[Coral-List] [EXTERNAL] Re: ICRS 2021 meeting session: Can Coral Reef Restoration Increase Coastal Protection?

Sat Sep 12 18:31:08 UTC 2020

Hi Doug,
My writing’s apparently not clear as I’ve not made any giant claims and at no point did I suggest bypassing climate action, if anything coral culture has spurred that vital conversation. "Why did it die? Because 60% of your stock portfolio is in fossil fuel and you donate to XYZ political candidate” he said to the CEO of ABC investment firm.

You ask about Jamaican reefs. It’s not a happy story generally, particularly with SCTLD or for those who adored DiscoBay in the day, with details available via UWI, AGRRA or NEPA/Govt if you’re not finding on Google. What it is, is a fascinating patchwork of impacts, declines & improvements on a per-colony, per-bay & per-decade basis. The chef-owner of the little restaurant that serves turban-shell soup gets a job at a hotel, and 2yrs later there are wee coral recruits to the local reef crest. It’s that specific, it's that nuanced. We don’t eat urchins, either. That said, I’d not suggest these are particularly long-term hopeful when a COVID19 may shutter the hotel, or Diadema gets on the menu, or 800lb gorillas. 

Might Caribbean & Jamaica's acroporids be selected-for? This was Austin Bowden-Kerby’s thought in ’04 & not unlikely - those that persist are either lucky or tough, likely both. I’ll not say supercoral, but there’s certainly a continuum from weaker to stronger to be watched, mapped & promoted if not exploited (not exclusively as per Francesca’s point). We then work with the sorts of nuances noted above in planting. Scalable? It’s spot-specific & a lot of work, but the field gets more savvy, flexible & efficient every day and Curt says it’s already cheaper than cement. Yes, we’re still bet-hedging to an uncertain climactic future; however, if we leave those high-value corals on the bottom & subject to chronic predation & stress then we’re nowhere. Game on.

For us & in my experience, Acropora not coming back 1983~2005 (between disease event & when bleaching really hit) is likely to be mostly somewhere between predation & macroalgae, IE fishing, runoff & sewage. Culture, planting & maintenance offers a bridge as we work on ecosystems, use, local & global politics (IE climate) etc. The gorillas are always front & centre. 

Just to clarify, my (not very good) haircut joke was intended as a metaphor for coral culture & enhancement, not for Jamaican reefs. 

