[Coral-List] Fwd: So you think you understand coral bleaching?
Douglas Fenner
douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Thu Mar 26 09:19:21 UTC 2020
Scott,
OK, let's look at your answers a bit more closely. Question 1: can
non-symbiotic corals stand 33-34 deg Celsius? Your answer: YES. Really??
Which ones??? Almost half of all coral species are azooxanthellate. Most
are in deep water. Deep water is cold. They are not exposed to anything
close to 33-34 deg Celsius. Answer to your question: most probably can't.
If you read my post over carefully, I didn't say that the holobiont of
a zooxanthellate coral has the same temperature threshold as the separated
components. I said that each species has a different threshold, and every
last one of them can be killed by too hot a temperature. Are you saying
that is not true?? Are you saying that zooxanthellate coral, when
bleached, will not be killed by high water temperatures?? Or just that the
nutrients have to be at high levels?? (clearly they don't have to be,
given the bleaching and mortality on remote atolls, but that doesn't mean
that nutrients don't increase the bleaching, I didn't say they didn't, did
I??)
You say you are not talking about extreme temperatures, but you
continue to use the word "BOILING." You said it twice again!! You say
that "I am not talking about extreme scenarios of warming." But you keep
using the word "BOILING"! In all caps. How come?? Please say what you
mean. I don't think the Hughes paper said "BOILING."
So the Hughes paper reported the water was relatively hot, and
corals bleached quickly and died quickly. Do you deny those facts?
Anybody can repeat that as an experiment in an aquarium, put a corals into
water at a variety of temperatures above the average annual high
temperature and see how long it takes them to bleach, and how long to die.
You can easily put them at a temperature at which they will die well before
they would starve to death.
Do you deny that after zooxanthellate corals have lost their
zooxanthellae, their fate (with only 1% of their zooxanthellae present)
depends on the temperature?? Aren't those well known facts? You use
azooxanthellate corals as the control, but a better control is a
zooxanthellate coral without the zoox, because it is the same coral
species. Each species can have a different threshold for being killed by
high temperatures, the azooxathellate coral (out of over 600+ species of
azooxanthellate corals) may have a higher mortality threshold than the
zooxanthellate coral species you pick .
Then you make this statement, "But it is also why I think the light-weight
unjustified conclusions of Hughes et al. have been so very damaging. Lets
be honest, this is why most scientist have jumped on board the “oh we can
do nothing but yell loudly at the importance of mitigating warming’."
That's pure baloney. Many scientists have been very concerned about high
temperatures causing mass coral bleaching and mortality DECADES before this
Hughes paper came out!! The big mass bleaching event in 1998 was 20 years
before the Hughes paper, and loads of scientists were concerned by the
roughly 16% of corals around the world that were killed then by high
temperatures. Are you saying that causality goes backwards in time because
it has political ramifications??? Is that a "scientific" way to approach
the evidence?? Or is it just best to ignore the published record??
More importantly, who has said or written that “oh we can do nothing but
yell loudly at the importance of mitigating warming’." I don't know
anybody who has said or written that, can you show us any instance?? Many
people say global warming is important, some say it is the greatest future
threat, some point out the damage it has already done. I say that if we
don't get it under control, we can kiss coral reef ecosystems good by.
Maybe 10% of the corals will survive instead of just 1%. That isn't "going
for the gold." I agree, let's go for the gold, let's go for reefs as
healthy as they were in, say 1900. Controlling nutrients is surely an
important part of that. But again, if you control nutrients and let global
warming continue on a "business as usual" track, we can kiss coral reef
ecosystems good by. There may be someone who has said something similar to
what you wrote, but there are mighty few of them and most people don't
agree with it, I don't think.
I note that the Moorea study found that at moderately high temperatures,
nutrients doubled the bleaching. But at higher temperatures, they all
bleached. I'd be willing to bet that once they were all beached, if
temperatures went even higher, the time until they died would shorten the
higher the temperature. Easy to test in the lab, I'd think.
I note that you didn't respond to any of the other examples I've
presented. How about bleaching on remote atolls in oligotrophic waters?
Do light intensity and lack of water movement increase bleaching as well?
