[Coral-List] Mixed Messages
Nicole Crane
nicrane at cabrillo.edu
Mon Aug 5 20:44:54 UTC 2019
Why do we all need to remain in our boxes and stick to our one sided
reasoning line (perhaps due to a paper we might have written)? Cant we all
agree that multiple stressors are important? That maybe it really is a
combination of drivers? Alina, I am truly mystified that you really
believe Floridas reef declines don't have a eutrophication factor. Really?
wow I think I have missed something and would love to see the data behind
nutrient loading, eutrophication and reef declines. Isotopes might also
shine a light (thanks Michael for turning me on to that as we are pursuing
that more now!).
We work in one of those remote, low human impact, clear water systems (see
our paper Atoll wide Atoll-scale patterns in coral reef community
structure: Human signatures on Ulithi Atoll, Micronesia Crane et al
2017). There
are pretty clear patterns associated with nutrients although we didn't
sample for those specifically. But the 'worst' reef is in the lowest water
movement, closest to human nutrient loading, lowest oxygen, and highest
temp. Which of those is driving it? there is likely a dominant one, but
no doubt multiple drivers.
Anyway, denying ANY driver of decline is probably not advancing our
collective field at all, and surely leaves room for skeptics to jump at
justifications for poor behavior or lack of action.
Thanks
Nicole
Nicole L. Crane
Faculty, Cabrillo College
Natural and Applied Sciences
www.cabrillo.edu/~ncrane
Senior Conservation Scientist, Project co-lead
One People One Reef
onepeopleonereef.ucsc.edu
On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 7:55 AM Risk, Michael via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> Hello Alina, and thank you for the response.
>
> I did not mis-attribute anything you wrote. I said, "We have been led
> to believe..." In your 2002 Estuaries paper, you state "The evidence
> that nutrient enrichment has widely impacted coral reefs is poor", and
> "While nutrient enrichment may be the major factor in the decline of a
> few reefs, it appears to mostly play a secondary role..."
>
> In short, you led us to believe this-as I said.
>
> Science advances by consensus. There have not been many others papers
> denying the importance of nutrients on reefs. In my limited experience,
> I have seen your Estuaries paper cited by (a) your students, and (b)
> developers.
>
> I certainly accept that grazing is a major factor-I said some while
> back there has been little new in the field since Stephenson and
> Searles. There also is no question that global warming, if unchecked,
> will put the boots to the few reef remnants that still exist. Our 1997
> paper still scares me (Smith et al., Nature 386: 818), because we
> suggest that "...the initiation of the Younger Dryas may have taken
> place over as few as 5 years". The Younger Dryas, some believe, was a
> major reorganisation of Atlantic circulation, triggered by a meltwater
> event-of which we currently have sufficient. The final blows from
> climate change may therefore come more quickly than we already fear.
>
> What bothers me is the decades-long reluctance by many reef biologists
> to accept the importance of nutrients. Where would reefs be to-day if
> the worlds' reef biologists had stood up on their hind legs 40 years
> ago and shouted with one voice "Clean up the freakin water!" but they
> were collectively unable to assemble their feces, and chased various
> shiny objects.
>
> There never should have been the slightest doubt about the importance
> of nutrients. In the late 1960's and early 70's, Colin Stearn and Terry
> Scoffin and their students produced an enormous study of the carbonate
> budget of a then-healthy reef, Barbados. They showed us, almost a
> half-century ago, that accumulation rates of even a healthy reef were
> within the error bars of destruction (bioerosion) rates. We all know
> the response of bioerosion, especially by algae and sponges, to
> increased nutrients. So by 1977, we knew that bioerosion was an
> extremely important aspect of reef health, quantitatively more
> important even than coral growth rate.
>
> Anyone who doubts the tendency of reef biologists to chase shiny
> objects, I invite them to tabulate papers in, say, Coral Reefs. By
> rights, half those papers should cover aspects of bioerosion. Hoo Boy.
> It is time to accept that, with a few notable champions, this subject
> has been sadly ignored. (Hi, Christine.)
>
> I appreciate that you "may change your mind" after you read Brian's
> paper-which was, after all, the origin of this thread. I am well aware
> you do not believe eutrophication has been the cause of the decline in
> Florida's reefs. If you have not been convinced by "Sewage-derived
> nitrogen sources have persisted at the Backcountry, Lower Keys and
> Middle Keys reef sites since the 1970s and there has been a marked
> increase in d15N since ca. 1993, suggesting even greater insult to the
> reef ecosystem from land-based sources of pollution" (Ward-Paige et al,
> 2005a) or "Sanctuary wide, coral cover declined while Clionid sponge
> abundance increased from 1996 to 2001" and "Coral loss in the Florida
> Reef Tract is a result of land-based stress, rather than "global
> change" (Ward-Paige et al 2005b) then I don't know what it would take.
>
> Mike
>
> (ps-some may feel I have been hard on reef biologists. Suck it up. M
> Risk, PhD Biology.)
>
>
> Ward-Paige, C.A., Risk, M.J., Sherwood, O.A., 2005a. Reconstruction of
> nitrogen
>
> sources on coral reefs: d15N and d13C in gorgonians from the Florida
> Reef Tract.
>
> Marine Ecology Progress Series 296, 155-163.
>
>
> Ward-Paige, C.A., Risk, M.J., Sherwood, O.A., Jaap, W.C., 2005b.
> Clionid sponge
>
> surveys on the Florida Reef Tract suggest land-based nutrient inputs.
> Marine
>
> Pollution Bulletin 51, 570-579.
>
>
> On Aug 1, 2019, at 12:39 PM, Alina Szmant
> <[1]alina at cisme-instruments.com> wrote:
>
> 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
> ***********************************************************************
> **
> Dr. Alina M. Szmant, CEO
> CISME Instruments LLC
> 210 Braxlo Lane,
> Wilmington NC 28409 USA
> AAUS Scientific Diving Lifetime Achievement Awardee
> cell: 910-200-3913
> Website: [2]www.cisme-instruments.com
>
> **********************************************************
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> [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAYeR9qX71A&t=6s
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coral-List <[6]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 <[7]douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>; Steve Mussman
> <[8]sealab at earthlink.net>
> Cc: coral list <[9]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."
> ________________________________________
>
> References
>
> 1. mailto:alina at cisme-instruments.com
> 2. http://www.cisme-instruments.com/
> 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAYeR9qX71A&t=6s
> 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa4SqS7yC08
> 5. https://youtu.be/QCo3oixsDVA
> 6. mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> 7. mailto:douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
> 8. mailto:sealab at earthlink.net
> 9. mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
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