Boulder Star Coral - M. annularis
The above is a sequence of images showing a Boulder Star Coral (Montastraea annularis) during a spawn. The above would appear to be a femal spawn, releasing a cloud of eggs, but in fact each egg packet also contains sperm. It was quite obvious that the coral was going to spawn during the dive, as the normally uniformly colored coral heads had orange speckles, which were the egg/sperm packets at the center of each polyp. Some sort of trigger (bio-chemical?) causes large portions of a boulder star coral colony to release eggs all at almost the same time, as seen above.
NOTE: The file is about 4MB in size, so please be patient as it loads.
I have also posted some more captured stills from my two night dives during which the spawning occurred here.
All images in this section are Copyright © 2002 by Jake Richter - All Rights Reserved