[Coral-List] Nutrients / coral bleaching / coral mortality / coral disease

[tomascik at novuscom.net]

Thank you for the links Scott. I would also like to end this with one  
additional paper by Yentsch et al 2002 that is well worth the read:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228475381_Sunlight_and_water_transparency_Cornerstones_in_coral_research

PDF link is here

http://www.cmep.ca/jcullen/publications/2002/Yentsch_et_al.2002.pdf

Please note that the papers I provided links for came at the same time  
or after the review by Alina.

Cheers,
Tomas


Quoting Scott Wooldridge <swooldri23 at gmail.com>:

> Hi Coral Listers,
>
> This will be my last post on this issue - the time for talking is well
> past, and good experiments by young scientist are what are required not
> more rhetoric - by me or others.
>
> For young scientists, the essential starting point for designing your
> experiments is the recent paper by Baker et al. 2018, 'Climate change
> promotes parasitism in a coral symbiosis'.
>
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-018-0046-8
>
> The paper quickly establishes the essential truth of the matter - that
> nutrient enrichment and climate change work interactively. The stress foci
> is a destabilising of the energy relations of the coral-algae symbiosis.
> The net result is a starving of the coral host energy reserves, which can
> be understood to make corals more sensitive to thermal bleaching/mortality
> (and coral disease, as shown by Vega Thurber et al. 2013, "Chronic nutrient
> enrichment increases the prevalence and severity of coral disease and
> bleaching")
>
> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.12450
>
>
> When considering nutrient enrichment, the thresholds of concern are much
> lower than one might imagine. Meaning that numerous natural and
> anthropogenic sources are relevant. For example, terrestrial runoff
> (surface and groundwater), offshore upwelling, even bird quano enrichment
> on remote atolls.
>
> Think that bird excrement can't make reefs nutrient replete ?
>
> Then have a read of Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2004, 'Nutrient-induced
> perturbations to ?13C and ?15N in symbiotic dinoflagellates and their coral
> hosts'
>
> http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v280/p105-114/
>
> This paper shows that the ENCORE experiments were undertaken in nutrient
> replete water. This couldnt have been known before the experiments, but
> that is the unfortaunate truth. For example the authors write, 'This
> suggests that corals and their symbiotic dinoflagellates growing in the
> unenriched control ENCORE patch reefs may have been relatively nutrient
> replete and hence, relatively unresponsive to additional inorganic
> nitrogen. This is also consistent with the conclusions of HoeghGuldberg &
> Williamson (1999) who argue that the ambient ammonium concentrations at One
> Tree Island lagoon  (from  bird quano) are sufficient to supply the
> nitrogen demand of actively growing corals'.
>
> I have written much on the co-dependence of nutrient enrichment to the
> thermal bleaching response. Choose to ignore what i have written if you
> like. But dont ignore these results. Start your experiments and thinking
> from the standpoint of these results.
>
> Maybe, like me, it will lead to you suggest that pCO2 enrichment (so-called
> ocean acidification) is an additional player in all this.
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317100418_Instability_and_breakdown_of_the_coral-algae_symbiosis_upon_exceedence_of_the_interglacial_pCO2_threshold_260_ppmv_the_''missing''_Earth-System_feedback_mechanism
>
> It is exciting time for coral reef research. a huge natural experiment is
> underway that has the potential to explain phenomenon form the micro scale
> of the coral cell through to the global scale of climate change (such is
> the importance of coral reefs).
>
> The important thing - the take home message - as i retire to oblivion. Dont
> be fooled into explaining coral bleaching only through the spectre of
> thermal SST stress because that is the only good (global-wide) tool/dataset
> available. As good as the NOAA SST products are, any analysis that utilises
> them alone is missing at least 1/2 the storyline.
>
> The image of a drunk man walking home from the pub looking for his lost
> keys under the lamp posts comes to mind. He looks there in failed hope
> because that is the only place the light is shining. Lets not make that
> mistake.
>
> scott
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Scott_Wooldridge
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