[Coral-List] Mixed Messages

Thu Aug 1 16:39:28 UTC 2019

Hello Mike:

1) I did NOT write that coral reefs are the " the ONLY ones not affected by nutrients (Szmant, 2002)." Read the paper carefully with an open mind and you will see that. My objective was to critically review a contentious issue where some folks put the answer ahead of the question and data. My points were that: a) nutrients can be a cause of algal overgrowth but so can a bunch of other factors such as loss of herbivory (tons of experimental work showing less grazing more impactful than moderate nutrient enrichment). B) Lots of great reefs that have good historical accretion and high coral cover (at least back in prior decades) in spite of natural nutrient enrichment such as seasonal upwelling. C) There are many places remote from humans, with clear as gin water column and BDL nutrient concentrations where corals are in worse shape that reefs near humans because global warming killed them. D) Physiologically, corals are animals and they need nutrients from both heterotrophy and uptake of inorganic and organic nutrients to survive and grow. And they grow better and faster and have heathier tissues when they get the right kind of ambient nutrient (particulate and dissolved) regime for their physiology. Lots of experimental work out of Australia (Ken Anthony's work and others), aquarium community, showing importance of feeding to coral health and grow, that varies by species.

2) Of the two cases you cite where there was rapid recovery after reducing nutrient enrichment/eutrophication by management actions: Kaneohe Bay was not a fast or steady recovery because there was a lot of nutrient loading in the sediments near the low-circulation area near the original outfall, and it took decades for the corals to come back, and there have been other causes of coral decline in that area unrelated to nutrient enrichment in the decades after that. With regard to the other, I don't know much about Worthing Bay, and couldn't find any scientific work about the effects of the sewage spills, which have been recent and apparently government is working to remedy.  There are many more examples of where corals and reef community structure has improved after grazers returned, or how they have gone down hill after bleaching coupled with disease outbreaks have killed the corals and other temperature sensitive organisms.

It is not a dichotomous choice. Both elevated temperatures and degraded water quality can negatively impact corals and coral reefs, but one hammer is much bigger and more widespread than the other: global warming is just that:  GLOBAL, reaching even those outpost where humans are scarce.  Reef condition is generally worse near large human settlements, no surprise. The issue is apportioning the effects and not expecting to sell an expensive "solution" to the public that won't work for a particular place because water quality may not be the cause of the problem. I do believe that the Florida Keys is one of those places where the natural system has great flushing capacity, and eutrophication of the reef ecosystem is not has not been happening. This doesn't mean I support dumping sewage and other types of nutrient sources on the reef, why would I? But It does mean that anthropogenic eutrophication has not been/is not now, the cause of the decline of corals in the Florida Keys. I may change my mind after I read the newest Lapointe paper more carefully, but I doubt it. 

Alina

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-----Original Message-----
From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> On Behalf Of Risk, Michael via Coral-List
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2019 10:16 AM
To: Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>; Steve Mussman <sealab at earthlink.net>
Cc: coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Mixed Messages

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-thre
> at-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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list

--
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

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New book "The Uninhabitable Earth"  First sentence: "It is much, much worse than you think."
Read first (short) chapter open access:
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