Coral Reef Restoration Network of the
Eastern Tropical Pacific (PTO)
Welcome!
The main objective of the Red PTO is to facilitate communication and scientific work between the allied countries of the region, as well as being a platform for communication and dissemination of coral reef restoration work.
Eastern Tropical Pacific Region
The Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) is characterized as having a low diversity of less developed corals and reefs (Cortés and Murillo, 1985; Cortés, 1997) compared to other regions such as the Indo-Pacific or the Caribbean. Coral reefs in this region face wide fluctuations in temperature, pH and salinity (Cortés, 1997; Fiedler and Lavín, 2017), and it is also an oceanographically isolated region from the central and western Pacific regions. Despite these conditions, the species present in the reefs and coral communities in the ETP interact in as complex ways as the most diverse coral reefs (Cortés et al., 2017).
The combination of sub-optimal environmental conditions and the isolation of the region has sparked scientific interest in understanding how these reefs persist in adverse conditions (Boulay et al., 2012). Researchers have suggested that exposure to various environmental fluctuations has resulted in increased tolerance due to the effect of local acclimatization (Schoepf, et al., 2015; van Oppen et al., 2015; Safaie et al., 2018), which is of great value in times of climate change. Romero-Torres et al. (2018) talk about the importance of better understanding the connectivity in the PTO and based on this, propose coral conservation and restoration measures, and thus ensure long-term coral populations and associated marine life.
Coral reef patch of Pocillopora sp. in the North Pacific of Costa Rica
Video credit: Tatiana Villalobos
Through the Red PTO we intend to facilitate key communication and research that allows us to intervene efficiently on a larger scale, in order to conserve and give a chance to the coral reefs and communities of the future.