[Coral-List] Coral reef health over time vs human population trends

[Austin Bowden-Kerby]

Dear Alina, Doug, and Coral List community,

While population pressure is indeed driving so much of the planetary level
destruction and climate change, there is a very large disconnect between
human population and coral reef decline.  The entire Pacific Islands- all
of them, including Hawaii and the island parts of PNG, US and French
islands contain about 3 million people.  This is roughly equivalent to the
population of Puerto Rico.  While the island of Hispaniola has over 22
million!  Despite the low population to reef ratio of the Pacific Islands,
many of the coral reefs are overfished and badly impacted by coral
bleaching.  The overfishing is related to the fact that the majority of
people in the region participate marginally in the global economy, with
most of their food coming from what they can catch in the sea and grow on
the land.  Cash is very hard to come by, and saleable or exportable
resources are already badly depleted: sea cucumbers, tridacnid clams,
lobsters, etc.   The poverty level for a family of 5-7 in Fiji is $3,500.
USD per year- but that is used for statistical purposes only, as there is
no welfare system.  50% of the population of Fiji live below that level!
 In the Solomon Islands, PNG, and Vanuatu, people are even more poor and so
they still mostly live in thatched houses and use wood fires for cooking.
If the environment can not feed them, they starve.  Cyclone impacts are
horrific and outside aid often comes late and is insufficient. Some remote
communities in Vanuatu are right now going hungry due to the two cyclones
which hit two weeks ago.  These people are not a burden on the earth's
climate, yet they are on the leading edge of climate change impacts.
Climate change and poverty and a lack of alternative food sources is what
is driving coral reef decline here and in the undeveloped parts of the
world.

I have just yesterday returned from Moturiki Island, where on most reefs
over a wide area, 99% of Acropora corals are severely bleached- yet again,
the 4th major bleaching for that site.  Many of the corals have started to
die, but fortunately due to cloudy and windy weather, and the two cyclones
which passed to the West of Fiji, our sites at Malolo, on the western reefs
have been spared a mass bleaching, and the open ocean temperature has
cooled down from 30C to 29C.  Also in Moturiki, which is supposedly
condition one, roughly 50% of Acropora still retains the color of algal
symbionts on the shaded underneath parts, so we expect these corals to
mostly recover.  Our strategy is to collect as many of the unbleached
corals as we can before the recovery of partially bleached corals
happens, to create a collection of known bleaching resistant corals.

Because Porites and massive species are doing much better, and as Acropora
is the first group to die out due to bleaching stress, Acropora is our
primary focus.   Acropora is also essential for planktivorous fish, which
the Porites and other massive species simply do not provide.  Pocillopora
is second in importance as far as habitat for small fish, but it is
considerably more resilient than Acropora, and it tends to increase on
bleaching stressed reefs as the Acropora declines.   Measures of coral
cover, like that reported by GCRMN, or bleaching reported as percent of all
corals bleached- without any differentiation between genera, are failing to
record the phase shift in species which is occurring on reefs throughout
the Pacific region.  The collapse of coral reefs in the face of climate
change is clearly occurring as a series of phase shifts in species
composition, but few have connected the dots of information as monitoring
data is scant.  My conclusion is backed up in some long term data sets, and
comes from first hand observation and interviews with local communities.
 Fiji and GBR have fortunately resisted the phase shift quite well, as
Acropora larval sources have been retained, with a complete phase shift to
Pocillopora dominance seen in the Society Islands, and now the phase shift
is happening in Kiribati reefs and the Line Islands, with numerous local
Acropora extinctions, and with low diversity reefs dominated by Porites rus
or Montipora sp.  I might add that most reefs of the Line Islands have
virtually no fishing pressure, and the stress is 100% related to bleaching.

Unfortunately this time around, the Lau island group of islands to the East
of Fiji, as well as southern Tonga have been severely impacted by
bleaching, and although there are no reports coming in yet, the stress,
based on the NOAA data, has been particularly severe.  So I expect a
massive die-off of Acropora in both island groups.  The problem is that
these reefs are directly upcurrent of the main islands of Fiji during
normal weather patterns.  In the past they were likely the source of
excellent larval-based recovery after severe bleaching on Fiji's reefs, but
now will that high resilience be changed?

On closing, I am happy to report that the village communities just re
established their no-take Tabu areas in two sites, and the plan is to use
the bleaching resistant corals that we collect, once the cool season
arrives, as part of a community-focused project to restore and increase
coral cover within the Tabu areas, planting coral fragments onto A-frames
which help with survival and rapid growth, while serving as immediate fish
habitat.  Multiple genets of each species are planted together to encourage
effective spawning once the corals mature.  For those interested, more
details on these strategies can be found in my recent paper, link below.


