Resurrection reefs

Further to Zombie reefs, word from the ICRS: the way to protect reefs is...to protect them. Melissa Gaskill reports:

The overfished reefs at Cabo Pulmo on the eastern Baja California Peninsula. are a case in point. After the establishment of the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park — and more than 10 years of local enforcement of no-take inside its boundaries — the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that the amount of fish biomass in the protected area had increased more than fivefold, and shark biomass, tenfold. That’s the largest absolute increase in fish biomass ever measured in a marine reserve anywhere in the world.

Zombie reefs

A heartfelt and sane contribution from Carl Safina to a discussion of whether it's time to give up on coral reefs:

I can’t remember who dragged me to see the movie “Jurassic Park,” but one resonant line in that movie was worth the price of admission, this unforgettable sentence: “Life finds a way.” It popped out at me because it so economically summed up a truth behind all of nature’s stunning diversity and the continuity of the living adventure of Life on Earth.

Yes, things die, lineages go extinct, and coral reefs are in a world of hurt. All true. Also true is there exist heat-tolerant corals, corals that are regularly exposed to (and routinely survive) the extreme stress of finding themselves out in the tropical air at low tide, and many ocean organisms that live through large swings in pH through tidal cycles.

Yes many coral reefs are degraded. Yes it doesn’t look good. But sometimes living diversity supplies marginal adaptations that suddenly fit perfectly into new conditions. Someone (not Darwin) called it “survival of the fittest.” That’s what the phrase means; not survival of the strongest but of the ones who find themselves in the right place at the right time as conditions change to suddenly suit them. Look around; it works.

Agreed, it is past due to raise the alarm that coral reefs in many areas have largely collapsed, and that their future looks bleak. As an anguished lover of reefs and living things generally, and as an ecologist by profession, I cannot picture what it will take for coral reef systems to survive and thrive. But I also cannot picture a world in which no reef corals adapt, persist, and flourish, simply because it’s true: Life finds a way.

Bradbury seems to suggest giving up and spending money on ways to replace the values (for example, fish) that coral reefs have provided. But what would giving up look like? Overfishing is old news, and plenty of people are, in fact, spending money trying to raise fish. Some are making money. Overpopulation: also old news and crucial to everything from water supplies to prospects for peace. One doesn’t need to certify future coral reef destruction to realize that overpopulation is bad for human health and dignity, not to mention a catastrophe for wild living systems. These problems have caused the losses to date and they continue. Warming and acidification are also building.

But to accept that reefs are doomed implies that the best response is to give up hope, thus give up effort. That means we give up on curbing overfishing and allowing rebuilding (yet these two goals are in fact are increasingly working in many places, specifically because people have not given up, and because letting fish recover can work). It means we give up on controlling pollution (in the U.S., the Clean Water Act brought great improvement to rivers so polluted that they actually caught fire multiple times; developing nations deserve to do no less for themselves). It means we give up on population, whose most effective solving strategy is to teach girls to read and write.

Giving up, while reefs still flourish in many places, means accepting what is unacceptable, and abandoning work on situations that can likely be improved. It means deciding to be hopeless. It means giving up on the reefs, the fishes, and the people, who need all the combined efforts of those who both know the science best—and who, while life exists, won’t give up.

The science is clear that reefs are in many places degraded and in serious trouble. But no science has, or likely can, determine that reefs and all their associated non-coral creatures are unequivocally, equally and everywhere, completely doomed to total non-existence. In fact, much science suggests they will persist in some lesser form. Bleak prospects have been part of many dramatic turnarounds, and, who knows, life may, as usual—with our best efforts—find a way.

Night mind of the reef

Fluorescent juvenile flathead (family Platycephalidae). David Gruber and John Sparks

One by one, we shout “Diver in!” and splash into the inky water. The bright blue lights, battery packs and camera systems are then handed down from the boat, and we begin our descent. With yellow filters over our masks, the reef erupts into vivid green and red patterns. The fluorescent glow comes primarily from the stony corals and anemones, some of which glow wildly under our custom-made spectrally pure blue light source; others, curiously, exhibit no photic response...

-- from Glowing Wildly on a Moonless Night by David Gruber

A fluorescent false moray eel (family Chlopsidae). David Gruber and John Sparks

Death of coral reefs: exaggerated?

We demonstrate that important functional components of coral assemblages “sample” space differently at 132 sites separated by up to 1740 km, leading to complex latitudinal shifts in patterns of absolute and relative abundance. The flexibility in community composition that we document along latitudinal environmental gradients indicates that climate change is likely to result in a reassortment of coral reef taxa rather than wholesale loss of entire reef ecosystems.

