[Coral-List] looking for coral resilience videos

[Bruno, John]

Thanks so much Nohora,

> that there is not point to induce decision
> makers to "only" focus on reducing carbon emissions.

Of course. Nobody has suggested otherwise. It's not either/or, it's all of the above. We need to mitigate local stressors and end CO2 emissions. (But doing the former, doesn't relieve us of the need to do the latter.)

> The message that
> the decision makers take from your research may be that they should
> reduce supporting protection to coral reefs.

It's hard to understand why anybody could get that message from anything Ive written. I've long been a very strong advocate of MPAs and other forms of local protection. If it were up to me, I'd ban fishing from the open ocean and protect a third of coastal seas. 

Here is our 2010 paper in which we show local protection can reduce coral loss: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009278

The catch is that it doesn't seem to work for climate change (doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02658.x): specifically local protection doesn't measurably increase the resilience of coral communities to ocean heating (and subsequent bleaching, disease, coral mortality, etc). In fact, there is growing evidence that some local protections can be harmful (eg, leading to overgrazing and the erosion of the reef framework -> Kuffner and Toth 2016 DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12725) and could actually make coral communities more sensitive to ocean heating, AKA "The Protection Paradox" (marxiv.org/dprv5/)

I agree with your disgust about the reduced protection of the GBR. But that was because of politics, not because the corrupt politicians currently in charge there got the idea that climate change is a big problem and the only threat to the reef! 

> 
> In fact, we have in Colombia two resilient coral reef areas that are
> not protected by the government but from the local community:
> 
> If not protected by the fishers' communities #VaraderoColombia would
> not exist since 1990. When the plans for dredging it, started (De La
> Vega,1990). Therefore local protection did save that coral reef.

Indeed. Local protection has saved countless reefs from dredging, pollution, etc, and it's critical. It just won't save any from ocean heating. 

I sincerely appreciate you giving me the opportunity to clarify this message. 

Cheers,

JB