[Coral-List] Reply to: Underwater loudspeakers could help restore damaged coral reefs (Peter Sale)

Stephen Simpson simpsonstephen at hotmail.com
Fri Dec 6 15:37:08 UTC 2019


Dear Peter,

Thank you for these valuable words of caution (as ever) about the biggest threats to coral reefs.

As one of the authors of this study, I can assure you that we have used every interaction with the media to:

1) explain that the only reason we would even try this is because reefs are in such crisis from climate change impacts and poor management

2) that us exploring this approach is a direct response to the ecogrief that we, and many of our collaborators, feel when working on rapidly declining coral reefs

3) that this, and all local-scale remediation approaches, can only be a band-aid and will never be a silver bullet

4) that unless we tackle climate change then all this will be in vain

The positive elements of this story have opened the discussion to hope as well as despair, and given us (and many independent commentators) a fresh chance to raise the issues of climate change, overfishing and pollution.

In our press release we stated:

"If combined with habitat restoration and other conservation measures, rebuilding fish communities in this manner might accelerate ecosystem recovery.

"However, we still need to tackle a host of other threats including climate change, overfishing and water pollution in order to protect these fragile ecosystems.

“Whilst attracting more fish won’t save coral reefs on its own, new techniques like this give us more tools in the fight to save these precious and vulnerable ecosystems.

“From local management innovations to international political action, we need meaningful progress at all levels to paint a better future for reefs worldwide.”

I hope that this assures you that we are not heralding loudspeakers as a global panacea.

Happy to continue this discussion in Bremen (or remotely) as it is sad but true that this is what PhD students (including the lead author Tim Gordon) now work on (rather than earlier ICRSs where wonder, beauty and discovery were front and centre)...

Many thanks for your continued wisdom,

Steve



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Steve Simpson
Professor of Marine Biology & Global Change
University of Exeter

Biosciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Hatherly Laboratories, Prince of Wales Road

Exeter, EX4 4PS, UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1392 722714 / +44 (0) 7900551883
Email: S.Simpson at exeter.ac.uk<mailto:S.Simpson at exeter.ac.uk>

Twitter: @DrSteveSimpson<https://twitter.com/DrSteveSimpson>
Web: http://biosciences.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Stephen_Simpson


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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2019 19:05:12 +0000
From: Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca>
To: "coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov" <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>,
        "douglasfennertassi at gmail.com" <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
Subject: [Coral-List] Underwater loudspeakers could help restore
        damaged coral reefs
Message-ID:
        <QB1PR01MB34268C759C79CC2CFB9D238CC25D0 at QB1PR01MB3426.CANPRD01.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Doug and Coral List,
The media, helped perhaps by an overhyped press release, are at it again.  I'm referring to the sensational headline (The Telegraph, MSN, no doubt elsewhere also) that underwater loudspeakers will help restore coral reefs.  The research result (which is perfectly appropriate as science) tested whether patches built from dead coral could attract settling larval fishes more effectively if they sounded like real reef.  They apparently did.  But.  The artificial patches were just a few meters away from living coral.  The study did not follow fish for very long - patches were monitored over 6 weeks, and the species list, mainly damselfishes, included numerous species that normally recruit to rubble habitat.  The sounds resulted in about 3 times the number of young fish being counted on the treatment patches compared to the controls.

It's true that reef fishes of many species, particularly herbivores, can help maintain coral dominance relative to algae in reef habitat.  But to have the media trumpet the news that sounds will help restore reefs, based on these results,  is utter nonsense.  Getting rid of GHG emissions, and correcting the numerous local impacts on reefs, will help restore them.  At least we might expect criticism of such distortions on coral-list.  (I've not read the press release so do not know whether the authors encouraged this sensationalism by the media.)

Peter Sale
University of Windsor
sale at uwindsor.ca
petersalebooks.com




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