[Coral-List] For graduate and undergraduate coral reef scientists

[tomascik at novuscom.net]

I appreciate the comments made by David regarding the value of 
historical literature. I was fortunate enough to work on a project in 
Indonesia that gave me an opportunity to dig into historical literature, 
and it was a revelation to find just how much has been shelved and 
forgotten. David’s comment about the Dutch scientists is a good example. 
I was actually able to use Vervey (1931) Secchi disk data (converted to 
K) to demonstrate a strong relationship between turbidity and the 
maximum depth of the living reef, which suggested that the maximum depth 
of the functional coral reef community was significantly reduced since 
1929. It was the historical information from the 1920s that made it 
possible to theorize that the decline of the coral reefs in Jakarta Bay 
was linked to eutrophication. The study was presented at:

Ginsburg, R. N. (Compiler), 1994. Proceeding of the Colloquium on Global 
Aspects of Coral Reefs” Health, Hazards and History, 1993. Rosenstiel 
School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami.

Too bad that Bob Ginsburg’s compilation is not more widely accessible to 
the scientific coral reef community. Perhaps RSMAS can do something 
about it?

Anyone interested in the Jakarta Bay coral reef paper can access it 
through:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284877475_Case_histories_a_historical_perspective_of_the_natural_and_anthropogenic_impacts_in_the_Indonesian_Archipelago_with_a_focus_on_the_Kepulauan_Seribu_Java_Sea_Colloquium_on_Global_Aspects_of_Coral_Reefs?_sg=3jYI1H-EbDHabny5xg31uSxkTvvmOibyQLy-pIx0FBeqBSMrk2jN9vftKelciu0U4pVYMArbgIm6w-nFTyF7VrO5458a-uIXxgfHWmn-.mXCOHFn0uNC2czXM3IulYESvxSBmokzafcaDWeQBJ_wKlZmVK9ztCLt-1EHuUNocttM9dj4sL5501GnDVKHQnQ

To follow up on David’s comments about coral reefs in turbid 
environments I would like to suggest to anyone who is interested to work 
on coral communities in marginal environments to have a look at 
Bangladesh. Located about 200 km south of the largest river delta in the 
world, the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta) lies Narikel Jinjira (aka 
St. Martin’s Island). This small sedimentary island is surrounded by a 
rocky reef that supports a diverse coral community (66 scleractinian 
coral species), but no carbonate reefal buildup. It is a fascinating 
place and yet has receives very little attention thus far from the 
international scientific coral reef community. There have been recent 
(and numerous past) papers published on the “coral reefs of St. Martin’s 
Island” yet there are no coral reefs to be described. It seems that 
early studies on coral fragments that were found on the beaches of the 
island created a myth of the “Coral Island” surrounded by coral reefs. 
Hopefully more studies that will be published in reputable journals will 
be able to expose and put an end to that myth.

Anyone interested to learn more about Narikel Jinjira can visit:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304077895_MANAGEMENT_PLAN_FOR_CORAL_RESOURCES_OF_NARIKEL_JINJIRA_St_Martin's_Island?_sg=FB2VsUS1_7EDQE8lsGYl1aL2iR4ItUsd5m5_VSNo6UQe3F4Ztx85FoxH9bIlL13gM4RGHZH_wVWNZHM-vbpcHc1-8hnBDd8lRf6rX2GK.nP-_0ASFKV0QuSoYukkIVCBEOfgh2rvLpmfQxFaNWPy9LA6Tf3gmeFFwsvlPuFQl36SGHai3VKlPL-QcBN3zkA

Anyone interested to get contacts in Bangladesh to look at collaborative 
projects on Narikal Jinjira please let me know and I can provide you 
with more contact information.

