[Coral-List] Barrier reef bleaching

Douglas Fenner douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Mon Mar 28 15:59:16 EDT 2016 

Dale,
    Thanks for the good points!!  The article does state, as I quoted, that
"There has not been a similar event reported by the North Atlantic CPR
survey (20 to 60°N) over the past 70 years, the U.S. CPR survey in the
Northwest Atlantic (over the past 30 years)".  It doesn't say how many CPR
(continuous plankton recorder) surveys were done, where they were done, or
when they were done.  If they weren't done in the Caribbean during African
dust events, that would mean next to nothing, yet they don't document
whether any were or not, leaving readers wondering.  If you tell me that no
CPR surveys were done in the Caribbean during African dust storms, then
that would seem to settle that.  Mind you, the article says that along
Australia's coast, during this dust storm visibility got as low as < 50 m.
I doubt that any African dust storm has reached that density over the
Caribbean for a very long time, but correct me if I'm wrong.  The reefs in
Australia are close to the shore there, while the Caribbean is thousands of
miles from Africa, and so the dust concentration on Australian reefs in
2009 was much greater than it is in African dust storms in the Caribbean.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.  The authors don't state what they would
consider a "similar event" to be, a similar amount of dust falling on a
reef, or a similar amount of fungal spores in the water, or something else,
so it is hard to evaluate their statement that there have been no other
similar events reported.  I suspect that the density of fungus in the water
in this Australian event might be greater than in Caribbean dust events,
but I certainly don't know.  If anyone knows, please enlighten us, and
thank you.
    By the way, the CPR device sounds ingenious, with a continuous belt of
silk screen pulled through a stream of water, catching plankton, and the
belt going into formaldehyde, allowing later analysis to find plankton that
was captured over the period of time that the recorder was in operation, so
you can detect changes in plankton over time and space.  The rate water
goes through is also measured, so a quantitative measure of the number per
volume of water can be calculated.  Clever!  I note that there were so many
fungal spores and hyphae in the Australian event that the silk screens were
turned black.  150,000 per m3 of water.
    You are exactly right that just because the strain identified in
African dust was not the same strain as in Caribbean sea fans, does not
prove that African dust is not where the sea fan disease originated,
because it could be that the sea fan pathogen simply hasn't been found in
the African dust, even though it actually may be in the African dust in
smaller quantities.  That is correct.  Of course, to absolutely prove that
it is not at all present in the African dust is to prove the null
hypothesis, and no one can do that.  However, some might see it as
reasonable to say that the hypothesis that the African dust brought the
disease to the Caribbean which infects the sea fans, predicts that the same
strain of disease is in the African dust, and when the same species is
found easily in the African dust but it is a different strain and none of
the same strain was found, that fails to confirm or support that
prediction.  As you say, the failure to find that strain in the African
dust does not disprove the hypothesis, but I think it does fail to support
it, and so could be considered to somewhat weaken it.  My understanding is
that PCR now is a very powerful tool for detecting very small amounts of
DNA so that rare microbes can be detected (whether they can be cultured or
not), however I don't know if that technique has been used on African dust.
      I quoted the article directly in part because I didn't want to
distort what they said.  I may have quoted out of context, I hope not, but
the rest of the article must be read to determine that.  In fact, I
disagree with their statement that "Surprisingly, no human health or marine
ecosystem impacts were associated with this Australian dust storm event."
Their data is not sufficient to be able to state that, only that "No
impacts were *found* to be associated with this event."  There is a big
difference.  *Aspergillus*, as far as I know, has been found infecting only
one genus of gorgonian in the Caribbean, the shallow-living seafan genus
*Gorgonia*.  I don't know if it infects all 3 species.  Anyhow, there are
lots of genera and species of gorgonia in Australia, and I doubt that every
one has been checked, and certainly not at every location.  Again, to prove
that there are *no* effects would be to prove the null hypothesis, and
can't be done by anyone.  However, apparently at this time there are no
known effects of this event.  (However, it is rather hard to imagine that
it had *no* effects on people breathing it, the dust alone without
pathogens would not be helpful to people, particularly those with asthma,
I'd think.  In addition, they demonstrated that the fungus does affect
zooxanthellae in the lab, which makes one suspicious that it might affect
corals on reefs, though maybe that effect is weak enough that it is not
obvious or easy to detect.)
     Gene didn't fill in what the implications were of his report of the
first article, and I didn't fill in what all the implications were for the
parts I quoted in the second article.  (Probably neither of us could have
thought of all possible implications.) I do *not* mean to imply that
African dust does not contain anything hazardous materials or does not
cause any problems for people or organisms in the Caribbean.  Quite the
contrary.  The articles which document what is in the African dust appear
to me very good articles, and they are crammed full of evidence of all
sorts of nasty things in that dust.  There is no doubt in my mind that it
surely has damaging effects of some sorts on both humans and reefs in the
Caribbean.  I don't pretend to be an expert on what that damage is, though
I find suggestions that African dust caused the *Diadema *urchin dieoff or
the spread of coral diseases or coral bleaching in the Caribbean dubious,
because the patterns in space and time don't fit.  African dust is an
important factor, but it hasn't been shown to cause every problem on reefs
in the Caribbean to my knowledge.  I am also not saying that anyone has
claimed it has, just that each hypothesis needs to be critically evaluated
against the evidence.  I *do *think that the threat posed by these dust
events needs to be recognized and kept in mind, and that the papers
documenting these dust events are important contributions.  Three cheers
for all their authors (that includes Gene, Dale, and others).