Also note, I was not talking about what causes bleaching. I was talking
about what causes mortality. The two are not necessarily caused by the
same thing. They may be, or they many not be. My point was that mortality
has been said to be caused by starvation, but I think it is quite possible
that it can be caused by high temperatures. No, not boiling, I never said
that except when I was talking about thermophiles to make the point that
all organisms have a maximum upper temperature before they die (you used
that word first in your first post).
Funny, I spotted another article that was linked to at the bottom of one of
the articles you gave links to. It says that when the temperatures are
just 0.5 C higher, the corals die immediately and their skeletons get
covered with filamentous algae. Just what I was saying (though I didn't
have the 0.5C number). No mention of nutrients. "Rapid coral death and
decay, not just bleaching, as marine heatwaves intensify"
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-rapid-coral-death-marine-heatwaves.html
Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, we need every tool we can get in our
toolbox to save reefs. If lowering nutrients reduces bleaching at moderate
bleaching temperatures, that's great, that's another reason to reduce
nutrient runoff. Let's use it!! We need to reduce nutrient runoff anyhow,
this is just more evidence of the need to do that. However, reducing
bleaching at moderately raised temperatures is not the same thing as
reducing mortality. If someone can demonstrate that lower nutrients reduce
coral mortality to even higher temperatures, great, let's use it. But
let's not use a reduction of bleaching at moderately raised temperatures by
nutrients as an excuse to ignore the ultimate driver of coral mortality,
high temperatures. As the decades go by, we're moving from moderately hot
events to hotter events that are likely to have higher coral mortality.
Nutrient reduction is great, but will it help reduce the coral mortality at
higher temperatures? Or will the corals just die rapidly like in the study
I referred to above? I don't think we can risk not addressing the causes
of global warming, which seems to be something you think has been falsely
accused of causing bleaching and coral mortality. In spite of a lot of
evidence that is does cause coral mortality. And coral mortality is a LOT
worse than coral bleaching, in my view. Dead corals can't recover; living,
bleached corals can if the temperatures go down.
Cheers, Doug
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 3:53 PM Scott Wooldridge <swooldri23 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi Doug,
>
> I see you are well versed in the dogmatic response of coral bleaching.
> Therefore, my challenge for you, is to answer 3 very basic questions.
> Question 1: Can non-symbiotic (hermatypic) corals survive at 33-34 deg
> Celsius? Question 2: Can the photosymbionts (zooxanthellae) that associate
> with corals survive at 33-34 deg Celsius when free-living or in culture?
> Question 3: Can the coral-algae symbiosis survive at 33-34 deg Celsius?
>
> I can supply you with the references if need be. But the answers are YES,
> YES, very rarely (most commonly NO).
>
> So is the heat stress problem due to the Host, the Symbiont or the
> Symbiosis ?
>
> I am not talking about extreme scenarios of warming. But even in saying
> that. I am not convinced AT ALL that the conclusions of the Hughes et al.
> study are correct nor WISE. Namely, their claim that the corals died
> quickly from boiling water temperatures. Indeed, my facetious mention of
> the crude coral bleaching model mentioned in my last post was a direct
> reference to this claim, whilst trying to remain politically correct -
> opps. But really let’s take a step back and think scientifically. So they
> are confident of their claim because they followed the energetic status of
> the symbiosis in the 6 week lead up to the event? No they didn’t. They
> observed the event outcome (visual bleaching) and then attributed the
> response to the heat metric accumulation they wanted to justify their
> beliefs!!
>
>
> PLEASE PLEASE everyone take note and read the paper below. The warmest
> year on the GBR as recorded by satellite-derived SST was in 2004. It was
> warmer than the event recorded by Hughes et al. And guess what? There was
> minimal bleaching in that year. Also minimal mortality as recorded by Ray
> Berkelmans(AIMS). But what? Shock horror!! The nutrient status of the GBR
> for 2004 was extremely oligotrophic. No big flood (drought period) and no
> upwelling. Well isn’t that just dandy.
>
>
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332658613_An_enigmatic_decoupling_between_heat_stress_and_coral_bleaching_on_the_Great_Barrier_Reef
>
> This result will NEVER be promoted to the media or general public because
> of the political ramifications. But it is also why I think the light-weight
> unjustified conclusions of Hughes et al. have been so very damaging. Lets
> be honest, this is why most scientist have jumped on board the “oh we can
> do nothing but yell loudly at the importance of mitigating warming’. Let
> me be clear, I am not against efforts to reduce global warming. it will be
> needed. However, I am totally against the notion that coral bleaching is a
> CORALS BOILING in HOT WATER scenario.
