GULF OF GUINEA CONSERVATION GROUP

GULF OF GUINEA ISLANDS BIODIVERSITY NETWORK

SNOWFLAKE CORAL CARIJOA RIISEI DISCOVERED IN PRÍNCIPE

Peter Wirtz, writing in the German journal Der Meerwasser Aquarianer (2/2005, 8-9), records the invasive coral species Carijoa riisei for the first time in the eastern Atlantic. A native of Brazilian and Caribbean waters, the species has gained fame for its ability to disperse throughout the world's oceans and its potential to endanger indigenous marine species and ecosystems. This has been particularly highlighted in the Hawaiian arquipelago where it is competing with the slow-growing native black coral. Although its dispersal to the Pacific was certainly by ship through the Panama Canal, its arrival in Príncipe may well have occurred naturally having travelled with the fast-moving Equatorial Counter-Current as a number of other species previously only known from the western Atlantic have recently been found around the two islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.