Cheers,  Doug

On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 12:30 AM, Griffin, Dale <dgriffin at usgs.gov> wrote:

> Doug......perhaps a reason why a similar event hasn't been reported in the
> Atlantic is that no one has undertaken a similar campaign.....also there is
> the issue of microbial strains...take E.coli as an example..numerous
> strains, of which only some are pathogenic...which is a good thing since
> all of us harbor this species in our guts.......so to ID a strain in a dust
> sample and find that it is not pathogenic means simply that you did not
> find a pathogenic strain.....to assume that this means African dust can't
> be a vector based on your observation is short sighted......
>
> "Everybody is ignorant, just on different subjects"
>                                            Will Rogers
>
> Dale W. Griffin, Ph.D., MSPH, MCSS, MCLES, MCOL
> Environmental/Public Health Microbiologist
> United States Geological Survey
> 600 4th Street South
> St. Petersburg, FL 33701
> Office # - 727-502-8075
> Fax # - 727-502-8001
> Cell # 850-274-3566
> email - dgriffin at usgs.gov
>
> email - dale.w.griffin at gmail.com
>
> <http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dale_Griffin/>
>
> http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dale_Griffin
>
> https://profile.usgs.gov/professional/mypage.php?rfs=y&name=dgriffin
>
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 1:15 AM, Douglas Fenner <
> douglasfennertassi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On this subject, another paper's abstract includes these statements:
>>
>> "Surprisingly, no human health or marine ecosystem impacts were associated
>> with this Australian dust storm event."  "While we have not yet seen any
>> soft coral disease outbreaks on the Australian Great Barrier Reef similar
>> to those observed in the Caribbean and while this particular fungal
>> population was non- or weakly pathogenic, our observations raise the
>> possibility of future marine ecosystem pathogen impacts from similar dust
>> storms harboring more pathogenic strains."
>>
>> The discussion includes the statements that:
>>
>> "The present report of fungal spore masses in Australian coastal waters
>> following a dust storm is unprecedented."  " There has not been a similar
>> event reported by the North Atlantic CPR survey (20 to 60°N) over the past
>> 70 years, the U.S. CPR survey in the Northwest Atlantic (over the past 30
>> years), the Southern Ocean survey over the past 20 years, or the North
>> Pacific survey over the past decade."
>>
>> and
>>
>>  "This initial work claimed A. sydowii to be the main causative agent of a
>> widespread outbreak of sea fan disease in the Caribbean, and increased
>> influx of African dust was proposed as the source of the coral mortality
>> (17). Subsequent physiological and toxicological work suggested that the
>> strains in African dust and as sea fan pathogens were distinct, hence
>> raising the possibility that African dust was not the source of the
>> pathogen, although the dust still could have played a nutrient enrichment
>> role to allow fungal pathogen proliferation (18, 19)."
>>
>> Pretty amazing event in Australia, though.
>>
>> Hallegraeff, G., et al.  2014.  Australian dust storm associated with
>> extensive *Aspergillus syndowii* fungal "bloom" in coastal waters.
>> Applied
>> and Environmental Microbiology 80(11): 3315-3320.
>>
>> Cheers,  Doug
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 11:17 AM, Douglas Fenner <
>> douglasfennertassi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >    This article is available open-access.
>> > http://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/14/3/59/htm
>> >
>> >    I note that the dust storm in question occurred in 2009.  Thus it
