[Coral-List] A very useful report (Douglas Fenner)

[Douglas Fenner]

Katherine,
     I think many of us agree with you about how you feel about the
damaging of coral reefs.
     My thoughts are that discussion of whether the US military is involved
in aggression seem to me to not be an appropriate topic for coral-list,
though we could surely have a spirited discussion, and there are surely
places where it would be appropriate.
     I think the question of whether the US military has done significant
damage to coral reefs would be completely appropriate for coral-list and
would probably be a good thing to discuss.  And maybe of world militaries
in general.
     I have no knowledge of the situation on Okinawa, so I won't speak to
that.
     I think that there is some evidence that at least sometimes, the U.S.
military has, whether intentionally or unintentionally, acted as a
conservation agent.  One of the times when coral conservation was totally
unintentional but perhaps significant, was in World War II, when the US
bombed and sank about 50 Japanese vessels in Truk (Chuuk) Lagoon in the
Pacific.  They were sunk in the lagoon, which like most lagoons is
relatively shallow with a sandy bottom.  It was deep enough for the ships,
a majority of which were merchant marine and many were in the 300 to 400
foot long range, so not small.  Jaques Cousteau made them famous and since
then they have been a big dive attraction and a major part of the Chuuk
economy, still are.  Over time, many organisms have grown on those hard
structures, including in the better lit parts, reef building corals.  The
wrecks provide hard substrate habitat for corals and other organisms, in an
area lacking hard substrate.  Thus, they have been beneficial to corals.
What we may consider a good outcome, but a totally unintended consequence
of a military action.
      Another example.  In Hawaii, there are many military bases, from
small to fairly large, most are probably small.  Many smaller ones are
probably left over from WWII, and have limited if any activity today.  But,
they remain in military hands.  Much to the frustration of developers, who
cannot buy that land and develop it for tourism.  (mind you, I think the
military have only a small proportion of the land in Hawaii.)  Some have
called the military in Hawaii, "Hawaii's greatest conservation agents."
Primarily, again, an unintended consequence.  At least one of the larger
military bases has closed waters around it.  That military base and nearby
towns used to release their sewage into Kaneohe bay, which promoted a phase
shift to macroalgae.  Then the sewage outfalls were moved outside the bay
and the bay recovered quite a bit.  The closed area around the military
base may offer some protection to those areas.
     Hawaii has one small island. Kaho'olawe, which was long used as a
military bombing range.  That has been stopped.  It has no running water
on it, it is not tall enough to squeeze clouds to get rain.  No one lives
on it, the military did partial cleanup of ordinance, ownership has been
transferred to the State of Hawaii, and the only people allowed on it now
are native Hawaiians for traditional purposes.  I believe you can dive
around it.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahoolawe
      In American Samoa, about half the airport runway was built out over
reef flat, plus they scooped up some of the rest of the reef flat to
provide material to build on top of the reef flat where the runway would
go.  The remaining reef flat has low coral cover as reef flats often have.
The "borrow pit" where they removed material is mostly sandy bottom, but
part of it has vigorously growing coral (more than it likely had as a reef
flat), and this is the "airport pool" where staghorns bleached and died and
pictures have been widely shown on the internet.  The other half of the
coral there is finger coral and did not bleach and remains alive.  Anyhow,
the runway was built as part of the WWII effort, I believe (I don't know if
the military built it or civilian contractors).  Oh, and the US Navy put
fill on top of reef flat in the harbor and then built storage buildings on
top of the fill, which subsequently were turned into tuna canneries (all of
this long before I got here).
      In the Marianas, correct me if I'm wrong, but while there are
military bases, there is no current bombing practice on any of the islands
other than a tiny one called "Farallon de Medinilla" that is uninhabited.
A recent publication on the corals there seemed to indicate little if any
damage to corals from the military, but probably lots of damage from storms
and some from bleaching.  Tinian does have several runways for airplanes