>
> For another recent example of how nutrients interact with warming to
> predict bleaching resistant versus sensitive sites - have a look at the
> nice study done in Moorea.
>
>
> https://phys.org/news/2020-02-nutrient-pollution-coral-resist.html
>
> oh what ?they say high nutrients basically DOUBLES the severity of
> bleaching....exactly what I have found for the GBR, as detailed in the
> manuscripts below.
>
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223780705_Water_quality_and_coral_bleaching_thresholds_Formalising_the_linkage_for_the_inshore_reefs_of_the_Great_Barrier_Reef_Australia
>
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26826520_Improved_water_quality_can_ameliorate_effects_of_climate_change_on_corals
>
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308746785_Excess_seawater_nutrients_enlarged_algal_symbiont_densities_and_bleaching_sensitive_reef_locations_1_Identifying_thresholds_of_concern_for_the_Great_Barrier_Reef_Australia?_sg=cvY9BxKoCv3-dVfb5Xcl2HjBJa2-E70DKNBBY4XJzz3CmdHoKtlKKfUdez6xvHOWUYnKDt5MRHvK6iI3s4K0x96AclkfRF1cB9R5ecqp.IobbN_h9xORD3L_w2TmHMYos9MIWM5du52F5OcSFhzGqIGjhl0R5JjgbI_E8uSHPs5nZFsS-sLTqoN-YAk7W-A
>
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308746844_Excess_seawater_nutrients_enlarged_algal_symbiont_densities_and_bleaching_sensitive_reef_locations_2_A_regional-scale_predictive_model_for_the_Great_Barrier_Reef_Australia?_sg=cvY9BxKoCv3-dVfb5Xcl2HjBJa2-E70DKNBBY4XJzz3CmdHoKtlKKfUdez6xvHOWUYnKDt5MRHvK6iI3s4K0x96AclkfRF1cB9R5ecqp.IobbN_h9xORD3L_w2TmHMYos9MIWM5du52F5OcSFhzGqIGjhl0R5JjgbI_E8uSHPs5nZFsS-sLTqoN-YAk7W-A
>
> I challenge people to read this last paper. The regional-scale predictive
> model for the GBR. Get a reality check on the value of the NOAA DHW product
> is for predicting and explaining coral bleaching patterns. By itself, it is
> very poor. But fantastic when you integrate with it predictions of nutrient
> status, and some way of making the heat stress relate to absolute temps -
> not just relative accumulations of anomaly heat.
>
> But the key for future studies - if that will be of great importance -
> They must be working at the FRONT END of event to get the true story.
>
>
> For your consideration,
>
> Scott
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 26 Mar 2020, at 9:25 am, Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> Scott,
> Thank you for this interesting perspective. Of course learning more
> about the mechanisms of the relationship between zooxanthellae and the host
> coral animal, and the onset of bleaching is a good thing. I don't think
> anyone would argue with that.
> I note that in one of your review papers, that you write that "...the
> onset of the bleaching syndrome and setting of upper thermal bleaching
> limits are emergent attributes of the coral symbiosis...which is known to
> depend not just on temperature, but also external (seawater) nutrient
> availability and zooxanthellae genotype." I have no quarrel with that. We
> could also add light intensity, which is well documented to
> exacerbate bleaching (Coelo et al, 2017), and reduced water circulation
> (Nakamura, 2001, 2003). There may be other additional factors as well.
> There are, of course, differences between the temperature threshold for
> bleaching of the coral symbiosis with zooxanthellae, and the threshold for
> mortality for a bleached coral with 1% or less of it's original
> zooxanthellae still in it. Those are two different things, and I would
> argue that coral mortality is far more damaging to coral reef ecosystems
> than coral bleaching. Corals can, if the temperatures don't get too high,
> recover from bleaching and be back to normal in most ways in a year or two
> and life can go on. Damage to the ecosystem is far greater when large
> numbers of corals die.
