[Coral-List] Coral restoration trashing

Tue Aug 22 15:08:10 UTC 2023

Hi all,

This has been an incredibly interesting discussion regarding coral
restoration. We rarely communicate in Coral List, typically we sit back
passively and absorb the knowledge and expertise this group has to offer,
but given the current situation of our reef, we would be neglectful if we
didn’t chime in. We are a nonprofit located in the Florida Keys and our big
platform has been improving the water quality. We do this primarily through
education, outreach, and city level policy endeavors. As we have a small
facility, we do not have a lab to perform testing, so we rely on others to
do so, and we communicate that to the public. We do work with and support
other organizations whose paths are more in the restoration side of things
as well.

During the current marine heat wave discussion, many have ignored the fact
that our corals have been dying long before this heat wave. We have lost
most of our coral coverage in the Florida Barrier Reef before this event.
Every summer we are on the reef 4 times a week with our summer camp, we’ve
rarely seen out planted corals reaching it past the 1-year mark. A lot of
this has not been due to coral bleaching but other factors. Stony Coral
Tissue Loss Disease, turbidity, run-off, excess nutrients, marine debris,
and so much more have been challenging our corals for decades. Some of
these challenges are not as easy to see from the naked eye, such as
contamination in the form of excess nutrients. Perhaps it is the shifting
baselines we’ve experienced from viewing blue water to green water, or
perhaps it is “out of sight out of mind”. While we cannot speak for other
reefs around the world, we can without a doubt say that water quality
surrounding Florida has been a disaster for decades with very little
attention brought to it. There is a small group of us in the form of
organizations, community groups, and individuals that have voiced our
concerns, called for more funding to improve infrastructure and more. Yet,
it rarely happens, or we are met with push back from agencies or even other
organizations.

To give a very current example, if you travel to the lower keys right now
the color of the water is a “pea soup” green and sludge brown. Residents in
some areas are receiving medical ailments after swimming in their canals,
and many of the nearshore water is emitting a sewage like smell. Divers can
barely see their hand in front of them. Warming waters are most definitely
worsening the underlying issues such as algal blooms and what is expected
to be failing sewage treatment facilities.

We need to collectively put our finger back on the pulse and address the
root of the issue, water quality. We’ve said many times, you can keep
putting a plant in a dark room, but until you open a window, it will not
receive what it needs to survive. Coral restoration, securing genetic
diversity, education, and other endeavors are so incredibly important and
are a valuable tool in our box. All of these are needed to bring the
Florida Barrier back to life. However, if we cannot allocate funding, time,
or even attention to the underlying problems, how can we expect anything to
work?

View our official response:

*https://www.reefrelief.org/2023/08/marineheatwave/
<https://www.reefrelief.org/2023/08/marineheatwave/>*

Best,

Dora DeMaria (on behalf of Reef Relief)

