[Coral-List] Even MPAs Don't Save Coral Reefs from Climate Change (A research paper and a comic)

Wed Jan 1 01:10:28 UTC 2020

Double spot on Steve and Doug!
It is becoming depressingly clear that no-take areas will not save coral
reefs from mass bleaching.  It is also becoming clear that MPAs do not seem
to help with post-beaching coral survival and recovery either- at least not
on their own.

For the Coral Coast MPAs that you both mention, if it were not for the
amazing community-based interventions going on facilitated by Reef Explorer
Fiji, the no-take areas would likely be in an equally degraded low coral
cover condition. But it is not only coral restoration, but also things like
COTS control and a district-wide tabu on the two species of surgeonfish
which target the brown macro-algae with otherwise cover the reef.  It is
clear that amazing progress has been made in the connection between humans
and their reefs, from exploitation to hands-on stewardship. Hand-off no
longer seems to be enough in the face of mass bleaching.

I have found in my work that in some cases that no-take areas, especially
if they are not fully mature or functional, can even be a strongly negative
factor- preventing coral recovery or forcing a shift in species composition
of what does recover.  An over-abundance of large adult parrotfish and
butterflyfish can develop (perhaps in the absence of sharks?).  These fish
can in some cases kill out virtually all the surviving Acropora corals, all
incoming Acropora recruits, and all Acropora out-plants for restoration.
It is rather horrific to see the process happening.  Pocillopora seems to
better resist the voracious predatory fish- could this be why some reefs
have shifted from Acropora to Pocillopora dominance?  Porites also resists
the fish, plus it resists COTS and Drupella- so this might explain shifts
on reefs to Porites dominance? There are certainly some Acropora corals
capable of surviving the heat, but they do not often survive the increased
levels of predation, not only are they the preferred prey species, but
predator to prey ratios go out the roof following mass coral die-offs.

If you suspect over-abundance of parrotfish or butterflyfish are preventing
coral recovery, try out-planting a few Acropora corals and watch the
results- if they disappear like candy thrown to a group of children, you
know there is a problem.  Also, if you look within farmer damselfish
territories and find Acropora there and only there- you will know that an
imbalance dominates the reef and is preventing Acropora from coming back.
The damselfish actively protect Acropora corals from parrotfish,
butterflyfish, and COTS predators, and indirectly from Drupella snails.
Unfortunately they also tend to suppress spawning and may spread disease,
etc.

I no longer despise the pesky farmer damselfish, but now feel that they are
absolutely essential in the survival of Acropora corals and thus coral
reefs in the face of climate change. From damselfish territories, we can
often find the missing corals we need in our coral nurseries.  I also
understand more fully how reef sharks and other large predators could be
essential for coral reef survival in the face of mass coral die offs, by
preventing parrotfish and butterflyfish over-abundance which otherwise
leads to coral demise.

And for coral restoration and out-planting, my experience is that corals
can sometimes fare better in moderately fished areas, as long as abundant
juvenile grazing fish are present to keep the seaweeds down. But better
yet, get the community involved and get the reef sharks and large predators
back in the no-take areas. For restoration and post bleaching
interventions, nurture what is rare, and the Acropora corals especially, as
they are the first to go. On the positive side, whatever is left should be
bleaching resistant.

We are promoting active community and  resort involvement through regular
COTS and Drupella removal, which can be an important factor in both coral
retention after bleaching and in coral survival during the restoration
phase. The coral restoration itself does several synergistic things: 1. it
rescues bits of the surviving bleaching resistant corals from predators, 2.
within 1-2 years we then re-create diverse breeding populations of
bleaching resistant corals of the species most susceptible to decline, 3.
It provides habitat for juvenile reef fish including grazing species as
well as the missing planktonivores, etc, 4. It potentially creates a
settlement signal to enhance coral and fish recruitment, and 5. it
potentially increases the chances of sharing bleaching resistant algal
symbionts with incoming coral recruits.

The strategy in effect means that cost per square meter or numbers of
outplants are rather irrelevant measures of success.  We do not seek to
replant vast areas, rather we focus on rescuing coral genotypes that
otherwise have a low chance of survival, growing them into larger colonies,
and then using trimmed second generation fragments to restore diverse
breeding patches- to species that are otherwise on their way out.  So if we
can restore small patches of breeding corals every few hundred meters or so
and have a major impact on recovery of the wider reef system (if 4 and 5
above prove true), this could be quite important to the adaptation of wider
corals reef systems.

Of course this work is very limited in scale so far, and only if expanded a
thousand fold would only buy us time- maybe two more generations until
ocean acidification wipes away all progress we make.

Again, there is only one ultimate solution- the lowering of CO2 levels.

