[Coral-List] reassessing coral reefs
Eugene Shinn
eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu
Thu Apr 9 10:28:43 EDT 2015
Guess I stirred up a lot of muddy water with the report on coral growth
in the Australian newspaper. I thank Dough Fenner for pointing out that
the report is on a 2012 paper published in Science.I missed that however
I do remember reading the original paper. I think the take home message
is that in areas where the water is usually quite cool it is logical for
coral growth to increase when the water warms. Think “just right” as in
the Goldilocks story.And yes Porities is a fairly tough coral.While with
USGS we cored large Porities heads that survived near Atomic bomb tests
at Eniwetok atoll. Based on analysis of annual growth rings we found
that several smaller heads began growing on the edge of a bomb crater
within a year of the event.
The photo of the diver coring the head coral appalled Dennis Hubbard as
it did me. The photo showed all the divers equipment as well as the
diver resting on the coral head. In the past we cored over a hundred
head corals and never touched them except with the drill bit.
It was interesting that one reader took the “kill the messenger”
approach taking the newspaper to task because it is a Rupert Murdock
product. Is that the way we do science? Read the article in Science and
evaluate that.
Earlier comments about the hypocrisy of coral scientists using air
travel to study distant coral reefs, reminded me of a recent gathering
of climate activists in Switzerland. They came from far and wide in
approximately 700 different private jets. Yes it was reported on Fox
news. What other network would have reported it?Hypocrisy is all around
us. It shows up when we attack the messenger instead of the message. Gene
--
No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
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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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