[Coral-List] tragic yes–but don't believe all you read in the press

[Judith Lang]

Dear Joe,
Regarding your Jan. 20th posting (below) to the coral-list: Please try to independently check what you read in the press before disseminating. 

The reports earlier this month in the Honduran and Mexican press that stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) is now found in Honduras have not been verified along the coast or in the Bay Islands. Many other diseases that have long occurred on Caribbean reefs are still active across the region, and a few resemble SCTLD in some aspects. Confusion is common and very understandable…at least until the real SCTLD reaches its unmistakable outbreak stage and multiple species are dying near simultaneously over a short period of time.

Those beautiful reefs to which you refer on the western side of the Caicos Bank are popular live-aboard dive sites. So even here, the possibility does exist of local contamination of the seawater.

SCTLD outbreaks are tragic, but some corals of all but the locally least-abundant species have survived, even in the longest infected areas of Florida. They will be available for responsible restoration efforts if the environmental drivers of these diseases, bleaching and other immediate sources of coral mortality can be reversed. As Phil Dustan noted in a recent post to the coral-list, "There are solutions we can work on but most are on land, not in the sea.”

Yours sincerely,
Judy Lang
AGRRA Scientific Coordinator
www.agrra.org/coral-disease-outbreak/



> On Jan 20, 2020, at 7:31 AM, Pawlik, Joseph via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
> **************************************************************
> 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
> **************************************************************
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list