Tom

On 2020-11-06 06:12, David Blakeway via Coral-List wrote:
> I’d like to follow up on our discussion about the value of historic
> literature by providing some examples. Actually, I haven’t found any
> examples of historic literature generating new research, but this is
> telling because there are plenty that should have. One topic already
> mentioned by Tomas is coral colonisation and reef development in turbid
> muddy habitats. It is now known, through research in North Queensland 
> and
> elsewhere over the last three decades, that coral reefs are growing
> spectacularly well in such habitats, refuting the clear-water coral 
> reef
> paradigm. However, in publications through 1890-1931, the Dutch 
> researchers
> de Sluiter, Umbgrove and Verwey had already completely described the
> phenomenon, including the inference that corals may be obtaining 
> nutrition
> from the turbid water.
> 
> Another example is the recent discovery of coral reef hypoxia and 
> tropical
> dead zones by Altieri et al. (2017). This is a great piece of work that 
> has
> sparked multiple research programs. But the field *should* have begun 
> with
> Verwey (again!, 1931) whose comprehensive reef surveys and lab 
> experiments
> showed that, in his words: “…*the oxygen consumption of a reef can be 
> so
> considerable that the water around it may become deprived of a large 
> part
> of its oxygen.*” and “…*the quantity of oxygen, present in the water, 
> must
> often be the limiting factor in reef growth*.”
> 
> I will emphasise here that, although I obviously have an interest in
> historic coral reef literature, I’ve only read a fraction of it, and
> nothing in other languages. The obvious inference is that there are 
> many
> more ground-breaking ideas to be rediscovered and that, at least in 
> older
> fields such as ecology, *the best way forward is to look back*. There 
> are
> also clear implications for newer fields; an important one being the
> recognition that some of today’s ideas will be tomorrow’s undiscovered
> gems. How do great ideas slip away undetected? No doubt there are 
> several
> reasons, but I’m pretty sure the present H-index-driven blizzard of
> publications isn’t helping.
> 
> For students reading this, especially those interested in reef ecology, 
> I
> have an agenda in presenting the two examples above and it’s this: in 
> both
> cases the phenomenon is expressed in reef geomorphology. In the turbid
> muddy reefs example, these reefs often colonise the seaward edges of
> sedimentary structures such as delta lobes (see India’s Gulf of Kachchh 
> for
> some awesome specimens). Deltas are, obviously, turbid muddy 
> environments,
> and it’s extremely unlikely there’s any hard substrate beneath the 
> reefs
> because deltas are built of sediment. So straight away, from 
> geomorphology
> alone, you can deduce that coral reefs are thriving (or at least 
> existing)
> in turbid water, and that they have colonised unconsolidated sediment, 
> not
> rock.
> 
> The hypoxia example is more complex because in this case the reef 
> doesn’t
> adopt the underlying morphology, it builds the morphology itself. At 
> least
> that is what I think. You can see my reasoning in this preprint:
> https://peerj.com/preprints/26794/ (critical feedback appreciated). 
> This
> self-constructing aspect of reefs is interesting because it potentially
> allows you to derive aspects of local-scale ecology from large-scale 
> reef
> geomorphology—reef geomorphology becomes a symbolic language, conveying
> ecological information. I would love to see young ecologists start 
> decoding
> this information! If you’re interested, but concerned that you don’t 
> know
> enough geology, don’t worry. Geological text can be dry and dense, with
> lots of jargon (like ecology), but conceptually it is not difficult. In
> fact, perhaps there’s no such thing as coral reef geology, it’s just
> ecology plus time (just trying to get a bite here :)
> 
> Altieri AH, Harrison SB, Seemann J, Collin R, Diaz RJ, Knowlton N. 
> 2017.
> Tropical dead zones and mass mortalities on coral reefs. Proceedings of 
> the
> National Academy of Sciences. 114:3660–3665.
> https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1621517114
> 
> *Verwey*, J, *1931*. *Coral reef* studies. II. The *depth* of *coral 
> reefs* in
> relation to their *oxygen*. consumption and the penetration of light in
> water. Treubia, 13(2): 169-198