>> seems
>> > unlikely to be the cause of the current bleaching event on the Great
>> > Barrier Reef.
>> >
>> >     Cheers,  Doug
>> >
>> > <#m_-759127735706507214_DDB4FAA8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>>
>> >
>> > On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 5:22 AM, Eugene Shinn <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu
>> >
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >> I was just made aware of the following paper. Here is the abstract.
>> >> Remember Aspergillus Sydowii in African dust has been implicated in
>> >> widespread Caribbean seafan disease. Gene
>> >>
>> >> Abstract: Dust has been widely recognised as an important source of
>> >> nutrients in the marine environment and as a vector for transporting
>> >> pathogenic microorganisms. Disturbingly, in the wake of a dust storm
>> >> event along the eastern Australian coast line in 2009, the Continuous
>> >> Plankton Recorder collected masses of fungal spores and mycelia
>> >> (~150,000 spores/m3) forming a floating raft that covered a coastal
>> area
>> >> equivalent to 25 times the surface of England. Cultured A. sydowii
>> >> strains exhibited varying metabolite profiles, but all produced sydonic
>> >> acid, a chemotaxonomic marker for A. sydowii. The Australian marine
>> >> fungal strains share major metabolites and display comparable metabolic
>> >> diversity to Australian terrestrial strains and to strains pathogenic
>> to
>> >> Caribbean coral. Secondary colonisation of the rafts by other fungi,
>> >> including strains of Cladosporium, Penicillium and other Aspergillus
>> >> species with distinct secondary metabolite profiles, was also
>> >> encountered. Our bioassays revealed that the dust-derived marine fungal
>> >> extracts and known A. sydowii metabolites such as sydowic acid,
>> >> sydowinol and sydowinin A adversely affect photophysiological
>> >> performance (Fv/Fm) of the coral reef dinoflagellate endosymbiont
>> >> Symbiodinium. Different Symbiodinium clades exhibited varying
>> >> sensitivities, mimicking sensitivity to coral bleaching phenomena. The
>> >> detection of such large amounts of A. sydowii following this dust storm
>> >> event has potential implications for the health of coral environments
>> >> such as the Great Barrier Reef.
>> >>
>> >> The article is published in Marine Druges
>> >> Article
>> >> Aspergillus Sydowii Marine Fungal Bloom in Australian Coastal Waters,
>> >> Its Metabolites and Potential Impact on Symbiodinium Dinoflagellates
>> >> Aiko Hayashi 1, Andrew Crombie 2, Ernest Lacey 2, Anthony J. Richardson
>> >> 3,4, Daniel Vuong 2, Andrew M. Piggott 5 and Gustaaf Hallegraeff 1,*
>> >> 1 2
>> >> 3 4 5
>> >> *
>> >> Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania,
>> >> Hobart, Tasmania 7004, Australia; aiko.hayashi at utas.edu.au Microbial
>> >> Screening Technologies, Building A, 28-54 Percival Rd, Smithfield NSW
>> >> 2164, Australia; acrombie at microbialscreening.com (A.C.);
>> >> elacey at microbialscreening.com (E.L.); dvuong at microbialscreening.com
>> >> (D.V.)
>> >> CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research, Ecosciences Precinct, Brisbane,
>> >> Queensland 4102, Australia; anthony.richardson at csiro.au Centre for
>> >> Applications in Natural Resource Mathematics, School of Mathematics and
>> >> Physics, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia
>> >> Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, Macquarie
>> University,
>> >> NSW 2109, Australia; andrew.piggott at mq.edu.au Correspondence:
>> >> gustaaf.hallegraeff at utas.edu.au; Tel.: +61-3-6226-2623
>> >> Academic Editors: Samuel Bertrand and Olivier Grovel Received: 9
>> >> February 2016; Accepted: 3 March 2016; Published: 16 March 2016
