[Coral-List] Parrotfishes and coral reef health

[Francesco Cinelli]

Dear friends,
I spent last week in the Seychelles. I went snorkeling in Parslin, La
Digue, and some other small islands. I saw only completely dead reef.
Someone understands the reason for this and what were the causes of recent
or past and if someone is doing something for this? The bottom is
completely flooded with sea urchins and most of the fish is represented by
herbivores. I was shocked. I know very well the Maldives, the Chagos
islands and of course the Red Sea, but I've never seen a situation similar
to that of the Seychelles. I add some photos. Francis

Prof. Francesco L. CINELLI
Professor on Marine Ecology
University of Pisa - Italy
President of the Scientific Council of the International School for
Scientific Diving (ISSDONLUS) "Anna Proietti Zolla"
Member of the AAUS (American Academy of Underwater Science)
Past President of the International Academy of Underwater Sciences and
Tecniques

Home address:
Via De Amicis, 39
50053 EMPOLI (FI)- Italy

Mob. +39.335.7110149
posi2donia at gmail.com
fcinelli at pec.it
www.issdonlus.it <http://www.issd.it/>
www.u <http://www.accasub.it/>nderwateracademy.org


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2017-02-18 17:31 GMT+01:00 Billy Causey - NOAA Federal <
billy.causey at noaa.gov>:

> Peter,
> You, Judy and Tim, and a few others, have been right on track. I have
> been following this thread and communication and find some
> explanations way off the mark.
>
> In my estimation, coral decline continues to be the synergy between
> the impacts of climate change, land-based sources if pollution,
> habitat loss and degradation and overfishing.  Considering that
> overfishing affects the food chain and removal of important reef
> species such as the grazers.  And, I don't have time to start on the
> problems of fish traps and how they can remove important reef species
> that make up a robust reef fish community.
>
> Personally, I have added a fifth cause of reef community decline and
> in the Wider Caribbean that is Lionfish.
>
> Keep the good messages pouring in Peter, Judy and Tim and others.
>
> Billy
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Feb 17, 2017, at 5:25 PM, Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca> wrote:
> >
> > Kudos to Tim McClanahan, in particular, for quietly reintroducing a
> touch of realism into this discussion.  Coral reef decline is proceeding
> around the world, but seems to me to be particularly severe in the
> Caribbean.  (Perhaps that is because of the relatively small number of
> primary reef builders in that system, some of which have been savagely hit
> by disease.)  The decline is caused by many concurrent stressors (Judy
> Lang's post hit most of them in one sentence).  The relative importance of
> these stressors varies from place to place, and from time to time.  The
> long-term trajectory looks very bleak.
> >
> > I doubt any of you disagree with my first paragraph.  But if we reef
> scientists, and particularly the reef ecologists amongst us, cannot
> remember that this is a case of simultaneous, possibly synergistic,
> stressors acting in different ways on different species when we discuss
> what is happening, how can we expect other people to comprehend the
> magnitude of the problem?  To spend lines and lines of text on coral-list
> debating whether or not parrotfish grazing is to blame (as if one factor
> will be the leading cause of decline across time and space) cheapens the
> discussion and reduces any chance of articulating clearly what is needed to
> gain some improvement.  We can all do better.
> >
> > And please, let us stop reducing the concept of herbivory, by
> parrotfishes, sea urchins or anybody else, to a simple binary interaction
> between the grazer and the macroalgae, with the corals waiting patiently on
> the outcome..  What utter nonsense.  It's been well documented in numerous
> marine environments that algae of different species respond differently to
> grazing pressure.  Most macroalgae escape most of the herbivore guild
> through growth, so that the suite of herbivores that might keep a bare site
> free of anything other than a fine algal turf is quite incapable of
> returning a lush stand of macroalgae to that fine turf state.  Different
> species of macroalgae are differentially palatable to different species of
> herbivore, are differentially impacted by pollution, by nutrients, by
> storms.  I could go on.  Even understanding the algal-herbivore interaction
> requires much more subtle ecological insights than are evident when all
> parrotfishes and all algae are considered inte
>  rch
> > angeable.  If we do not improve the way in which we talk about the loss
> of living coral on our coral reefs, we diminish the chance of really
> understanding what is happening, or potentially discovering effective
> management actions.  We are all capable of elevating the level of
> discourse.  If the world is destined to lose most of its coral reefs this
> century, I'd like to think that at minimum, we had at least learned what
> was happening, and could articulate what would have been needed to prevent
> that eventual demise.  We cannot learn from our mistakes without
> understanding clearly what has happened, and the eventual demise of coral
> reefs, if it does happen, needs to become a teachable moment.
> >
> > Peter Sale
> > University of Windsor
> >
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