[Coral-List] Getting old is no fun; shifting baselines

[Douglas Fenner]

The Hawaiian Airlines magazine recently had an article about teaching
people to plant macroalgae on Hawaii reefs.

The Undersea Gardeners
https://hanahou.com/21.4/the-undersea-gardeners     open-access

  "The lei makers and planters are here to support the Waimānalo Limu Hui,
one of several nonprofit groups dedicated to restoring depleted nearshore
reefs through-out the Hawaiian Islands."   The article says something like
they feel there are not many fish near shore, so planting algae the fish
like to eat could bring the fish back.  One is tempted to point out that
there may be more people than the fish can feed.  One also wonders if reef
degradation has gone so far that the way to restore reefs is to plant
macroalgae??  Could this illustrate shifting baselines?  In the past, we
might have hesitated to recommend planting macroalgae on reefs, wouldn't
we??  Maybe the opposite?
Cheers,  Doug

On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 6:44 AM John Ware <jware at erols.com> wrote:

> Dear Peter and List,
>
> Peter Sale's recent comment, extracted below:
>
> "...that over the next decade or so, the world is going to lose a lot of
> coral reef scientists along with our memories of what reefs could be like
> in a Holocene ocean that no longer exists."
>
> This reminded me of a recent trip my wife and I made to Curacao.  We have
> been diving ~40 years, maybe not long by the standards of many coral reef
> scientists, but long enough to have seen many changes to our reefs.
>
> We were on a boat with quite a number of much younger divers (it seems
> everyone is much younger these days).  When we came up my wife's first
> comment was that "It was like diving on a cemetery!"  However, the younger
> divers were raving about the beautiful reef referring to algal-covered
> mounds that were once live coral.
>
> John
>
> --
>
>   John R. Ware, PhD
>   President
>   SeaServices, LLC
>   302 N. Mule Deer Pt.
>   Payson, AZ 85541, USA
>   928 478-6358
>   jware at erols.com
>   http://www.seaservices.org
>
>    Become a member of the International Society for Reef Studies
>    http://www.coralreefs.org
>
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>


-- 
Douglas Fenner
Ocean Associates, Inc. Contractor
NOAA Fisheries Service
Pacific Islands Regional Office
Honolulu
and:
Consultant
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

IPCC says limiting global warming to 1.5C will require drastic action.  Coral
reefs would almost entirely disappear with 2 degrees of warming, with just
10–30% of existing reefs surviving at 1.5 °C.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06876-2?utm_source=briefing-dy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=briefing&utm_content=20181009

Key climate panel, citing impending crisis, urges crash effort to reduce
emissions.  Coral reefs are projected to decline 70% to 90% at 1.5°C, but
at 2°C, 99% of reefs would be ravaged.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/key-climate-panel-citing-impending-crisis-urges-crash-effort-reduce-emissions?utm_campaign=news_daily_2018-10-08&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=2416592

Major UN report says climate change is worse than first thought.  Even 1.5C
could cause damage that could run as high as $54 trillion.  (annual US GDP
is US$20 trillion, China and EU should be roughly similar, 2014 world GWP
was US$76 trillion, Purchasing Power Parity was US$107 trillion.)
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/08/major-un-report-climate-change-worse/?yptr=yahoo