[Coral-List] Catastrophic loss of coral cover, Turks and Caicos: "end of the end" for Caribbean corals?

[Pawlik, Joseph]

More tragic news,

One of the best preserved fore-reefs in the Caribbean, along the west coast of the Turks and Caicos, suffered considerable loss of living coral cover during 2019 from a combination of disease (likely SCTLD, which began spreading in May) and bleaching from warm seawater temperatures in summer.  You can see the current state of the reef in this video from 5-10 Jan 2020:
https://youtu.be/11ywGm33wnM<https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F11ywGm33wnM&data=01%7C01%7Cpawlikj%40uncw.edu%7C8207277dd6164b2f5d1308d79cf23b1f%7C2213678197534c75af2868a078871ebf%7C1&sdata=vqKPJwQrfKv1TdW%2Fa5ph7KVTb3K9qeOIftcehS6O8dI%3D&reserved=0>
Skip to 7:15 to see a very large brain coral nearly dead from disease. Bleaching and disease can be seen extending down the reef slope into the mesophotic zone (shot from 33 m and viewing deeper) under conditions of excellent visibility.  There were clearly earlier losses of some coral cover on these reefs, particularly for French Cay, which sustained damage from Hurricane Irma.
There were no apparent negative effects on octocorals or sponges.

You can read about this disease outbreak in a BBC article from 10 January:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51035398

Note that these T&C reefs otherwise have as intact an ecosystem as can be found in the Caribbean - lots of fishes, including sharks, large snappers, jacks and groupers, lots of triggers, parrotfishes and tangs, abundant lobster, reef crabs and conch.
There are no land-based sources of pollution to these reefs.

The same diseases are affecting Mesoamerican reefs off Mexico, as posted earlier from 8 January:
https://earthjournalism.net/stories/coral-disease-and-invasive-algae-accelerate-loss-of-reefs-in-mexico<https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fearthjournalism.net%2Fstories%2Fcoral-disease-and-invasive-algae-accelerate-loss-of-reefs-in-mexico&data=01%7C01%7Cpawlikj%40uncw.edu%7C86d79e5c79f24fd4599908d798f8cf00%7C2213678197534c75af2868a078871ebf%7C1&sdata=pFR7IFi3pFm6mFbTrOTdLScK6P%2FzmdGeFo524NvqATo%3D&reserved=0>

The status of SCTLD was just summarized in a recent Reef Encounter article by Weil et al. (Dec. 2019) - it is spreading rapidly.
Given the circulation patterns of the SW Atlantic and past history with coral and urchin disease and lionfish invasions, we appear to be witnessing the "end of the end" for most reef-building corals in the Caribbean.

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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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