Assistant Executive Director

On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 9:22 AM Austin Bowden-Kerby via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Paul,
>
> I completely agree that what has been going on in Australia with high tech
> methods and flashy science is a diversion.  I applied to the Great Barrier
> Reef Challenge when Australia just got going with supporting restoration,
> and even though I had proof of concept that what we were doing worked very
> well, the donor said they did not want to fund anything already proven, so
> they funded cloud brightening, 3-D printing of fake corals, giant fans to
> cool the waters, and a coral planting robot.
>
> This makes me want to distance myself from the misleading hype by no longer
> calling what I do restoration.  I did restoration in the past and most of
> it was killed off by mass bleaching.  What I do now is not restoration, it
> is coral focused adaptation and endangered coral species conservation. You
> are spot-on about the importance of knowing the status of each coral
> species, as we can then know better which species most need our help.  My
> restoration worker contacts in the Caribbean did not fully understand my
> point of view until just recently, and I fear that most coral restoration
> practitioners in Australia might still think they have two more decades,
> but that is because they have not seen the new global mean seawater
> temperature data, which today reached an all time high of 21.16C.
> https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
>
> I now focus our efforts on collecting bleaching resistant corals and on
> local translocation from hot to cooler reefs to create secure gene bank
> nurseries much more than outplanting, as we are preparing for the severe
> marine heat waves that are coming. Once we have more extensive collections
> secured, then we will begin outplanting into nucleation patches, on cooler
> degraded reefs and planting these resistant corals into patches amongst
> sensitive populations to encourage sharing of symbionts through natural
> means.
>
> Australia and the USA  are the two nations where millions have been spent
> on coral restoration, but over here in the developing world, in spite of
> wasting incredible amounts of time of our time writing proposals, we have
> only gotten crumbs.  We do not rely on scuba gear, as we can not afford it,
> so we are confined to the shallows. We just got our first boat his year,
> after all this time.  Even then, we have had amazing success developing
> methods which mimic natural processes and reboot natural recovery.
>
> Regards,
>
> Austin
>
> Austin Bowden-Kerby, PhD
> Corals for Conservation
> P.O. Box 4649 Samabula, Fiji Islands
> https://www.corals4conservation.org
> Publication on C4C's coral-focused climate change adaptation strategies:
> https://www.mdpi.com/2673-1924/4/1/2/pdf
> Film on our "Reefs of Hope" coral restoration for climate change adaptation
> strategies:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG0lqKciXAA
>
> https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/
> <
> https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 9:04 PM Paul Muir via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>
> > Not involved in Coral Restoration or trashing CR, but I certainly agree
> > with some of the criticism. Billions of dollars are now being poured into
> > CR by governments and big mining in lieu of reducing their carbon
> > emissions. These big players are touting CR as a super-high-tech means of
> > "saving the reef" while continuing with business as usual. High-tech
> > (sci-fi?) plays a big part of selling this to the public: artificial
> > intelligence, underwater robots, genetic engineering, 3D printing etc.
> > figure heavily in the marketing. Arguably, CR is also diverting funds and
> > researchers away from critical conservation science, for example the
> recent
> > Red List revision concluded that there was a chronic lack of data on the
> > conservation status of the majority of our ~750 coral species. We have no
> > clue how the majority of coral species are faring, their regional
> > population size, risk of extinction, susceptibility to bleaching etc.
> > Collecting this basic data would cost a tiny fraction of the CR budget,
> but
> > it's being ignored.
> >
> > I'm certainly a fan of many of the CR projects, but the trashers do have
> a
> > point at times?
> >
> > On Tue, 22 Aug 2023 at 01:37, Luiz Rocha via Coral-List <
> > coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> >
> > > Alright, I've had it. I am sick and tired of the constant trashing and
> > > criticism that coral restoration projects and that any science even
> > > remotely related to restoration are getting. Even though I don't work
> on
> > it
> > > (directly or indirectly) I know a lot of scientists working on coral
> > > restoration. And I also know a lot of restoration projects. Not a
> single
> > > one of them has ever said that the solution for the coral reef crysis
> is
> > > coral restoration. This is hyperbole created either by the media and
> the
> > > critics of coral restoration.
> > >
> > > Now more specifically about the critiques to every kind of science
> > related
> > > to restoration. If we put together all of the dollars that went into
> > coral
> > > restoration science, in all of human history, that adds up to (very
> > > graciously) about half a billion dollars. For those that keep saying
> that
> > > we can solve the climate crisis with coral restoration dollars, please,
> > > please, tell me how 500 million dollars would solve climate change. If
> > you
> > > sit down and really think about it, I hope you realize that climate
> > change
> > > is not a money problem. We have the money and the solutions to do it.
> > What
> > > we do not have is the political will.
> > >
> > > And for those that keep saying that corals in air conditioned aquaria
> are
> > > not a solution, rhinos in zoos aren't either, so should we kill them
> all
> > > and be done with it? The only surviving individuals of unique genetic
> > > lineages of several species that used to be in Florida are now only
> alive
> > > in aquaria. So let's use the few hundreds of thousands of dollars being
> > > used to keep them alive to convince Ron De Santis and Donald Trump that
> > > climate change is real. Yeah, that's gonna work. These dollars (even if
> > > dollars could solve climate change, which they won't) are not competing
> > > with climate change dollars. That's like asking to stop funding coral
> > > taxonomy because giving coral species names is only rearranging the
> > chairs
> > > in the Titanic. That argument can be used for any branch of science
> that
> > is
> > > not fighting climate change. And it is not true.
> > >
> > > So, get off your horses, fight climate change the best way you can, and
> > > keep doing science, even if it's not related to climate change. Because
> > it
> > > will help.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Luiz
> > >
> > > Luiz A. Rocha, Ph.D.
> > > Curator and Follett Chair of Ichthyology
> > > Co-Director, Hope For Reefs Initiative
> > >
> > > California Academy of Sciences
> > >
> > > p. 415.379.5370
> > >
> > > LRocha at calacademy.org
> > > Academic Website
> > > <https://www.calacademy.org/staff/ibss/ichthyology/luiz-a-rocha>
> > >
> > > 55 Music Concourse Drive
> > > Golden Gate Park
> > > San Francisco, CA 94118
> > >
> > > Twitter <https://twitter.com/CoralReefFish> | Instagram
> > > <https://www.instagram.com/coralreeffish/>
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Coral-List mailing list
> > > Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> > > https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Coral-List mailing list
> > Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> > https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list

-- 
*Reef Relief® is a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to improving
& protecting our coral reef ecosystem.*

Phone: (305) 294-3100
Post Office Box 430, Key West, Florida 33041--430
Key West Office:  631 Greene Street, Key West, FL 33040
Website: http://reefrelief.org

*Follow us:*
Facebook:  www.facebook.com/reefrelief     Twitter: twitter.com/reefrelief
Instagram: instagram.com/reefrelief

*Do you want to make a difference for coral reefs? With the stroke of your
keyboard, you can.  Sign up to join Reef Relief's online community.
<http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001Ytl_fE6JQ_1voEfJtMuVMxwfLxuwYihpMr11Rd9v2XjsWAaaRdLR7Sm6xjQgsD0xuMgiXLeT_DtlqsV0TKokdbjph29MC7KUUenaeVgozNW3gM11-5YBa1F8MbGy_oZ5f86rPGRYCB0IyO60zaBZ9w%3D%3D>
It's free, it's easy and you'll begin receiving regular coral reef news &
updates on Reef Relief activities.*

*Support clean water. Join the Floridians’ Clean Water Declaration Campaign*
*Visit www.wewantcleanwater.com <http://www.wewantcleanwater.com>*