Andrew M. Ross, Ph.D. 
Seascape Caribbean
+1-876-363-8850

> On Sep 11, 2020, at 3:00 PM, Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>     Interesting.
>     Difference between a good and bad haircut is 2 weeks?  How about Jamaica.  Hit by Hurricane Allen in 1980.  How's the coral doing for the whole north shore?  I've never heard the news that it has recovered.  Been 40 years.  I've never heard that any of their coral species have gone extinct there, which implies that there are still some colonies around.  No doubt selected very heavily by whatever has been killing colonies and keeping populations down for decades.  Yet no supercorals have emerged naturally to restore their reef populations.  I've heard of projects to selectively breed corals for resistance to high temperatures, which are called "supercorals" in the presence of reporters.  But I haven't heard of anyone breeding corals resistant to sediment and nutrients, etc. aka poor water quality.  Maybe somebody is, hope so.  But we know that in Jamaica, the reefs are stuck in a phase shift.  Need more corals to compete with the algae.  So growing corals by coral gardening/restoration which works really well, will surely reverse the phase shift there, right?  After all, a few thousand corals are a lot.  On how many hundred miles of shoreline?  There have been published reports of some spots where corals have recovered there.  Sort of like natural outplants from coral restoration projects.  Have they taken over the reefs and beat all the algae back?  I haven't heard that.  How many corals would it take grown by coral restoration projects to restore the entire north shore reef system of Jamaica, and what would that cost?  How about the 2000 mile long, 2500 Great Barrier Reef?  At what point does reality enter this scheme??  We could stop bleaching by shading reefs, or by pumping up cold deep water.  But no one has even tried those, because scaling up is obviously impossible.  Even small scale is daunting.  So how is coral gardening and outplanting different from that?  By the way, if I remember it was 5 % survival of corals in Florida after 2 years, not 10%.  And where is the proof that in the next 2 years, suddenly there will not only be survival of all the corals, but expansion to take over the reef??  I see no reason to expect anything other than 95% mortality in the second two years just like in the first two years.  Unless some magic is invoked.  How much is 5% of 5%??  I can see where that is going.  Will that first two years select for resistant colonies much better than was done in the coral farm?  Why was the coral farm worse than nature at selecting resistant genotypes?  Why are all the naturally selected corals dying too??
>       So the alternative to sitting around just watching corals die is to breed corals that will die??  I guess getting the causes of coral death under control is not an option.  And the way some people talk to reporters, even mentioning that if we don't get climate change under control we will lose the reefs, plus all the other fun things that happen like having the western half of the US go up in flames, will happen and the corals will all be dead and the money spent will have been wasted.  That's not a good way to get funding, so don't mention the 800 pound gorilla in the corner of the room?
>        I can see an argument that we are in a desperate situation.  We obviously are.  We are failing to control the things that kill corals, and have been since the battle began.  Doesn't look good.  We must grasp at straws because there IS nothing else.  That assumes that if the coral reef community stands up and screams in unison, no one will listen.  So that would be a grasping at straws attempt, so not worth even trying.  But coral restoration, another 'grasping at straws' strategy, IS???  How come one but not the other??  Does coral restoration imply that people who advocate for it and/or do it, must keep quiet about the causes of the degradation????  Because that's what some people are doing.  Isn't it???  That's what Steve and I are complaining about.
>     Cheers,   Doug
> 
> On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 8:12 AM Andrew Ross <ross.andrew at mac.com <mailto:ross.andrew at mac.com>> wrote:
> Greetings Doug, Curt, Steve & List,
> 
> Ten-percent survivorship at 5-yrs is not fundamentally bad, as each of those will be shown suitable to the location incl. temperature spikes (recently at 2~3yrs). Assuming you’ve used a good genetic mix, what persists at 5-yrs will likely be growing & maybe even spawning. 
> 
> Example: recently we set 300 nursery head-started mixed Acropora for an impact remediation in a touristy bay in the west of Jamaica. Mike Risk’s “septic tank on a karst outcrop” may apply in some seasons, so we did much swimming, pondering, scanning, planning & hedging of bets… and ear-drops, yes. Through an unknown patch mortality and a bleaching event we have 43 isolates/corals at 12-months on-bottom, and all are established, most vigorous & I can comfortably suggest an upward trajectory from here (barring predation, disease event, clumsiness, silliness, hurricane, heavy-bleach event etc.). Wasted money is a question of goal & time - the client satisfied Govt, the bay will have a patch of branching coral habitat with realistic fingers-crossed for a spawn in 3~5yrs + a source of temperature-durable material for future culture/work while our little firm enjoyed a complicated project to hone methods & inform future scopes & augment humilities. Yes, we did our hand-wringing re. the raw responsibility of this contract as well as reputation, thus bet-hedging including minimizing our collecting impacts. 
> 
> A couple of ideas: 
> i) I can’t immediately/directly control the water-quality or temperature, but I can have a hand in genet/lineage choices, planting point, ecosystem/PA/seeding/grazing, quantity (predator overwhelm?), parent impact & initial health, hopefully including a budget for ongoing reef husbandry or facilitations to spawning. These sometimes bring community & political conversations re. water, CO2 or solid waste investments and/or policy, but there’s useful work in the meantime & waiting would amount to sitting on hands.
> ii) We learn far more from failure than we do from success, and 
