[Coral-List] Battling climate change versus coral reef restoration: widening the discussion

Steve Mussman sealab at earthlink.net
Mon May 7 18:06:08 EDT 2018


I would like to widen the discussion even more by offering a perspective from outside of the scientific community reflecting on how this debate might be affecting public opinion. Although we can’t mandate unanimity, be aware that the divisions here can be politically exploited adding fuel to the fire that emphasizes that the science surrounding climate change is unsettled. At the same time, it seems that all of you agree that climate change is currently the greatest threat to corals. I also believe that Luiz’s point “that even as we address climate change we need to help corals in other ways” enjoys universal acceptance too. The problem as I see it is that when restoration efforts are reviewed they are most often detached from the issue of climate change therefore inadvertently promoting the troublesome misconception that in fact restoration is the/a solution in and of itself. The diving industry has been great at getting the word out about sunscreen (see Doug Fenner’s most recent post), plastic trash, shark finning and coral restoration (even offering specialty courses on the subject), but what about climate change? Not a word, creating the myopic view that we can “fix” coral reefs without addressing the greatest threat. Restoration efforts can certainly do everything Luiz suggests including providing much-needed hope and optimism, but they (as well as the other efforts mentioned) could do so much more if they made it a point to unequivocally stress that we must address climate change (as well as other significant stressors) or that hope will most likely prove to be a cruel illusion.

Regards,
Steve Mussman
Sea Lab Diving

Sent from my iPad

> On May 4, 2018, at 2:29 PM, Luiz Rocha <lrocha at calacademy.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Les, that's an interesting discussion and one that I've been thinking
> about a lot recently. I really don't care about who came up with the
> "super" term first or how it's used today, but I do care about the
> restoration debate. And in this case I think I am on Colin's side. I do
> 100% agree with Terry (and Colin, from what I read) that the greatest
> threat to corals today is climate change, and the need to address it is
> urgent, but I think that even as we address climate change we need to help
> corals in other ways. Here is why:
> 
> https://theconversation.com/what-would-happen-to-the-climate-if-we-stopped-emitting-greenhouse-gases-today-35011
> 
> The article above summarizes results from different papers that show that
> even if we stopped CO2 emissions today, Earth's temperature would take
> decades to stabilize and would still be higher than pre-industrial levels.
> So, to save corals we cannot solely focus on curbing CO2 emissions. To me,
> restoration does three things:
> 
> 1) It buys corals time. Restoration can keep populations going or make them
> viable again, even when done on a small scale (if done the right way). And
> it can just help them survive long enough to be around when climate
> stabilizes.
> 
> 2) By keeping populations going, it gives them more chances to adapt
> naturally. Every bleaching event is a severe bottleneck, and everything
> that survives has a big chance of surviving the next bleaching event. But
> if the closest coral colony of that species is 10km away, their gametes
> will probably never meet. Restoration (again if done the right way) can
> help corals adapt by connecting those stragglers.
> 
> 3) It gives people hope. When people realize that temperatures won't go
> back to normal any time soon even if we stop CO2 emissions now, they will
> simply think that there is nothing that can be done for corals and will let
> them go. I don't want to see that happening.
> 
> Having said all of that, I would probably still be on Terry's side if I
> thought the fight climate change was competing with resources for coral
> restoration. But I don't think they are. I think the climate change fight
> is a global one and has to be mostly driven by governmental and energy
> industry initiatives, whereas coral restoration is driven by local and
> foundation support. As you know, my views are very different when it comes
> to MPAs. I think very large (and based on everything I read, not effective)
> pelagic MPAs are sucking the few resources available for marine protection
> in tropical countries, and that's a big problem.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Luiz
> 
> *Luiz A. Rocha, PhD*
> Associate Curator and Follett Chair of Ichthyology
> California Academy of Sciences
> p. 415.379.5370
> f.  415.379.5731
> LRocha at calacademy.org
> Academic Website
> <https://www.calacademy.org/staff/ibss/ichthyology/luiz-a-rocha>
> 
> 55 Music Concourse Drive
> Golden Gate Park
> San Francisco, CA 94118
> 
> Twitter <https://twitter.com/CoralReefFish> | Instagram
> <https://www.instagram.com/coralreeffish/>
> 
>> On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 10:38 AM, Kaufman, Leslie S <lesk at bu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Colleagues,
>> 
>> Colin Foord and I have been having a digital conversation that might be of
>> interest to a wider audience.  Colin wrote an interesting and provocative
>> blog addressing the dialectic that is emerging over the best strategy for
>> bettering the lot of coral reefs in this era of anthropogenic climate
>> change.  The divide is between those who underscore the need to battle
>> climate change, versus others investing heavily in manual coral reef
>> restoration.  Of course, we have also been debating this issue here on
>> Coral-List.
>> 
>> Colin’s blog can be found here:
>> 
>> https://medium.com/@coralmorphologic/on-super-
>> corals-and-where-to-find-them-or-a-cautionary-tale-of-using-
>> memes-in-science-1b4f6a9ace3c
>> 
>> A wider discussion could be very valuable, especially in light of the
>> National Academy study, and particularly given that some of us are in the
>> midst of planning a second international workshop on coral reef restoration
>> for December of this year.
>> 
>> ***
>> 
>> Dear Colin,
>> 
>> Dialectics are useful in communication, but can also undermine our
>> understanding of a complex world.  Terry Hughes may be in shock from what
>> has happened recently on the Great Barrier Reef but he is not wrong about
>> the importance of addressing anthropogenic climate change.  If we bet on
>> manual restoration as an exclusive tool for maintaining coral reefs we will
>> fail; and if we bet on restoring the climate of 200 years ago there will be
>> no coral reefs by the time we succeed.
>> 
>> As you yourself point out, in Miami something is “super” if it is way
>> above other things in magnitude.  The magnitude we are interested in in the
>> case of reef-building corals, is their survival.  Interventions to ensure
>> the survival of a living system always have two components.  One is
>> stabilizing and centering the environmental envelope over the reaction
>> norms of the system, so that it can feasibly adapt.  I suppose we could
>> call this achieving a super environment.  Terry wants us to pay attention
>> to achieving a super environment.  The other is ensuring that that
>> adaptation occurs, and also continues, allowing life to continue adaptively
>> tracking its environment in perpetuity.  Any organism that can do this is
>> pretty super in my book.  Those are our two super duper strategic options:
>> ameliorate the environment, and accelerate adaptation.  Environmental
>> amelioration itself is hierarchical, ranging from how we steward our
>> watersheds, to how we steward the biosphere.  All of these pieces must be
>> attended to and in place for us to succeed, and all have a limited scope
>> within which they can be manipulated.  When they align, then all the
>> necessary elements fall back into place and a coral reef re-emerges.  Or a
>> forest, or a city, or an entire vanua…or a world.
>> 
>> In other words, seeing the whole at all times is more important than being
>> super.  Let’s keep our eyes on the whole.  That, after all, is the goal in
>> attempting to heal the world: to restore wholeness.  People had this
>> figured out a very long time ago and it is a core mythology of all the
>> world’s great religions for a reason.  So, may you have wholeness, and may
>> we have coral reefs.
>> 
>> Les
>> 
>> Les Kaufman
>> Professor of Biology
>> Boston University Marine Program
>> Faculty Fellow, Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future
>> and
>> Conservation Fellow
>> Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science
>> Conservation International
>> lesk at bu.edu<mailto:lesk at bu.edu>
>> 
>> 
>> 
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