-- from Assembly Rules of Reef Corals Are Flexible along a Steep Climatic Gradient by Terry P. Hughes et al.

'Protect Chagos'

The Chagos Archipelago represents a magnificent conservation opportunity that could be of lasting benefit to humanity. There can be few places on this planet that represent better value for leveraging spectacular returns. What is needed is vision and a leadership initiative by Britain to create the Chagos as an iconic, pristine area held in trust for the future of the world community.

-- Callum Roberts for Protect Chagos

Justice for the people of Chagos, driven out for the military, is also important. But it need not inconsistent with the creation of a Marine Protected Area.

'Cradles of evolution'

Coral reefs: Wolfgang Kiessling, Carl Simpson, Michael Foote

If we lose the coral reefs we lose the ability for marine ecosystems to generate new species in the future. I suspect that new species evolve every single day, but unfortunately not as fast as they go extinct.

-- Wolfgang Kiessling,

A hundred to one

If we were to expand marine protection from less than 1% to 30%, say, what would that cost? Establishing reserves, policing them and so on, would cost about $40-50bn per year - and the annual benefit would be about $4-5 trillion.

-- says Pavan Sukdev, study leader of TEEB. The study also finds the ongoing loss of forest comes with an annual pricetag of US $2-5 trillion.

Bright fish

A series of studies has recently revealed that [coral] reef fish are surprisingly adaptable. Freshly caught wild fish quickly learn new tasks and can learn to discriminate among colors, patterns and shapes, including those they have never encountered. These studies suggest that learning and interpreting new stimuli play important roles in the lives of reef fish.

-- Sean B Carroll reports

Reef as metaphor:

Technology is “alive” in the sense that a coral reef is alive. The reef is an ecological system with many species, and technology in the broadest sense is an elaborate and constantly changing structure made up of thousands of discrete technologies, themselves composed of separate technologies.

Stabledoor, horse?

I didn't make it to the Royal Society meeting last night. This is from Alok Jha's report (emphasis added):

David Attenborough joined scientists today to warn that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already above the level which condemns coral reefs to extinction, with catastrophic effects for the oceans and the people who depend upon them.

If this analysis is correct then one of the few options left would to be scrub very large amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere. But that doesn't look a likely prospect, does it?

See also the Inter-Academy Panel statement on Ocean Acidification.

My review of Veron's book is here.

Bad times just around the corner

By the end of the century, 100 million people across South East Asia could be on the march, looking for something to eat. Communities might be breaking down and economies destroyed.

It's billed as a worst-case scenario, but...it is not as bad as the future we're currently headed towards.

-- Ove Hoegh-Guldberg: BBC, Climate shifts, WWF.

It's as clear as crystal
From Bridlington to Bristol
That we can't save democracy and we don't much care.

-- Noel Coward

'Eating tourism' boom

Spawning of reef fish in [the Coral Trangle] has declined 79 percent over the past 5 to 20 years, depending on location.

-- NYT reports work by Yvonne Sadovy et al.

Our ultimate success in preserving and restoring the oceans depends on a more inclusive ethic for the seas.

-- from Developing an Ocean Ethic by Peter J Auster et al

('Big fish', we have been reminded, 'save reefs')

Islands of the mind

One of the...places now receiving protection, Johnston Atoll, was formerly used to stockpile chemical weapons.

-- US vows 'huge' marine protection.

After almost a thousand miles, we at last saw land -- a tiny, exquisite atoll on the horizon. Johnston Island! I had seen it as a dot on the map and thought, 'What an idyllic place, thousands of miles from anywhere.' As we descended it looked less exquisite: a huge runway bisected the island, and to either side were storage bins, chimneys, and towers: eyeless buildings all enveloped in an orange-red haze...my idyll, my little paradise looked like a realm of hell.

...Migratory fowl stop here by the hundreds of thousands, and in 1926 the island was designated a federal bird reserve. After the Second World War it was acquired by the US Air Force, and 'since then', I read, 'the US military has converted [it] into one of the most toxic places in the Pacific. It was used during the 1950s and '60s for nuclear testing, and is still maintained as a standby test site; one end of the atoll remains radioactive. It was briefly considered as a test site for biological weapons...[and in] 1971 became a depot for thousands of tons of mustard and nerve gas, which are periodically incinerated, releasing dioxin and furan into the air...All personnel on the island are required to have their gas masks ready.