Kind 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
22 minute summary of climate change adaptation strategies
https://youtu.be/arkeSGXfKMk
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/
<https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/>


Teitei Livelihoods Centre
Km 20 Sigatoka Valley Road, Fiji Islands
(679) 938-6437
http:/www.
<http://permacultureglobal.com/projects/1759-sustainable-environmental-livelihoods-farm-Fiji>
teiteifiji.org
http://permacultureglobal.com/projects/1759-sustainable-environmental-livelihoods-farm-Fiji
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/happy-chickens-for-food-security-and-environment-1/







On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 1:36 AM Alina Szmant via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Here is even a better resource for looking at human population trends by
> country, by age group and many more options. It’s interactive. Lots of fun.
>
> https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/900
>
>
> *************************************************************************
> Dr. Alina M. Szmant, CEO
> CISME Instruments LLC
> 210 Braxlo Lane,
> Wilmington NC 28409 USA
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>
> From: Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, March 13, 2023 11:08 PM
> To: Alina Szmant <alina at cisme-instruments.com>
> Cc: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Explosive growth of Sargassum in the Caribbean
>
> I certainly agree that "the more people, the more disturbance" so long as
> each person does about as much.  Population is very much a problem.  But it
> is only part of the problem.
>
> Yes, population is a problem, no, there is no chance it will get solved in
> time for saving reefs, but it is going to resolve itself without much of
> any intervention, and that is already well underway.  Meantime, you don't
> mention over-consumption, and few others want to talk about it either.  But
> then, very very few people want to reduce their consumption, everyone wants
> the economy to grow as much as possible, get richer, spend more, throw more
> away.  Economy size and wealth drive some of the environmental damage, like
> climate change, plastic trash, and other aspects.  Population and
> consumption multiply each other in producing environmental damage
> Technology seems about our only semi-realistic hope.
>
> As for population, birth rates are way down in almost all countries.  The
> peak birth rate for the world was way back in 1968, it has fallen a lot
> since then.  They are way below replacement in China, Japan, S. Korea,
> Taiwan, Italy, and several other countries.  Birth rate in the US is now
> nearly down to 1.7 children per mother on the average, and replacement is
> 2.1 (population in the US continues to grow, but slowly, due to
> immigration).  Long been below replacement in most of what was the Soviet
> Union, if I remember.  Europe is going to lose population.  Now, as it has
> long been stated for Japan, the countries with very low birth rates are
> facing mounting problems due to much lower numbers of people of working
> age, paying to support more people at retirement age.  In developed
> economies, children are expensive, women want to work, and child care is
> expensive, so they choose to have fewer children.  It is the "demographic
> transition" and it is very widespread.
>
> Check it out:   www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncZW73QMBt8<
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncZW73QMBt8>
>
> The Great People Shortage is coming — and it's going to cause global
> economic chaos
>
> https://www.businessinsider.com/great-labor-shortage-looming-population-decline-disaster-global-economy-2022-10
>
> "By the end of this century, the global population will have decreased by
> 1 billion people from its peak, according to a 2020 analysis by researchers
> at the Gates Foundation, and in the most extreme scenario, the population
> could decline by almost 2 billion from where it is today, to just over 6
> billion.  The German working population will have declined<
> https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext> by a
> third, based on the average scenario from the researchers, and in Italy,
> Spain, and Greece it will have declined by more than half. Poland,
> Portugal, Romania, Japan, and China will all lose up to two-thirds of their
> labor force, according to the projections. The looming population decline
> is a wake-up call: Instead of the "population bomb" that some have feared
> for decades, we will face a population drop, and it will have enormous
> consequences for the world's prosperity."
> China will lose half its population by the end of the century — and the
> ripple effects will be catastrophic
>
> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-shrinking-population-grim-omen-110400765.html
>
>
> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3203833/chinas-shrinking-working-age-population-send-ripples-through-global-economy
>          "China’s fertility rate decreased from 2.6 in the late 1980s to
> just 1.15 last year, well below the 2.1 needed to replace deaths."
>
> There are articles like this popping up all over the web now.
>
> So, in terms of huge population damaging the environment, the future
> population decreases look encouraging, though it will take too much time to
> get there to help reefs that are forecast to be hit hard within 2-3 decades.
>
> Cheers, Doug
>
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 7:46 AM Alina Szmant via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>>
> wrote:
> Thanks Gene for once again weaving the data into a cohesive scenario that
> starts with:  too many people doing what people do best.... disturbing the
> natural environment to grow food and other human life necessities. The more