> You want people to "go for the gold" of a "cure." The use of the
> word "cure" sounds like what people use when they talk about disease, but
> as far as I can tell, you're not saying that bleaching is caused by an
> infectious agent (though some may be, there is literature documenting that
> for one species of coral in the Mediterranean).
> There is a difference between a "cure" and "treating the symptoms."
> With the common cold, we can treat symptoms, but not the cause of the cold
> (viruses). So what is the ultimate cause of bleaching? Nutrients? Bad
> zooxanthellae genotypes? Do nutrients by themselves cause bleaching and
> colony death if the water is not unusually hot? I haven't heard of that,
> correct me if I'm wrong. The world has several thousand atolls that exist
> in oligotrophic tropical warm seas, with flourishing corals, which can, and
> have been, killed by high water temperatures, not by nutrients. In 1998
> and 2014-17, about 90% of the corals in the Chagos archipelago were killed
> by hot water-induced bleaching, though coral populations recovered
> considerably in between. Only one of those atolls has any people on it,
> there are only tiny islands, and some of the atolls have no islands at all,
> NO terrestrial nutrient inputs, and corals were bleached and killed there
> just like they were near to high islands and continents elsewhere when
> temperatures got to high. Are the genotypes of zooxanthellae that corals
> naturally have causing bleaching outbreaks even when the water is not
> unusually hot? Haven't heard of that one, and it would have some
> explaining to do to account for why bleaching occurs in mass events in
> particular locations instead of continually everywhere.
> The article you refer to by Santos et al has an interesting sentence
> in the abstract, the second sentence: "Coral reefs have been devastated
> by warm water temperatures at a rapid pace and currently, there is no
> effective method to predict a mass bleaching event." Apparently the NOAA
> Coral Reef Watch project is a total waste of money, all those maps of where
> the water is hot, hotspots, degree heating weeks, all that stuff is a total
> waste of time and money, according to that sentence. That sentence flies
> in the face of an awful lot of empirical evidence, it appears to me.
> Perhaps they meant something else, if they did, they needed to state it in
> a way that it couldn't be misinterpreted. Because taken literally, it is
> dead wrong, and a mountain of evidence shows that.
> Why am I picking on that? Because your "go for the gold" is implying
> that the "cure" for bleaching is in the mechanisms in the coral leading up
> to bleaching, not in hot water and global warming. What is the main
> ultimate cause (not proximal cause) of mass coral bleaching mortality?
> (that's the thing we need to avoid more than anything else to save corals
> and reefs, isn't it?? Or is it best just to treat symptoms when you can
> treat the ultimate cause? When doctors have a choice between those two,
> they don't neglect the ultimate cause, because if they do, they can lose
> their patient. If we do, we could lose our patient, the coral.) Isn't the
> ultimate cause global warming with temperature spike events caused by El
> Nino and other ocean heatwaves??
> How about nutrients, if high nutrients were the primary ultimate
> cause, SST's (sea surface temperatures) would not be good predictors of
> bleaching and NOAA Coral Reef Watch would never have gotten any traction or
> funding, nor would anyone pay any attention to what they put on the web.
> Can it be better refined? Surely, what can't be? Is there more to learn?
> Surely. BUT, it is the best current predictor of bleaching. And that is
> because higher temperatures do indeed cause bleaching, it is a primary
> cause, though other things can exacerbate it, like high light levels,
> reduced water motion, and nutrients. (Of course, other things than high
> temperatures can cause coral bleaching, but most mass bleaching events
> correlate well with high SST's.)
> You write that "the conceptual coral bleaching model adopted by
> most-all coral reef scientists is WRONG; which at its crudest, explains
> coral bleaching in terms of corals BOILING TO DEATH in hot water." OK,
> so high temperatures don't kill corals??? Fact is, and it is a fact not an
> opinion, every living thing has a maximum temperature that it can survive
> in. That includes humans. "Heat exhaustion" and "Heat stroke" are two
> stages in the human response to limiting temperatures for humans. Go
> beyond that, and human die. Take any other organisms, every organism, and
> heat it, and when the temperature is high enough, it will die. There are
> NO exceptions. Limits differ for every organism. The highest limits are
> for what are called "thermophyles" which are microbes that can live in
> water just below boiling, you can find them in hot springs in places like
> Yellowstone National Park in the US. Heat them a degree or two higher, and
> they die (I'm not up on the study of them around deep sea vents, there may
> be some that can survive even higher temperatures there). But the high
> temperature thresholds for most organisms are vastly lower than that, and
> for most the limit is not a lot higher than what they normally experience,
> which has been documented for corals as well. Actually, there are many
> statements, particularly in the popular literature, that corals which die
> from bleaching die when they have been bleached for a long time, because
> they have lost their major source of energy, the zooxanthellae, so they in
> essence starve to death. My memory tells me there are papers documenting
> loss of energy reserves in corals that have been bleached for long times.
