[Coral-List] Toth et al 2021

[Steve Mussman]

Hi Mark,

I think both you and Doug make some good points although I wouldn’t describe those Goliath groupers as huge (I actually thought they were large Nassau groupers myself). Still, we are fortunate to have them in Florida waters, but that’s likely only because Goliaths have been protected for some time although every year it has been a battle to keep them from being harvested. Anyway, I’d say there was a lot of interesting life in that video just not much in the way of healthy corals.

My follow up question to you is this: If the conclusions reached in the paper that John Bruno referenced are accurate, how might that affect future prospects for all the various marine life we did get to see in that video?

Thanks and warm regards,

Steve

On 6/23/21, 7:14 AM, Mark Tupper via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

Hi Doug,

Respectfully, I have to disagree. In addition to the huge goliath groupers

(not black groupers), sharks and schools of jacks, there were large schools

of snapper and grunt that were probably in the 15-20 cm length class -

certainly not minnows. Without a colour filter on the lens, it's hard to

see the benthic composition from a distance, but I saw plenty of sponges.

This is a relict reef at the northern limit of reef development, so it's

not going to look like Palau or Raja Ampat. It's not a beautiful coral

garden but for the type of ecosystem it is, it looks quite healthy, with

high biomass and apex predators. That said, I'm sure it could be improved

with better water quality off the Florida coast.

In terms of paying for the dive, we all have our biases. Mine is toward

reef fish, so I would pay more for that Jupiter dive than to dive in

American Samoa, which was already devoid of large fishes when I last dove

there in 2003. Willingness to pay in the diving public is also generally

biased towards icon species like large groupers, sharks, sea turtles, etc.

rather than corals, so I would bet that most recreational divers would also

pay more for the Jupiter dive than to dive on reefs that have healthy coral

but no fish.

Cheers,

Mark

Mark Tupper

Theme Lead, Aquatic Living Resources Management

Centre for Blue Governance

Institute of Marine Science

University of Portsmouth

On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 at 05:47, Douglas Fenner via Coral-List <

coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> That's an amazing video all right. The video does have a lot of live

> stuff in it, and that as I gather is pretty much natural for there in

> Florida (?) I have read a statement in a published paper that confirms

> what I have long thought, no surface underwater in tropical oceans goes

> more than a few days without being totally covered with one kind or life or

> another. If it is natural I have no complaints, however, it sure doesn't

> look like a coral reef ecosystem to me, looks like hardground which I never

> expected to have coral on it. Looks really grungy, anyone who has seen a

> nice reef wouldn't find that a beautiful place. Doesn't even have sponges,

> let alone corals. Must be 1% cover or less. If it is natural, I have no

> complaints. I saw two sharks and at least 3 big black groupers in the

> video. That's great, in American Samoa usually you see no sharks on a

> dive, and I've never seen a single big grouper alive here. I saw one once

> that a fisherman had caught and was quite dead by the time I saw it. The

> video has jillions of tiny fish, minnow size, but I saw few medium size

> fish other than that big school of jacks.

> Yeah, there are tons of gorgonia and tons of algae. Some of the very

> few coral colonies I saw had disease on them. Some people talk about the

> "Florida Barrier Reef." This video is what that looks like, I gather. If

> I look at a map of the Florida reef tract (which is what it has long been

> called) I see tiny little dots that have actual living coral reef

> ecosystems. One of the reefs said to be among the nicest remaining is Looe

> Key Reef. Looked to me like it was maybe a city block square or

> something. Without GPS you could easily miss it. Not a barrier to

> anything. Was ringed with buoys for dive boats. Our dive boat had to wait

> for another boat to untie and leave before we could tie up.

> The relict reefs and hard grounds like in this photo are interesting

> both geologically and biologically. But they are not "living coral reef

> ecosystems." They are "dead coral reef ecosystems" on geological coral

> reef structures, with living benthic communities dominated apparently by

> gorgonia and algae, and maybe I'm biased and I am certainly spoiled, it

> isn't an attractive reef to me and for pleasure I wouldn't pay 10 cents to

> dive on it. As a biologist or geologist I might be super interested in

> them.

> I think this video, along with Bruce Carlson's one from one reef in

> Fiji (which is not representative of Fiji reefs) showing what it looked

> like last time he surveyed it, are a warning. People say "we need to get

> used to the ecosystem changed, not the way it was." Oh. And this is what

> they will look like??? Sorry, those are DEAD coral reef ecosystems. This

> is what I, and many, fear the future looks like for many or most coral

> reefs. And it isn't pretty and it isn't productive of ecosystem services.

> No, the very last few corals are not dead yet, but if you wanted to

> document that all the original coral species were still there, no local

> extinctions, I think you'd have a lot of surveying and work trying to find

> them. I did not see even a single pair of living coral colonies of the

> same species close enough together to be able to fertilize eggs. I don't

> even remember a pair of any kind of coral colonies next to each other.

> Sorry, I'm just NOT going to be happy with the world's reefs

> looking this way and I refuse to "adapt and adjust" to reefs this way. If

> the world's reefs start looking like these it will be an unmitigated

> disaster and we should call a disaster a disaster. Over 100 million people

> are going to be malnourished and on the edge of starvation if we allow this

> to happen, and the best current predictions are dire indeed.

> Cheers, Doug

>

> On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 9:41 AM Bruno, John via Coral-List <

> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

>

> > Coral peeps: check out the interesting new paper by Toth et al "Climate

> > and the latitudinal limits of subtropical reef development" -> its open

> > access here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87883-8

> >

> > What an author group! Some of the Caribbean's leading reef scientists

> > teamed up to assess past accretional states and the demise of the

> > high-latitude reefs of southeast Florida I grew up diving on in the 80s

> > (off Jupiter and West Palm Beach). They conclude that climate variability

> > (namely post-holocene thermal maximum cooling and cold fronts) and not

> sea

> > level rise was the cause of the demise of these reefs after a period of

> > accretion ~ 10,000 years ago. (I had thought they were much older),

> >

> > Importantly, they conclude: "Modern warming is unlikely to simply reverse

> > this trend, however, because the climate of the Anthropocene will be

> > fundamentally different from the HTM. By increasing the frequency and

> > intensity of both warm and cold extreme-weather events, contemporary

> > climate change will instead amplify conditions inimical to reef

> development

> > in marginal reef environments such as southern Florida, making them more

> > likely to continue to deteriorate than to resume accretion in the

> future."

> >

> > PS, You can see what these relic reefs look like now here:

> > https://vimeo.com/177782350

> > Little coral, but extraordinary fish and invert communities. If you think

> > a reef with <10% living cover is "dead" you should watch this or go see

> for

> > yourself.

> >

> > Cheers,

> >

> > JB

> >

> > John Bruno

> > Professor, Dept of Biology

> > UNC Chapel Hill

> > www.johnfbruno.com

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> >

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