This is New Year's day, 2020, and a time for reflection.  I hope that this
will give some of you food for thought or ideas for research.  Time will
tell if this perspective is relevant in making a difference.  I am not a
research scientist- I am not paid to gather quantitative data or to do
statistical science. Like most doing coral restoration, I spend much time
fund raising and struggling to survive.  I use science in my chosen work,
concerned more about food security and the impact of dying coral reefs on
human health and the survival of indigenous Pacific Island communities.  My
dyslexia, which sometimes allows me to see patterns and trends that others
can't see so clearly, has prevented me from publishing much in the way of
scientific articles during my professional life.  So I am now gathering
together decades of observations and past results into a coral restoration
descriptive ecology and am teaching short courses on ecological restoration
of coral reefs and simple community-appropriate methods here in Fiji.  We
welcome self-funded student research in our sites in Fiji, Tuvalu,
Kiribati, Samoa, and Moorea to quantify the various changes and
observations. We also welcome academic institutional partners to help
quantify our various working assumptions, also to include us in your
grants!

I hope that 2020 be a year of real progress- a year for the suppression of
competitiveness in favor of working together on levels not thought possible
in the past.

Lets work together to save these precious coral reefs, and in doing so we
will save the planet and ourselves.
.
Regards,

Austin

Austin Bowden-Kerby, PhD
Corals for Conservation
Sustainable Environmental Livelihoods for the Future
P.O. Box 4649 Samabula, Fiji Islands
https://www.facebook.com/C4Conservation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009j6wb
TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRLJ8zDm0U
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/
<https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/>

Sustainable Environmental Livelihoods Farm
Km 20 Sigatoka Valley Road, Fiji Islands
(679) 938-6437
http://
<http://permacultureglobal.com/projects/1759-sustainable-environmental-livelihoods-farm-Fiji>
teiteifiji.org
http://permacultureglobal.com/projects/1759-sustainable-environmental-livelihoods-farm-Fiji
https://www.facebook.com/teiteifarmstay
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/happy-chickens-for-food-security-and-environment-1/

> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 08:29:36 -1100
> From: Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
> To: Steve Mussman <sealab at earthlink.net>
> Cc: coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] A research paper and a comic
> Message-ID:
>         <
> CAOEmEkEsMTJRG36g7UZ3P4CE0JCrUUOvzcyLYUSzfOubnTfMrw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> Steve,
>     Thanks very much for this.  I noticed in the cartoon that on the lower
> right of the screen, a link opens up to the article the cartoon is based
> on.  I noticed that after the paper's abstract talks about how MPAs are not
> helping corals, the last sentence says:
>
>   "If reefs cannot be saved by local actions alone, then it is time to face
> reef degradation head-on, by directly addressing anthropogenic climate
> change?the root cause of global coral decline."
>
> Spot on.
>
> The cartoon mentioned some MPA's in Fiji that have helped coral.  Those
> MPAs were set up by villages with help by Reef Explorer, led by Victor
> Bonito.  Reef Explorer is also doing lots of coral restoration there, very
> successfully, I've seen it.  They also teach people how to do it.
>
> Cheers,  Doug
>
> On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 4:03 AM Steve via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>
> >
> > Two links that might be of interest to some.
> >
> > Social-environmental drivers inform strategic management of coral reefs
> in
> > the Anthropocene
> >
> >
> >
> https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/files/24053660/Darling_et_al_NEE_final_submission_12June2019.pdf
> >
> > As coral die, protected areas aren?t enough
> >
> > COMIC: The reef-builders face larger threats, scientists say. Chief among
> > these is warming seas.
> >
> >
> >
> https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/sustainability/2019/coral-reef-conservation-marine-reserves
> >
> > Sent from EarthLink Mobile mail
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Coral-List mailing list
> > Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> > https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>
>
>
> --
> Douglas Fenner
> Lynker Technologies, LLC, Contractor
> NOAA Fisheries Service
> Pacific Islands Regional Office
> Honolulu
> and:
> Consultant
> PO Box 7390
> Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA
>
> Even 50-year old climate models correctly predicted global warmng
>
> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming?utm_campaign=news_weekly_2019-12-06&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=3113276
>
> Greenhouse gas emissions to set new record this year, but rate of growth
> shrinks
>
> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/greenhouse-gas-emissions-year-set-new-record-rate-growth-shrinks?utm_campaign=news_weekly_2019-12-06&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=3113276
>
> "Global warming is manifestly the foremost current threat to coral reefs,
> and must be addressed by the global community if reefs as we know them will
> have any chance to persist."  Williams et al, 2019, Frontiers in Marine
> Science
>
>
>