[Coral-List] Toward a New Era of Coral Reef Monitoring

Sun Apr 16 01:10:07 UTC 2023

Hi Amy,
 Your team is organizing an amazing array of instrumentation to dial in
coral reef condition. The real question is what is going to be done about a
degrading reef when it is revealed.
In general, when people hear that a reef is being monitored they think some
remedial action will be triggered to "fix the problem".
As valuable as reefs are to humankind you'd think this might be the case
but in fact, history shows it has not been.
Take the Florida Keys for example. This reef system has been under attack
by humans for at least 100 years.
John Pennekamp's work got a small section of Key Largo "protected" which
resulted in hoards of divers dissenting upon the reefs.
In the 1970's thousands of anchors were ravaging the reefs and it took the
work of individuals to create serviceable moorings buoys.
The creation of a Marine Sanctuary increased business.
But we all knew it was the increasing sewage that was causing the major
problems but
Then the major herbivores dropped out and the weeds, fertilized by sewage,
began to over grow the reef.
Individual people started monitoring in the 70's and a Keyswide monitoring
system was put in place in the mid 1990's
The investigators measured a 38 percent loss of coral cover and 400%
increase in stations with disease in 4 calendar years.
Coral cover on reefs where monitoring had begun in the 1970's was showing a
90%+ loss in coral cover.
Business continued to BOOM and the reefs continued to die.
Now the loss is blamed on climate change whereas, truth be told, most of
the death happened before climate change began to be a factor.
The sewer system that was installed is a failure because fresh wastewater
is buoyant.
New diseases are so virulent the corals must be placed in rescue aquaria
away from the reef.
Everyone is focusing on restoration but corals will never thrive in
polluted water.
A few years ago I was visiting DIscovery Bay where I had worked years
before.
( see https://biospherefoundation.org/project/coral-reef-change/)
I told Leslie I was interested in how the reef had changed and he said,
"Phil, you don't have to dive to see the reef is dying, just look out and
see it's dark brown when it used to be golden".
So while we can build better gizzies to follow the dying reefs in ever
greater detail, unless we generate the political will to act it is all in
vain.
Maybe we should spend our energies and ever decreasing budgets on altering
human behaviors instead of building newer, faster, better resolving
platforms to watch the war in ever greater detail.
Most nations do not have the resources of a Wood's Hole or Scripps
Institute of Oceanography, or the need for nextgen monitoring platforms.
They need help with food, healthcare, sewage treatment, and education.
My friends and colleagues know I love technology and was one of the first
to monitor coral reefs using lines,video, and even satellites, but this is
not going to help the reefs anymore.
They are way past needing monitoring.
They need simple help: clean water, reduced pollution, reduced fishing
pressure, less tourists, and a cooler, higher pH ocean.
So congrats on developing a nexgen monitoring system but you may be wasting
your energy on something that is necessarily over complex and will not
accomplish what is needed.
Simply put, the very adaptations that have enabled coral reefs to thrive in
the clear, nutrient poor tropical seas makes them vulnerable to human
activities.
They are complex processes operating at levels of ecological efficiency
humans should strive to emulate- That would be true  sustainability!
But, sadly, coral reefs will probably not thrive again until humans are
gone.
Phil

Leslie, the retire gardener and I were sitting in the
breezeway reliving old times

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 9:19 AM Amy Apprill via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Hello Coral List,
>
> Our team is pleased to share a new open-access perspective paper titled
> ‘Towards a New Era of Coral Reef Monitoring’ published in Environmental
> Science & Technology (2023, 57, 5117-5124).
>
> Link: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.2c05369
>
> Abstract: Coral reefs host some of the highest concentrations of
> biodiversity and economic value in the oceans, yet these ecosystems are
> under threat due to climate change and other human impacts. Reef monitoring
> is routinely used to help
> prioritize reefs for conservation and evaluate the success of intervention
> efforts. Reef status and health are most frequently characterized using
> diver-based surveys, but the inherent limitations of these methods mean
> there is a growing need for
> advanced, standardized, and automated reef techniques that capture the
> complex nature of the ecosystem. Here we draw on experiences from our own
> interdisciplinary research programs to describe advances in in situ
> diver-based and autonomous reef monitoring. We present our vision for
> integrating interdisciplinary measurements for select “case-study” reefs
> worldwide and for
> learning patterns within the biological, physical, and chemical reef
> components and their interactions. Ultimately, these efforts could support
> the development of a scalable and standardized suite of sensors that
> capture and relay key data to assist in categorizing reef health. This
> framework has the potential to provide stakeholders with the information
> necessary to assess reef health during an unprecedented time of reef change
> as well as restoration and intervention activities.
>
> Best wishes,
> Amy Apprill, Yogesh Girdhar, T. Aran Mooney, Colleen M. Hansel, Matthew H.
> Long, Yaqin Liu, W. Gordon Zhang, Jason Kapit, Konrad Hughen, Jeff Coogan,
> and Austin Green
> Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>

-- 

Phillip Dustan PhD
Charleston SC  29424
843-953-8086 office
843-224-3321 (mobile)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself
we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords
that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe. "
*                                         John Muir 1869*

*A Swim Through TIme on Carysfort Reef*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCPJE7UE6sA
*Raja Ampat Sustainability Project video*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RR2SazW_VY&fbclid=IwAR09oZkEk8wQkK6LN3XzVGPgAWSujACyUfe2Ist__nYxRRSkDE_jAYqkJ7A
*Bali Coral Bleaching 2016 video*

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo>*
TEDx Charleston on saving coral reefs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwENBNrfKj4
Google Scholar Citations:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HCwfXZ0AAAAJ