that were used heavily in WWII, including the runway where the airplane
took off that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  An event that I think
everyone agrees was incredibly horrible.  But there was, to my knowledge,
no bombing of any of the Marianas by the US, though the US did attack the
Japanese military left particularly on Saipan, a story that has some very
sad parts to it.
     I have only been on a couple military bases, both US bases on atolls,
one in the Pacific and one in the Indian Ocean.  The US military has
conservation officers and programs, and does a variety of conservation
things.  On one of them I was part of a small group that surveyed corals in
a lagoon, paid by the military to see how the corals are doing (they were
doing pretty good where we dove).  On one of those atolls, fishing is
prohibited by the commander, and large reef fish are more abundant than in
many other areas.  At one point when we rolled into the water on an outer
reef slope, I counted 40 reef sharks within sight, and some of the other
divers reported that a few were briefly making passes at them (sharks are
curious predators, but reef sharks rarely attack humans. something we hope
is correct when they are that close).  You will see that in very few other
places where there are people anywhere on the globe, and they are there
because of protection by the commander.  One of those atolls has an island
that is a seabird colony, with thousands of thriving sea birds, and the
main island that the military is on has had cats eradicated and now needs
to have rats eradicated.  Humans have eradicated seabird colonies by eating
them long ago on nearly every island with a seabird colony where humans
have settled, yet a seabird colony thrives on a little island that is part
of the military base on the atoll (but the military has no activities on
that island).  They could have had them for dinner at any time, or simply
used that island for military activities, and the birds would be gone.  But
they are not, they thrive.
       The US military proposed moving the home base of an aircraft carrier
from Japan to Guam.  But that would mean that they would need to have deep
enough water in Guam's main harbor to bring the aircraft carrier in.  They
have a draft of about 55 feet.  They hired several teams to survey patch
reefs in the harbor, I was on a couple of those teams.  The patch reefs
reach well shallower than 55 feet.  There are corals on them.  I presume
they would have to take the tops off the patch reefs in the path of the
aircraft carrier.  The proposal was probably from over 10 years ago.  A
friend of mine once said they were studying it to death.  If they didn't
care, they'd just go in and rip them out, would be easy.  But they haven't
done it.  My guess is that there is a surprising amount of pressure for the
military to be good environmental stewards these days.
         On the other hand, the US did atomic testing on two atolls
in the Marshall Is, during the period in which the US and Russia were
building and testing atomic bombs after World War II.  They detonated bombs
on both Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, and people who had lived on those have
not to this day been allowed to return (some radiation remains), though
divers can go on trips to dive on the wrecks in Bikini Atoll, which were
older US Navy vessels anchored there to see what the bombs would do to
them.  The largest bomb, a hydrogen bomb "Bravo" excavated a large pit
on Bikini which remains.  I think it is all sand with no corals in it.
However, the atoll as a whole has as many or more coral species than it did
before testing (126 sp before vs 183 after, though 28 may have been driven
to local extinction.)  Richards et al 2008.  Bikini Atoll coral
biodiversity resilience five decades after nuclear testing.  Marine
Pollution Bulletin 56: 503-515.
         I'd also point to what China has done to reefs in the South China
Sea, dredging them, filling with sand, and building military bases on
them.  Nothing accidental about the destruction of those reefs, and the
military purpose is obvious, satellite photos show it.
       So I would argue that it is not all black and white, and the US
military at times does significant conservation work that benefits coral
reefs, and other actions have been damaging.  Maybe military activities
should be listed when we are listing human activities that damage coral
reefs, and if we do they will be one of the minor sources of damage in my
view.  But maybe we'd then want to also list them as conservation actors on
some reefs.  I presume there are many more such stories out there, probably
some good and some bad for corals.

