[Coral-List] Cooling Reefs

Shelby Boyer sboyer at mlml.calstate.edu
Tue Jan 6 16:52:06 EST 2009


Hi all,

While cooling of the reefs would undoubtedly reduce thermal stress on the
reef, the detrimental effects of nutrient loading in an oligotrophic system
should not be ignored. Changes in nutrient regimes have been found across
the globe to cause shifts from coral dominated systems to macroalgal
communities. These types of algae are the biggest space competitors for
corals and are often only limited by nutrients. I agree with Mark that it's
not just identifying the problems but using science to solve them. One
potential resolution to side effects of high nutrient loads being dumped on
the reefs would be some kind of algal filtration system. Algae have been
shown to successfully filter nutrients out of water for large scale
aquaculture purposes. Perhaps other avenues of bioremidiation could be
explored for the pH and hydrogen sulfide threats.


Shelby E. Boyer
sboyer at mlml.calstate.edu
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
8272 Moss Landing Rd.
Moss Landing, CA 95039



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