareness and public interest in coral reefs here in the United States. Successful displays have been hosted in numerous U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Scottsdale. DC’s first community coral reef exhibit made of crocheted, knitted and other media, even recycled materials, will be displayed in the Natural History Museum’s Sant Ocean Hall, 16 October 2010 to 24 April 2011. A small group from our Botany Department, including Elaine Haug, Maria Faust, Jenny Datiles, Shruti Dube, Nistha Dube, and Marielle Saums, contributed to the project. Margaret Wertheim, the mathematical twin sister, relates the coral reefs through some of crocheted pieces to the newly discovered “hyperbolic geometry,” which gives the upcoming exhibit its name, the Hyperbolic Crocheted Coral Reef Exhibit.
The dynamics of a coral reef involve plants as part of a coral-microalgal partnership. The corals on a coral reef live in a partnership with microscopic plants, but many are unseen – these microscopic species are hidden in the plankton or within the tissues (zooxanthellae) of corals. The simplest plants on the reef are the microalgae; some are a little more than a fuzz of brown or green on the bare reef surfaces, while others have broad leafy blades of turtle grass, Thalassia testudinum, fine blades of sea grasses, and kelp. Like all algae, microalgae use special pigments to capture the energy from sunlight. In the process known photosynthesis, they use this energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars, which they need in order to grow.
The coral polyps provide a safe and secure home for the zooxanthellae, a microalgal form which lie hidden within the tissue of corals, and in turn the microalgae provide the corals with sugars and other food that help the corals to grow and build the coral reef. Thanks to this partnership, corals can thrive even in places where there is little food to be filtered from the water. Many reef corals get 80-90 percent of their food from these tiny algal partners and catch very little for themselves. It is the photosynthetic pigments of the algae which give the corals their beautiful colors. And it is this dependence on sunlight which means that reef corals only thrive in clear shallow waters.
The Botany staff made their artistic pieces as realistic as possible and provided photographs to identify each piece to a living species. Stephen Carins, a deep sea coral specialist in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology, and Christopher Mah, an Echinoderms specialist, loaned the group books containing images of specimens from coral reefs. Mah created a blog site for the Botany crochet and recycled material pieces and added some information about the exhibit at http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/echinoderm-sneak-peak-of-hyperbolic.html?spref=fb. The reef will be divided into three parts, a living reef (colorful pieces), a dead reef (all white, beige, and mauve pieces), and toxic reef (pieces composed of recycled material).
Jennifer Lindsay has been coordinating the museum crochet project. She has a website and a Flickr site devoted to the art work: http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/hreef/communityreef.html . Hundreds of people have contributed items, and each contributor will be acknowledged for their efforts. The Botany group created 47 pieces.
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