Cheers, Doug

Carilli, J.E., Bolick, L., Marx, Jr., D.E., Smith, S.H., Fenner, D.  2020.
Coral

    bleaching variability during the 2017 global bleaching event on a
remote, uninhabited

    island in the Western Pacific: Farallon de Medinilla, Commonwealth of
the Mariana

    Islands.  Bulletin of Marine Science 96: 785-802.


On Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 4:17 PM Katherine via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Thank you Douglas Fenner for posting the recent ICRF report on "Rebuilding
> Coral Reefs: a Decadal Grand Challenge", by Knowlton, N., et alia, at
> http://coralreefs.org/publications/rebuilding_coral_reefs/.
>
> Upon reading it, I am feeling, beyond dismay, anger, frustration, I am
> beyond feeling woe, or even resignation, I have a new feeling, one of
> terror.
>
> How might such fantastically well-educated and well-travelled scientists
> from my own generation omit from their very pretty report of the "3
> pillars" for keeping reefs alive, elide (ahem, ignore entirely) the
> bludgeons of nearly 130 years of US militarism? Knowlton and her colleagues
> only mention 1) reducing climate change 2) improving local conditions and
> 3) investing in restoration of corals....What feeble pillars these 3 are,
> against current and constant ongoing forceful military aggression!
>
> Yes, the US military continues its bludgeoning, its destruction forever, of
> cultures and natural environments all around our watery, once-lively,
> Planet.
>
> In the Pacific, the imperialistic US military, since the 1893 overthrow of
> the Hawaiian monarchy, and then throughout the continuing US decimation of
> Pacific islands and culture during WW2, until right now, with the US
> bombing practice at Naftan/Tinian/Pagan in the Marianas and with the Aegis
> missiles targeting Kwajalein from Kaua'i, and with the US Navy's incessant
> Pacific war games, including recently permitted 2019-2024 24/7 low/mid/high
> frequency destructive sonar from 44 degrees N latitude to 15, the US
> military continues, unchecked, to obliterate marine life. In Okinawa, it
> continues to engage in deliberate obliteration of the most beautiful and
> diverse coral reef I have ever had the privilege to dive into, at Oura
> Bay.  There, over 5,334 species (262 species of which are listed as
> "endangered" and others which are still "new", undescribed), including over
> 430 spp of corals, 1000+ spp of fish, numerous spp of molluscs,
> echinoderms, arthropods, seagrasses and algae are resolutely clinging to
> life. Yet the US insists on expanding Camp Schwab, a US Marine Base on
> the Bay, against the wishes of 70% of the local population and their
> democratically elected Governor. Despite years and years of opposition from
> stalwart local activists, the desecration of Oura Bay continues.
>
> In summary, the mightily-funded US military has been bludgeoning life on
> lands and in the seas for well over a century, and continues unchecked. Now
> with the "China threat", the US is ramping up activities, expanding  even
> further away from its own shores, mercilessly continuing irreparable
> destruction. Not just expanding military base construction in Okinawa,
> Guam, Australia, S. Korea, Japan, etc etc but increasing noise and sonar
> and chemical pollution, nuclear contamination, etc etc, throughout all
> waters of the Pacific Ocean.
>
> I have in my hand a very sobering book that S. Dillon Ripley gave me in
> 1976, which first brought my attention to this ongoing tragedy, entitled
> "Lost Island", by his admired colleague, James Norman Hall. (Hall was an
> American author better known for writing "Mutiny on the Bounty" and other
> books adapted for film.) In 1944 Hall published this very eloquent and
> poignant description about the impact of war/US militarization on humans
> living on Pacific islands. If not readily available to you, I admonish you
> to read this more accessible, recent report from an admired colleague of my
> own, Gavan McCormack, an Australian historian and philosopher, entitled
> "The Prospect of Political Change in Japan" published on October 25 in Asia
> Pacific Journal, https://aphid.org/2021/20/McCormack.html. In this report
> he details the accelerating tempo of military exercises in the East and
> South Pacific, and warns of the possibility of clash, by accident or
> design, of the US, UK, Japanese, German, Australian, French and Chinese
> forces assembling there for "war games".
>
> I have witnessed tragic loss, in just my lifetime, to reefs and corals I
> loved, shallow and deep, all around the world. They are diseased and dying,
> from pollution, tourism, overfishing, acidification, warming...Thus I
> mentioned not just my feelings of sadness, frustration and despair but also
> terror in my opening sentences to you.
>
> Why terror? Because in my view, the overt failure by academics to
> address/oppose/curtail/stop military destruction of the marine environment
> is beyond outrageous. I fear the "Penta-Force", the
> Military-Industrial-Press-Administrative-Academic Force, will forcefully
> succeed, causing innocent, beautiful, ancient and wondrous corals and their
> associated marine life to succumb and perish. The complacency and silence
> of marine biologists are complicit in this irreversible tragedy. Thousands
> of years of life in the sea, poof!
>
> Katherine Muzik
> kmuzik at gmail.com
> 808-346-6167
> www.ourwaterdrop.org
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