> people the more disturbance. And this has been going on for millenia.
> After all, humanity started in Africa. Most of what you describe has been
> happening long before the industrial revolution and the rapid increase in
> greenhouse gas concentrations responsible for recent global warming.
> Anthropogenic climate and environmental change and degradation has been
> occurring for much longer than the rise of global temperature since the
> boom in use of fossil fuels. And coral reefs are not the only ecosystems
> affected by human activity.  If you could ask the Sargassum how they feel
> about all this, they would tell us they love it! To paraphrase a great line
> from Encanto ("We don't talk about Bruno"): humanity doesn't want to talk
> about human overpopulation and the cumulative impact of now 8 billion
> people going about their daily business. There were only 2 billion people
> on Earth 100 years ago. Not wonder everything is falling apart! Only 4 % of
> mammal biomass is made up of mammal wildlife. What happened to all the
> wildlife? They have been killed off as food or decimated by loss of
> habitat. Their biomass has been replaced by humans and our food animals
> (plus a few % of pets).
>
> Can't save coral reefs if we have a bigger structural problem to deal
> with. And yes, social inequality and inequity is a contributing factor but
> not the main one.
>
>
>
> Dr. Alina M. Szmant,  CEO
> CISME Instruments LLC
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Eugene Shinn via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>>
> Date: 3/13/23 1:19 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
> Subject: [Coral-List] Explosive growth of Sargassum in the Caribbean
>
>     As a geologist/biologist diving the Fla Keys and much of the
> Caribbean long before the coral-list, Brian LaPointe, and Marine
> Sanctuaries existed, I have watched corals diseases develop and other
> crises come and go. HoweverI do not recall a time when Sargassum growth
> exploded such as it has in the past 2 decades. Of course there were no
> satellites for observing the explosive growth back then, nevertheless we
> would have experienced abundant floating seaweed accumulating on beaches
> such as it has in the past 2 decades.During these recent decades  the
> explosive growth has been building year after year. Now the newest area
> of weed forms a belt stretching from West Africa to the Caribbean and
> beyond and it keeps enlarging. The Amazon and other rivers have often
> been blamed in the past even though it seems difficult for those waters
> to reach West Africa. Let’s see, can we blame ballast water and/or
> cruise ships? Climate Change? Upwelling? Cosmic Rays? There must be
> something out there that affects that region on a yearly basis. Whatever
> it is satellite images indicate it is coming from Africa, especially
> during our summer months. I once read some technical papers that stated
> the Amazon Rain Forrest receives its essential nutrients mainly during
> our winter months. It seems there is a this red/brown powder that
> accumulates on limbs and leaves high up in Amazon forest trees. Because
> of it some limbs even sprout rThat powder has been shown to contain
> essential nutrients. What is it? During our summer months that belt of
> powder moves northward and forms a thin soil over the prevailing
> limestone of Caribbean Islands. Some even reach the Florida Keys and
> Bermuda. It forms a thin hard laminated red/brown crust in the Florida
> Keys that has been forming for several thousand years. That crust
> contains clay minerals not native to the Keys, or Bermuda. We even have
> an agricultural area west of Miami called the Red-lands. I wonder what
> it is and how did it get there?
>
> Of course long-time readers of the list know exactly what I am writing
> about. Just suppose that stuff gets sprinkled on the water forming a
> belt that spans the Atlantic Ocean. I wonder if it might stimulate the
> growth of a floating plant held afloat by small gas filled floats?
>
> Why had it not affected the seaweed, and the corals, or caused red tides
> in the past?  Dr. Joe Prospero, now retired from the U. of Miami Marine
> Lab  monitored
> African dust flux at Barbados starting in 1965. That  monitoring is
> on-going. There was little dust in the past when there was far less
> people/agriculture in the Schell desert of North Africa and less
> pesticides used to control Locusts outbreaks and mosquitoes. There was
> also a hundred-mile-wide lake Chad  there in 1960 that has evaporated
> down to only a few miles wide. It’s exposed lake bed, and whatever had
> accumulated in it, is now blowing across the Atlantic. Need I say more?
>
> After all these years I keep wondering why some organization has not
> studied the situation? We at the USGS monitored and cultured live
> bacteria in the dust and noted the presence of numerous viruses in the
> late 1990s. While the military followed our work, because of bioterror
> implications, there was little interest within our organization. Only
> the US Academy of Environmental medicine appreciated the work because of
> the clear evidence of medical effects on humans, especially on Caribbean
> Islands. Trying to understand why there was so little interest in the
> projectI keep coming back to the fact that no one is  going to make
> money determining if that dust is the cause of coral, and medical
> effects. Who benefits if you can’t stop it? Of course the many thousands
> with respiratory diseases in the Caribbean and Eastern Bahamas might
> benefit but does that put any money in anyone's pocket? And what can be
> done to stop it?  Oh Well, I will continue to watch and wait. I thank
> Doug Fenner for pointing out this latest explosion of Sargassium and
> will wait for his short  reply. Gene
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