> iii) failure -vs- success may be a matter of time: What’s the difference between a bad haircut and a good one? About two weeks.
> 
> Example #2+ would be staghorn planted in/around MoBay for grad-school, ’07’ish. One formal site saw ~90% mortality at 15-months & last year much of that rock was thicketed, as is another informal beach/reef with notably worse water & algae & sunscreen. In fairness, another ostensibly better spot of the same lineages now has ~5 struggling colonies - so much nuance, so many lessons. 
> 
> To Curt’s points, I’d expand that the trade btwn green/blue & grey infrastructure is cost -vs- time, as new coral takes a while for an outcome that doesn’t have 100yrs in modelling of intended outcomes with nifty computer graphics. This is a difficult sell, leaning heavily on secondary incentives such as your & MikeBeck's insurance industry work, plus aesthetics & recreation & green-branding, or opting for a grey-blue hybrid. I also agree with Doug that it’s likely rearranging deckchairs without tackling climate, even with bet-hedging & hands-in, but the option is to sit & watch (while protesting). Re competitive funding & focus: I’m not funded by the usual donor/CFP processes and don’t see direct competition with mitigation/activism but that some of my clients may have blood (oil) on their hands (wallets)… but karma-cleansing is maybe another topic.
> 
> Best regards & keep safe,
> 
> 
> Andrew M. Ross, Ph.D. 
> Seascape Caribbean
> +1-876-363-8850
> 
> 
>> On Sep 10, 2020, at 11:24 AM, Steve via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Curt,
>> 
>> I have a few questions regarding your response to Doug’s post.
>> 
>> From what I can tell, most restoration/outplanting projects in existence have not waited for stressors to be mitigated before moving forward. (In fact, my concern is that many do not like to focus on addressing stressors at all).
>> 
>> You mention that in order for restorative efforts to have a good chance of success stressors need to be mitigated “unless coral breeding/engineering has made the corals more resilient to those stressors”.
>> 
>> This is exactly the problem as I see it - is the plan to continuously genetically design corals to withstand ever increasing stressors?
>> 
>> I ask this because to me the lack of emphasis on addressing stressors only serves to reinforce the idea that we can engineer our way out of this - and that message only serves to delay the mitigation of stressors that natural coral reefs need to survive and flourish.
>> 
>> It seems to me that restoration has all the momentum for funding at the moment. Wouldn’t it make more sense to allocate more of those funds towards mitigation until such a time that restoration and natural recovery have a more sustained opportunity to succeed?
>> 
>> Finally, I do mean to denigrate restoration efforts. Coral science is greatly enhanced by these projects, but in my humble opinion, some do a much better job than others. Those that do not (for whatever reason) emphasize causation are, in a sense, self-defeating and ultimately may even prove more harmful than beneficial to the end goal of saving coral reefs over the long run.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Steve Mussman
>> 
>> Sent from EarthLink Mobile mail
>> 
>> On 9/9/20, 10:27 PM, Storlazzi, Curt D via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>> wrote:
>> 
>> Doug,
>> 
>> I whole-heartedly agree! Don't put canaries back in the coal mine. Thus one needs to determine what caused the coral decline in the first place, then that(those) stressor(s) need to be mitigated before any restoration likely has a good chance of success, unless coral breeding/engineering has made the corals more resilient to those stressors.
>> 
>> My thought regarding coral reefs and coastal protection is four-fold:
>> 
>> First, healthy coral reefs with high coral cover and rugosity (as would occur due to restoration) result in less wave-driven runup and thus coastal flooding. See Quataert et al. (2015).
>> 
>> Second, green coastal defense infrastructure is much less expensive than gray coastal defense infrastructure. See Ferrario et al. (2014).
>> 
>> Third, green coastal defense infrastructure such as coral reefs, oyster reefs, marshes, mangroves, etc can theoretically grow (not degrade as gray infrastructure such as seawalls and breakwaters do) through time if in a good environment, as discussed above, and generally are a net contributor to ecosystem health (as compared to gray infrastructure, which generally is not). See Beck et al. (2018).
>> 
>> Fourth, the US spends on the order of a few $million/year on coral reef restoration, versus on the order of half a $billion/year on pre-disaster coastal mitigation funding and 10s of $billions on post-disaster coastal restoration funding after hurricanes, such as Irma and Maria in 2017. If just a few percent of those pre-disaster mitigation funds or post-disaster restoration funds could be used for coral reef restoration, that would be a huge influx of funding for restoration. And that's just public dollars - what about private sector insurers? If a hotel restores its reef just offshore (reducing its flooding risk), might it get a lower insurance rate?
>> 
>> Thus if you can show coral reefs provide coastal protection at a management-relevant scale and in rigorously enough manner (e.g., Storlazzi et al., 2019), you might be able to create new funding opportunities for coral reef restoration to help increase ecological function, that, in turn, helps provide all of the other ecosystem services that average folks (non-coral lovers such as ourselves) crave, such as fisheries, tourism, recreation, etc.
>> 
>> Again, it does hinge, as you note, on successfully outplanting corals (maybe genetically engineered or selectively bred to be more resilient). But it seems we can't scale up those engineering, breeding, and outplanting efforts (and likely mitigation of local stressors such as land-based pollution) without a lot more funds that it appears are currently available....so let's think about how we might create such funding opportunities.
>> 
>> But that's just one thought....
>> 
>> Stay safe and sane in these crazy times, amigo.
>> 
>> Curt
>> 
>> ------
>> 