> Further, there are papers that document that corals can't sexually
> reproduce for at least a year after bleaching, surely because they don't
> have the energy reserves. All makes sense. However, as Hughes et al
> (2018) have pointed out, in the recent bleaching events on the GBR (Great
> Barrier Reef in Australia), corals died so fast after bleaching that they
> surely didn't die of starvation. “These widespread losses were not due to
> the attrition of corals that slowly starved because they failed to regain
> their symbionts. Rather, temperature-sensitive species of corals began to
> die almost immediately in locations that were exposed to heat stress”
> (Hughes et al. 2018). So what did they die of??? High levels of
> nutrients? Not likely, why would they only die when the water is hot?
> They died because they were too hot. The zooxanthellae and the coral
> animal cells are two different organisms. They both have maximum
> temperatures they can survive, and those high temperature thresholds don't
> have to be the same. Further, you can kill a coral with hot water without
> it bleaching. Try dropping a living coral into boiling water. Will it
> bleach first?? Or just die? Doesn't much matter whether the coral has
> color when you drop it in, or is already bleached and has no zoox left. It
> will be scalded and die very quickly indeed. If a human touches a red hot
> hot plate, the skin cells will be killed extremely fast, we call that a
> "burn" and humans that have large burn areas are in serious danger of death.
> The fact that when temperatures are high enough, bleaching can
> happen quickly is captured in the "degree heating weeks" threshold, that
> works better than just a single temperature threshold, for predicting mass
> coral bleaching. The higher the temperature, the faster mortality occurs,
> as illustrated by the finger on the red hot plate, but also fits with the
> "degree heating week." Further, the fact that when high temperatures cause
> corals to bleach, if the temperature recedes the corals can survive and
> regain their zoox, but if the temperature goes higher the coral dies, means
> that the coral animal, with few zoox left, is sensitive to additional rises
> in temperature, which if they happen kills the coral, if they don't happen
> the coral doesn't die. So the mortality of a coral that has lost 99% of
> it's zoox depends heavily on temperature, too high and it dies, not too
> high and it doesn't die. Only a bit more than 2 C above average summer
> high temperatures (no where near boiling).
> I contend that the evidence indicates that coral mortality following
> bleaching can be from high temperatures (but likely can also be from very
> extended bleaching due to loss of energy supplies, though I'm not sure the
> evidence for that is ironclad. I don't pretend to be an expert on the
> subject). I wrote my arguments in my paper "Coral reef myths and
> misconceptions. Reef Encounter 34: 30-37." See Myth #5: "Bleached
> corals die of starvation."
> http://coralreefs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/REEF_ENCOUNTER_Dec_2019_lo-res_3.pdf
> So I think your statement that the common view that corals die from
> boiling fails on two accounts, first that you haven't demonstrated that
> that is the common view, and second that the question is not whether it is
> literally BOILING that kills them, but whether a slight increase of a
> degree or two above the mortality threshold for the animal is what kills
> it, and the evidence does support that at least at times that is what kills
> them.
> In summary, I have no quarrel with the details of your hypotheses
> about bleaching mechanisms, or the opportunities to discover more about
> bleaching mechanisms, nor the possibility that might lead to some way of
> producing more temperature-tolerant corals. More research on those things
> is a good thing. I caution that it is a huge leap from producing a
> temperature-tolerant coral in an aquarium to making all the world's corals
> temperature tolerant. I don't think anyone knows how to do that, I haven't
> read the people who are selecting for temperature tolerance to produce
> "super corals" claim to be able to do that, I haven't heard of anyone
> selecting temperature tolerant corals in reef restoration claim to be able
> to do that. You want us to "go for the gold" but that is surely the "gold"
> for such efforts. Maybe someone will come up with a way, one of those
> bright young people, surely we should be thinking about how to do that.
