[Coral-List] Mixed Messages

Thu Aug 1 15:31:28 UTC 2019

Well said Michael! I would add that the few places in the Western Atlantic where corals cover is still high and healthy have good water quality.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 31, 2019, at 10:15 AM, Risk, Michael via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
> Doug:
> 
> Too long.
> 
> I would remind -listers that there have been (as far as I know) only two studies of what happens to a reef when the water is cleaned up: Kaneohe Bay Hawaii, and Worthing Barbados. In both cases, recovery surely an aspect of "resilience") was rapid.
> 
> The interesting (and depressing) aspect of this is, why has the coral reef biological community been so slow to accept the impacts of land-based stresses? The reluctance sometimes reaches heroic proportions. In previous discussion on this thread, when Steve asked how to reconcile the paper showing  bleaching on the GBR and Brian's 30-year Looe Key work, some bright spark suggested that the GBR work covered a huge area, whereas Brian looked only at Looe Key. As though Looe Key were the only spot in the world's oceans where N enrichment has occurred. (And I point out that the monitoring on the GBR is incapable of detecting land-based stresses-see Reef Encounter, 1988.)
> 
> Due to a lot of foot-dragging, we have been deprived of a crucial experiment: how will healthy coral ecosystems survive global warming?
> 
> In 2002, Gardner et al showed us that the Caribbean had lost >1/2 its coral by 1980. Recent Florida efforts emphasize transplanting corals, without tackling WQ issues. Ten years ago I said (MPB Editorial):
> 
> "I will digress here a moment to lament the current state of coral
> reef science politics. Somehow, we are led to believe that, out of
> all the ecosystems on the planet, reefs are the ONLY ones not affected
> by nutrients (Szmant, 2002). Some of this debate is no doubt
> truly driven by responsible people going where the data lead, but a
> cynic might note the confluence of development money and political
> pressure with the willingness of suits to say it’s OK to dump/
> dredge/clear/whatever, because it’s all grazing and overfishing."
> ________________________________________
> From: Coral-List [coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] on behalf of Douglas Fenner via Coral-List [coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov]
> Sent: July 29, 2019 6:49 PM
> To: Steve Mussman
> Cc: coral list
> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Mixed Messages
> 
>     I think it is an open empirical question whether reducing local
> impacts improves resilience.  One confusion may be due to the definition of
> the word "resilience."  Some people have used "resilience" to mean both
> resistance to being killed and ability to recover.  Others have used
> "resistance" to refer to being killed and "resilience" to ability to
> recover.  Might be an important distinction.  It could be that local
> impacts have little or no effect on whether hot water kills corals or not.
> Evidence is strong that if the water gets hot enough, they die even in
> places with essentially no human local impacts (northern Great Barrier
> Reef, Scott Reef in NW Australia, Chagos, Jarvis (remote US Pacific island)
> etc).  Might be that local impacts have a huge effect on whether corals can
> recover.  Nearly no local impacts and they recover (such as Scott Reef and
> Chagos), and heavy impacts no recovery (Discovery Bay, Jamaica, 40 years
> later).  Or maybe that's not the solution to the question, empirical
> question, important question.
>     My thought is that this title ("biggest threat to coral reefs") was on
> the popular article, not on the original, scientific article, it is not the
> fault of the authors of the scientific article unless they provided the
> idea that poor water quality is the greatest threat to coral reefs to the
> popular article writer (which I don't know to be the case, and I know that
> popular article writers have to have an attention-grabbing title to pull
> readers in, so I assume it was their idea).
>      If the popular article had said that poor water quality was the
> biggest threat to Florida reefs, that may well be true.  My impression was
> that coral disease was the proximate cause of the death of most Florida
> corals.  But as the writers of this scientific article point out, nutrients
> have been documented to exacerbate coral diseases.  So maybe nutrients are
> the ultimate cause of the Florida coral deaths.  And could well be same or
> similar for the Caribbean, I suppose.  But for the world's coral reefs?  I
> don't think so, especially threat ifor the future.  Mind you, the
> documented decline in Florida and the Caribbean is greater than in most of
> the Indo-Pacific.
>      Nutrients are widely considered to be one of the greatest threats to
> coral reefs.  Reducing nutrients from humans is obviously a very good thing
> to do, vital in many places, particularly Florida.  No dispute there.  But
> many of us think that global warming causing bleaching is the greatest
> future threat to the world's corals as a whole.  At the same time, other,
> local threats can have great impacts locally, and we must act on them as
> well as climate change, and locally the local threats are about all
> individuals can reduce.  But we must get global warming under control or
> the world's corals are going to be mostly dead from bleaching if they
> weren't already killed by disease, nutrients, sediment, overfishing, etc
> etc etc.
>     Cheers, Doug
> 
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 2:52 AM Steve via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> I’ve received a number of interesting responses to my inquiry and that
>> leads me to attempt to clarify a few things. As far as points of contention
>> in the two papers I cited, what I find most complexing are the somewhat
>> incompatible references to the effects of water quality. One paper suggests
>> that if water quality improved, resilience would be enhanced while the
>> other points out that there was “no sign of bleaching protection where
>> water quality was high”. While I’m sure that the dynamics can vary from one
>> reef to another, this seems to be a critical point with universal
>> implications. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were determined that every reef
>> reacts somewhat differently to a whole host of what must be, at least to
>> some extent, unique and asymmetrical threats.
>> 
>> To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the waters are being muddied
>> intentionally. The data should lead you wherever it does, but what I am
>> implying is that we have to mindful of the fact that in today’s world
>> swayed by sound bites and social media, even the most rigorous scientific
>> findings can be spun, even unintentionally, by seemingly innocuous
>> headlines like this:
>> https://www.earth.com/video/poor-water-quality-may-be-the-biggest-threat-to-coral-reefs/
>> Does it matter if water quality, plastic pollution or sunscreens are hyped
>> intermittently as the greatest threat to coral reefs? Maybe yes, maybe no,
>> but I do know how hard it is to break through on climate change. Right now
>> my concern is that just when we seem to be gaining traction on perhaps the
>> most challenging of issues I react with trepidation to anything that could
>> cause even delusory momentum headed in the right direction to suddenly slip
>> away.
>> 
>> Steve
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
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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
> 
> A call to climate action  (Science editorial)
> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/807?utm_campaign=toc_sci-mag_2019-05-30&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=2840296
> 
> New book "The Uninhabitable Earth"  First sentence: "It is much, much worse
> than you think."
> Read first (short) chapter open access:
> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/read-a-chapter-from-the-uninhabitable-earth-a-dire-warning-on-climate-change
> 
> Want a Green New Deal?  Here's a better one.
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-a-green-new-deal-heres-a-better-one/2019/02/24/2d7e491c-36d2-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.a3fc8337cbf8
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