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
>> >> ------------------------------------
>> -----------------------------------
>> >> E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
>> >> University of South Florida
>> >> College of Marine Science Room 221A
>> >> 140 Seventh Avenue South
>> >> St. Petersburg, FL 33701
>> >> <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
>> >> Tel 727 553-1158
>> >> ---------------------------------- -----------------------------------
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Douglas Fenner
>> > Consultant, corals, coral reefs, coral identification
>> > "have regulator, will travel"
>> > PO Box 7390
>> > Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA
>> >
>> > phone 1 684 622-7084
>> >
>> > Join the International Society for Reef Studies.  Membership includes a
>> > subscription to the journal Coral Reefs, and there are discounts for pdf
>> > subscriptions and developing countries.  Check it out!
>> www.fit.edu/isrs/
>> >
>> > "Belief in climate change is optional, participation is not."- Jim
>> Beever..
>> >   "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own
>> facts."-
>> > Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
>> >
>> > Record shattering February warmth bakes Alaska, Arctic 18oF
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/13/3759569/record-february-warmth-alaska-arctic/
>> >
>> > Sea level is now rising at the fastest rate in 3,000 years.
>> >
>> >
>> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/sea-levels-are-rising-their-fastest-rate-2000-years?utm_campaign=email-news-latest&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=292592
>> >
>> >
>> http://mashable.com/2016/02/22/manmade-sea-level-rise-flooding/#fscPLGedCiqz
>> >
>> > Miami is flooding: "The Siege of Miami, as temperatures rise, so will
>> sea
>> > levels."  Sea level rising an inch a year there.
>> > http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami
>> >
>> > website:  http://independent.academia.edu/DouglasFenner
>> >
>> > blog: http://ocean.si.edu/blog/reefs-american-samoa-story-hope
>> >
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> Coral-List mailing list
>> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
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>
>
>


-- 
Douglas Fenner
Consultant, corals, coral reefs, coral identification
"have regulator, will travel"
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

phone 1 684 622-7084

Join the International Society for Reef Studies.  Membership includes a
subscription to the journal Coral Reefs, and there are discounts for pdf
subscriptions and developing countries.  Check it out!  www.fit.edu/isrs/

"Belief in climate change is optional, participation is not."- Jim Beever.
  "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."-
Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Record shattering February warmth bakes Alaska, Arctic 18oF

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/13/3759569/record-february-warmth-alaska-arctic/

Sea level is now rising at the fastest rate in 3,000 years.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/sea-levels-are-rising-their-fastest-rate-2000-years?utm_campaign=email-news-latest&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=292592
http://mashable.com/2016/02/22/manmade-sea-level-rise-flooding/#fscPLGedCiqz

Miami is flooding: "The Siege of Miami, as temperatures rise, so will sea
levels."  Sea level rising an inch a year there.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami

website:  http://independent.academia.edu/DouglasFenner

blog: http://ocean.si.edu/blog/reefs-american-samoa-story-hope

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