> But we don't have a way to do that yet and it doesn't look like an easy
> problem to solve, and that's not the thing you're urging people to think
> about.
> BUT, you are essentially playing down the need to reduce and stop
> global warming, even though it is the main ultimate cause of mass coral
> bleaching and death. We need to do that not only to save corals and reefs,
> but also to save terrestrial environments from things like fires
> (Australia, California, Amazon being examples), and from the world becoming
> so hot that 10's if not 100's of thousands if not more, people die in heat
> waves, and parts of the planet become uninhabitable by humans. We don't
> lack for reasons to stop global warming, and corals are part of that but
> only part of the reasons. There is NO conflict between doing that and
> researching the mechanisms that cause coral bleaching. Also, there is NO
> conflict between the need to reduce global warming, and the need to reduce
> local threats like nutrients, sediment, overfishing, disease, etc etc.
> Cheers, Doug
>
> Coelho, V., Fenner, D., Caruso, C., Bayles, B., Huang, Y., Birkeland, C.
> 2017. Shading as a mitigation tool for coral bleaching in three common
> Indo-Pacific species. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology
> 497: 152-163.
>
> Hughes TP, Kerry JT, Baird AH, Connolly SR, Dietzel A, Eakin CM, Heron SF,
> Hoey AS, Hoogenboom MO, Liu G, McWilliam MJ, Pears RJ, Pratchett MS,
> Skirving WJ, Stella JS, Torda G (2018) Global warming transforms coral reef
> assemblages. Nature 556:492– 496
>
> Nakamura, T., van Woesik, R. 2001. Water-flow rates and passive diffusion
> partially explain differential survival of corals during the 1998 bleaching
> event. Marine Ecology Progress Series 212:301–304.
>
> Nakamura, T., et al, 2003. Water flow facilitates recovery from bleaching
> in the coral *Stylophora pistillata.* Marine Ecology Progress Series
> 256: 287-291.
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 11:34 AM Scott Wooldridge via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>
>> Dear Coral Listers,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think it is fine that the reef science community discusses strategies
>> that can help formulate new ways of doing (and reporting) our science that
>> can help minimize our carbon footprint. But can I suggest that we owe the
>> global public and the coral ecosystems themselves so much more than this.
>>
>>
>>
>> Like those scientists tasked with finding a vaccine for COVID-19, we need
>> to keep challenging ourselves to find the CURE for coral bleaching. This
>> must consume 99.9% of the best thinking time of coral reef scientists. And
>> before we resign ourselves to believing that reducing global carbon
>> emissions (and by inference future sea temperatures) is the sole solution
>> we can offer the global public, I believe we need to double down on our
>> efforts to understanding the suite of cellular processes that initiate
>> coral bleaching, especially those at the FRONT END of the bleaching
>> response.
>>
>>
>>
>> By FRONT END I mean those processes that happen in the days-weeks before
>> we
>> see any visual sign of bleaching (i.e. symbiosis breakdown). They are
>> subtle, not well studied, and not well understood. But when you start to
>> investigate them more deeply, you quickly realize that the conceptual
>> coral
>> bleaching model adopted by most-all coral reef scientists is WRONG; which
>> at its crudest, explains coral bleaching in terms of corals BOILING TO
>> DEATH in hot water.
>>
>>
>>
>> The issue I specifically draw your attention to in this post, is the
>> little-known FACT that the endosymbiont population increases its size and
>> growth rate (as measured by cellular division rate) in the days and weeks
>> of warming leading up to the visual coral bleaching response. THEREFORE,
>> immediately before the break down of the symbiosis, the endosymbionts are
>> by our best measures very happy, and by adding some anthropomorphism -
>> think that the symbiotic lifestyle cannot be much better.
>>
>>
>>
>> Don’t believe this? Don’t take my word for it. It has been very well
>> reported by others, most recently;
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331593854_Effects_of_increased_heat_on_fluorescence_and_dinoflagellate_density_in_the_captive_coral_Anthelia_sp
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> And obviously, given my intent to get people thinking about the science of
>> the response, I have already had my say on this issue.