-- from The Island of the Colour-blind by Oliver Sacks (1996)

Getting lumpy on the GBR

Porites are seldom regarded as beautiful. They are, however, often among the most robust coral species. So the decline in calcification rates reported from the Great Barrier Reef looks like a real cause for concern. [1]


In December 2008, notes Elizabeth Pennisi, a 4-year assessment of the Status of Coral Reefs of the World said that 45% of the world's reefs were healthy with no significant threats from human activity on the horizon. [2] But looks can be deceptive. Anne Cohen of Woods Hole says "Even though the corals look healthy, some pretty dramatic changes are occurring beneath the surface." [3]

More on this by John Bruno and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at Climateshifts.

Footnotes

1. Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef by Glenn De'ath et al. DOI: 10.1126/science.1165283 (See also Declining coral calcification in massive Porites in two nearshore regions of the northern Great Barrier Reef by Timothy F. Cooper et al. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01520).

2. Noted on this blog at A glass almost half full. For some background and context see Coral Bones.

3. Calcification Rates Drop in Australian Reefs DOI: 10.1126/science.323.5910.27. Pennisi reports that the role of acidification in this decline is "far from settled". Alina Szmant of the University of North Carolina concludes, "It's not clear that carbon dioxide enrichment will have negative effects on calcification rates." [Question: why did the calcification rate increase by 5.4% between 1900 and 1970 (before falling 14.2% between 1990 and 2005)?]

P.S. 4 Jan: a comment on resilience by Tom Goreau here.

A glass almost half full

Encouragingly, 45 percent of the world’s [coral] reefs are currently healthy.

-- from an IUCN press release

Urchins

Pohls sea urchins found off Lizard Island (see New species revealed on Great Barrier and Ningaloo reefs). "The researchers spotted about 300 soft coral species, up to half of which they think are new to science, as well as dozens of small crustacean species, likewise thought to be unknown."

On balance

Few beings are more bizarre when you come to them for the first time than the Crown of Thorns Starfish (COTS). What could be stranger than an animal with multi-axis symmetry that digests living 'rock' (coral) by extruding its stomach? [1]

Monster Mash

Their role in a so-called 'balance of nature' ['dynamic system'?] has been debated (see, for example What is natural? by Jan Sapp). A recently published paper by Hugh Sweatman suggests that a 'healthy' coral reef, with plenty of small inverbrates to eat the juvenile starfish, copes better with COTS (press report). Good news, perhaps, until something bigger comes along.

Note

1. There's a useful Q&A on COTS by Peter Moran of AIMS

'Assisted colonization'

We must contemplate the possibility that some regions of the Earth will experience high levels of warming (>4°C) within the next 100 years, as well as altered precipitation and ocean acidity. Under these circumstances, the future for many species and ecosystems is so bleak that assisted colonization might be their best chance.

-- say Ove Hoegh-Guldberg et al in Assisted Colonization and Rapid Climate Change.

Coral 'extinction'

For some context on One-Third of Reef-Building Corals Face Elevated Extinction Risk see this review of A Reef in Time.

Yes, the shells and reefs dissolve and the 'weeds' take over

Ocean 'acidification' causes concern but understanding of how it may affect marine ecosystems and organisms is 'limited' because almost all studies have been in vitro, short-term, rapid perturbation experiments on isolated elements of the ecosystem [1]. A newish paper [2] about localised acidification caused by undersea volcanic vents seems to confirm best guesses to date:

coralline algal biomass was significantly reduced and gastropod shells were dissolving... The species populating the vent sites...indicate that ocean acidification may benefit highly invasive non-native algal species.

Elsewhere [3], it's noted that avoiding environmental damage from ocean acidification requires reductions in carbon dioxide emissions regardless of climate change:

Projected changes in ocean carbonate chemistry should serve as a guideline for policy protocols that identify CO2 emission targets to reduce the effects of human-made ocean acidification. For example, to avoid a surface ocean pH decline by more than 0.2 units, total emission targets would have to range from ~700 Pg C over 200 years to ~1200 Pg C over 1000 years. Such scenarios would be difficult to achieve, however, because they require immediate reductions in global emissions.

Image: a 'rainbow of death' - explanation here.

Footnotes

1. But field studies from the Southern Ocean have already turned up evidence. See this episode of ABC's Catalyst.

2. 'Volcanic carbon dioxide vents show ecosystem effects of ocean acidification' DOI:10.1038/nature07051

3. Carbon Emissions and Acidification DOI: 10.1126/science.1159124, with news report here.

Vestige of a beginning, prospect of an end

chinadialogue.net has published my review of J.E.N. Veron's A Reef in Time in Chinese and English.

I don't speak or read the language, but am interested to note that the title of the book in Chinese -- 大堡礁的岁月：从产生到终结 -- reverts (via Google) to something like

Great Barrier Reef the years: from generation to the end.

Another version of the review is here on Coral Bones.

image: Antelao - an ancient reef