[Coral-List] Worthing, Barbados

[Alina Szmant]

I served for 8+ years on a panel of experts for an USA EPA project to develop models for how to classify reef 'health and condition' using a bunch of survey data and lots and lots of photos and videos. Reefs were rated by the team of 15+ experts from "1 Pristine" to "6 Fully degraded" based on % coral cover, lots of coral demographics, cover by algae, sponges, disease, spp composition, susceptibility of individual species to stressors, etc, etc. 

All this as background to support the message of one coral lister that "location, location, location" is everything for coral reefs just like it is for real estate. Deeper offshore reefs cannot be simply compared with fringing reefs. We always asked our EPA bosses to show us where the reef we were rated was located because as a learned coral reef researcher, one would know a lot about what to expect in order to judge whether it was degraded or not. 

What I saw in this video is a degraded reef in the 3.5 to 4 score because so much of the coral was dead and recognizable only by structural complexity and generic shape. Not much algae, and not all that much sponge other than the barrel sponges. Barrel sponges have always been common on the deeper reef platforms where corals tend to be light limited and where there is plenty of flow to support large filter feeding sponges. This is fairly typical of the 15-20 m terrace throughout the Caribbean. What is missing in this video compared to 40 years ago is abundance of live coral. I doubt such  changes are due to eutrophication but rather to coral bleaching and thermal death and disease outbreaks. There is no evidence of corals being overgrown by sponges or algae, and lots of CCA and short turf, and herbivorous fishes in the video.

I suggest that when people want to make generic statements one way of another about reef condition, they provide supporting information about what they hypothesize (or bluntly state) are the causes of degradation. This could result in a much more science based discussion.


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Dr. Alina M. Szmant, CEO
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-----Original Message-----
From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> On Behalf Of Pawlik, Joseph via Coral-List
Sent: Tuesday, August 6, 2019 3:55 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Worthing, Barbados


The SW coast of Barbados has better coral cover and lower seaweed cover than many reefs elsewhere in the Caribbean.  Here's a video tour from January 2019:

https://youtu.be/pFA5pw5FMVE


Notice the huge biomass of giant barrel sponges!!!!




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Joseph R. Pawlik

Frank Hawkins Kenan Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology

Dept. of Biology and Marine Biology

UNCW Center for Marine Science

5600 Marvin K Moss Lane

Wilmington, NC  28409

Office:(910)962-2377; Cell:(910)232-3579

Website: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/index.html

PDFs: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html

Video Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/skndiver011

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________________________________
From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> on behalf of Angie via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Monday, August 5, 2019 11:27 AM
To: Coral List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Worthing, Barbados

According to Dr. Risk.Barbados is "...an island which could be characterized as an outhouse built on a karst outcrop". That´s pretty uncharitable. I´m trying as a Barbadian not to be offended and as a scientist to stick to facts so I have to add that we have two sewage treatment plants, one primary servicing the south and slated to be upgraded to tertiary and the other secondary, servicing the Capital. An increasing number of householders are choosing septic tanks over the traditional suck wells and our nearshore water quality (which is monitored twice monthly) is not the sewer one would expect given that analogy.

Angelique Brathwaite


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