[Coral-List] Transformation of Caribbean reefs (Pawlik, Joseph)

[Ben Farmer]

Dear all,

Thank you for sharing these resources, Dr. Pawlik. Here is a recently
published study from the team at the School for Field Studies in the TCI
called "Ecological consequences of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease in the
Turks and Caicos Islands" (https://rb.gy/gdr6vc).

Unfortunately, SCTLD was still spreading throughout the TCI in 2020 after
its introduction in early 2019, and will likely continue to in 2021. Our
team at SFS, led by Dr. Heidi Hertler, was able to do field work at the
beginning of 2020 and found that coral cover on permanent transect sites
off of the South Caicos fore reef had lost 60% of cover in one year after
the local emergence of SCTLD, compared to a 10-year average. Highly
susceptible maze, brain, and flower corals may have been particularly
devastated. Some good news, however, is that TCReef Fund (
https://www.tcreef.org/) is hard at work with antibiotic interventions
across the islands!

All the best,
Ben


From: "Pawlik, Joseph" <pawlikj at uncw.edu>
> To: "coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov" <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>,
>         "PORIFERA at JISCMAIL.AC.UK" <PORIFERA at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> Subject: [Coral-List] Transformation of Caribbean reefs
>
> Colleagues,
>
>      Because of the pandemic, many of us are not doing field-work,
> traveling, or diving. For those of us who work on reefs in the Caribbean,
> many have missed the accelerating loss of the remaining stony corals,
> particularly at fore-reef depths >10 m.
> This link provides video surveys from January 2021 of reefs on the NW and
> SW sides of the island of Roatan, Honduras, and a seamount between the
> island and mainland.
> https://youtu.be/507OpUfd3Mc
> You can see the final stages of coral loss due to recent bleaching events
> and disease. Seaweeds, sponges, and octocorals now dominate the benthos.
> Near-shore and seamount reefs have been similarly affected, suggesting that
> local run-off and point-sources of pollution are not the primary causes of
> coral loss.
>      A video from a year ago documents the final stages of coral loss on
> the fore-reefs of the Turks and Caicos. The pace of coral loss appeared
> more rapid there, but the outcome was the same.
> https://youtu.be/11ywGm33wnM
> The purpose of these posts is not to depress the heck out of everyone
> (however likely), but to raise awareness of the reality of Caribbean reefs
> at the present time. It is one thing to look at a graph of declining
> percentage cover of stony corals (with the most recent data from several
> years ago), and another to see the current state of the reefs.
>
> Regards,
>
> Joe
>