>> Beck, MW, et al., 2018. "The global flood protection savings provided by coral reefs." Nature Communications 9:2186.
>> 
>> Ferrario, F, et al., 2014. ”The effectiveness of coral reefs for coastal hazard risk reduction and adaptation.” Nature Communications, 5:3794.
>> 
>> Quataert, E, et al., 2015. “The influence of coral reefs and climate change on wave-driven flooding of tropical coastlines.” Geophysical Research Letters, 42: 6407-6415.
>> 
>> Storlazzi, CD, et al. 2019. "Rigorously valuing the role of U.S. coral reefs in coastal hazard risk reduction." USGS Open-File Report 2019-1027, doi.org/10.3133/ofr20191027 <http://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20191027>.
>> 
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Curt D. Storlazzi, Ph.D.
>> 
>> U.S. Geological Survey
>> 
>> Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
>> 
>> 2885 Mission Street
>> 
>> Santa Cruz, CA 95060
>> 
>> (831) 295-3429 cell during COVID-19
>> 
>> https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/curt-d-storlazzi <https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/curt-d-storlazzi>
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> 
>> From: Douglas Fenner
>> 
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 3:03 PM
>> 
>> To: Storlazzi, Curt D
>> 
>> Cc: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
>> 
>> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [Coral-List] ICRS 2021 meeting session: Can Coral Reef Restoration Increase Coastal Protection?
>> 
>> This email has been received from outside of DOI - Use caution before clicking on links, opening attachments, or responding.
>> 
>> Wouldn't an important aspect be how long improvements in the amount of live coral last?? If people plant out 10,000 corals and feel good about themselves, but only 100 survive more than 5 years, was it worth it?? This is a question which it seems to me the huge number of enthusiastic coral restoration people are dodging, and I think it is a critical one. Bad water quality and mass coral bleaching can undo all these good efforts, and WILL, if we don't address them, and so far we're failing miserably at that. Isn't this fad just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic??? Cheers, Doug
>> 
>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 7:05 AM Storlazzi, Curt D via Coral-List > wrote:
>> 
>> Dear colleagues:
>> 
>> We would like to draw your attention to a meeting session to address:
>> 
>> Can Coral Reef Restoration Increase Coastal Protection?
>> 
>> at the 2021 International Coral Reef Symposium, which is being held 18-23 July 2021 in Bremen, Germany.
>> 
>> If your work is relevant to this session please submit an abstract to ICRS20-39 under Theme 13: Interventions and Restoration via the following link:
>> 
>> https://www.icrs2021.de/program/call-for-abstracts/ <https://www.icrs2021.de/program/call-for-abstracts/>
>> 
>> Session Description:
>> 
>> Coastal flooding and erosion affects thousands of vulnerable coastal communities and has resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in damage during the past decade alone; these impacts are predicted to worsen with continued population growth and climate change. There is growing recognition of the role of coral reefs in coastal hazard risk reduction as they dissipate wave energy and produce and trap sediment on adjacent beaches and thus reduce flooding and erosion. Given these benefits, there is the potential to apply coral reef restoration not only to meet ecological recovery goals such as coral species and reef communities, but also to reduce coastal hazards and build coastal resilience to current and future storms. To meet and support these joint objectives, there must be rigorous, quantitative assessments of restoration performance, particularly for risk reduction benefits. This mini-symposium focuses on advancements in understanding the role of coral reefs in hazard risk reduct
>> 
>> ion, including but not limited to (i) quantifying the roles of coral spacing, morphology, and attachment strength in boundary-layer hydrodynamics; (ii) relating coral species morphology, structural complexity, or reef location to change in hydrodynamic roughness or induction of wave breaking for different environmental forcing conditions; (iii) design and siting of reef restoration to best reduce coastal flooding for different reef configurations; (iv) comparison of natural green and hybrid gray-green infrastructure in relation to ecological and hydrodynamic change; (v) incorporation of ecological connectivity into reef restoration site selection; and (vi) cost-benefit analyses of restoration for coastal hazard risk reduction. Summaries of current local or regional-scale studies, including modeling exercises are encouraged, especially if they evaluate social and economic impacts of different restoration options.
>> 
>> Please visit the conference website for more information:
>> 
>> https://www.icrs2021.de/program/session-program/#c245 <https://www.icrs2021.de/program/session-program/#c245>
>> 
>> Abstract submission closes 15 September 2020
>> 
>> For further information and all updates, please visit:
>> 
>> https://www.icrs2021.de <https://www.icrs2021.de/>
>> 
>> If you know of anyone who might be interested who might not receive this notice, please feel free to pass it along. We are very excited about this session and look forward to your participation. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. We hope to see you in Bremen!
>> 
>> Organizers:
>> 
>> Curt Storlazzi - USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
>> 
>> Shay Viehman - NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science
>> 
>> Mike Beck - UCSC Institute of Marine Sciences
>> 
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Curt D. Storlazzi, Ph.D.
>> 
>> U.S. Geological Survey
>> 
>> Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center
>> 
>> 2885 Mission Street
>> 
>> Santa Cruz, CA 95060
>> 
>> (831) 295-3429 cell during COVID-19
>> 
>> https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/curt-d-storlazzi <https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/curt-d-storlazzi>
>> 
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>> 
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>> 
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