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307695433_Breakdown_of_the_coral-algae_symbiosis_Towards_formalizing_a_linkage_between_warm-water_bleaching_thresholds_and_the_growth_rate_of_the_intracellular_zooxanthellae?_sg=-2o85tlB6whC-hSPB0t8oWFed2eECtwPxvsoVRgGKUmzu6k0TIDq5aSV6BwcOhlLqeiGGYr3KAwOMLqI2UkuYtNLnddwaWcl1ReDnhNh.pvBbZTSCSahzvcVu-JkqhLKf-zq1EbYJ6GquHXoR2Nfs2G8--J5_4bxKPwNXk0lfNXJmGnuvk3srT7GzoZSkmQ
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44644540_Is_the_coral-algae_symbiosis_really_'mutually_beneficial'_for_the_partners?_sg=j-rvYFlYazoFU-eah3oORE-zhln-XE-Rt9sIsBFdHrjKHFWO3E1jvDuSBJmwoJ97CP1_RYFtuY-gXbicnyXyRuLK-0gAgwvn2XMNqukP.Mdg_vAKy_Zgedumry2ZUKz9kDoEj6KH_K84VDQ57AebVQnp8oLXLx95adt-cwLzuRjJ2I-j5St_pcMDr-2jtEA
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> All these articles ULTIMATELY explain coral bleaching in terms of a loss
>> of
>> host control of the demographic parameters of its endosymbiont population.
>> This is very far from the CORALS BOILING IN HOT WATER conceptual model.
>> And
>> that is good news!! Since it provides hope, that if we can limit the
>> thermo-kinetic growth potential of the endosymbionts, whilst
>> simultaneously
>> retaining their capacity to release fixed carbon, we may be well on the
>> way
>> to understanding what constitutes a BLEACHING RESISTANT coral. Much more
>> testing needs to be done on this issue. For example, can this favorable
>> symbiotic condition be achieved by ensuring a severe limitation of the
>> seawater supply of nutrients, such that the symbiont doesn’t have access
>> to
>> the prerequisite nitrogenous material needed for cellular division, even
>> during thermo-kinetic events that promote increased division? Or, do we
>> need to look/find/evolve a new type/species of endosymbiont, most likely
>> one with a bigger cellular diameter, that will have a slower
>> thermo-kinetic
>> division rate?
>>
>>
>>
>> There are so many questions. Still unknown. Still unconsidered. Still
>> untested.
>>
>>
>>
>> My challenge, especially to all the fresh thinking young scientists out
>> there, is to keep an open mind. Keep striving for the CURE. Never let
>> yourself be convinced that we already know all the necessary science to
>> answer this. WE DON’T and we are so very very far from it….
>>
>>
>>
>> And finally, for a bit of comic relief as well as encouragement I am
>> forever drawn to the excited words of an old Australian swim coach, who
>> famously stated STUFF THE SILVER, WE CAME FOR THE GOLD. For those old
>> enough to remember, he orchestrated a brilliant tactical race for his
>> swimmer to beat the best simmers in the world at the 1988 Olympics. The
>> SILVER in coral bleaching research is to be content to quibble about the
>> relative merits of ways to reduce our global carbon footprint. We need to
>> refocus, go back to the beginning and keep searching for a CURE. Or in the
>> words of the excited swim coach STUFF THE SILVER, GO FOR GOLD.
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgGr-quFf2k
>>
>>
>>
>> For your consideration,
>>
>>
>> Scott Wooldridge
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
> "Already, more people die <http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml>from
> heat-related causes in the U.S. than from all other extreme weather events
> ."
>
> https://www.npr.org/2018/07/09/624643780/phoenix-tries-to-reverse-its-silent-storm-of-heat-deaths
>
>
> 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
>
> "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
>
>
--
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
"Already, more people die <http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml>from
heat-related causes in the U.S. than from all other extreme weather events."
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/09/624643780/phoenix-tries-to-reverse-its-silent-storm-of-heat-deaths
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
"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
--
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
"Already, more people die <http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml>from
heat-related causes in the U.S. than from all other extreme weather events."
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/09/624643780/phoenix-tries-to-reverse-its-silent-storm-of-heat-deaths
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
"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
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