[Coral-List] Coral reef health over time vs human population trends
Douglas Fenner
douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Sat Mar 18 03:08:16 UTC 2023
Austin,
Thank you for this. I would add that American Samoa is the lowest
level economy in the entire US system, it is poorer than Mississippi (long
the poorest US state), and Puerto Rico and every other state and
territory. Yet, I'm pretty sure that it is richer (due to US federal govt
programs every state and territory in the US gets) than everywhere else in
the Pacific except for the other US areas and New Caledonia (which has
significant deposits of nickel and is in the French system). The GDP
(Gross Domestic Product) per person in American Samoa was about $6000 a
year, last I looked, which is about the median for the whole world (and
that's not personal income, only part of it is personal income). And
without boring you with details, there are almost no resources here, you
can't sell ocean water or volcanic rock, our most abundant resources. Just
10 sq miles of nearly flat land. Situated near the center of an ocean that
covers 40% of the entire planet, nearest big university library as far as
London is from New York.
Yet American Samoa has mostly high islands, as does Fiji and some
other Pacific countries. But some are atolls, which are even more
resource-poor. They have nothing above water but sand, and no natural
running water. There is usually a freshwater "lens" in the sand, floating
on top of the saltwater that is in the sand. Has some salt in it, and gets
anything that goes onto the ground into it as well. If there are people
around, you wouldn't want to drink it There is essentially NO soil, it is
sand with little else in it. People learned how to survive there.
The disparity in incomes drives the movement of people all over the
planet, to get better lives. Within countries, it has long been expressed
as urbanization, the move to cities for more jobs and services. In the
Pacific, people have been and will continue to, probably at increasing
rates, move to developed countries if they can. People in US-associated
areas move to Hawaii or the US mainland. There are more Samoans in Carson,
California (near LA) than in American Samoa, and there are lots in Hawaii
and most west coast cities. People in New Zealand-associated areas of the
Pacific move there. There are now over 9000 people in New Zealand from the
tiny island nation of "Niue" south of American Samoa, and only about 1500
left in Niue. In American Samoa, the smallest island that used to be
inhabited is 2 miles in diameter and used to have 150 people. now it has
zero. The next 3 islands up in size have lost half their population and
now all the chiefs from there live on the largest island. The population
on the largest island (which has almost all the jobs and services, and
where I and over 90% of all the people live) has long been growing. Then
the 2010 census reported that the territory had lost population, down by
5000 people. Most people didn't believe it. But in 2020 the next census
found that it had lost another 5000 people. This is typical of many places
in the Pacific. The reason I'm pointing this out to you is that this may
(may) lead to the lessening of population pressure on local resources, such
as fishing. In terms of local threats, this could be in coral reefs'
favor. Of course, global warming, El Nino, heat waves, and bleaching pay
little if any attention to how many people live there, and the people of
the Pacific caused a very minute fraction of the emissions that are driving
global warming that is destroying their coral.
Yes, fishing pressure in developing countries is for food to keep
people alive. It varies in intensity, but nearly everywhere there are
people, the largest reef fish species are heavily overfished, that is their
stocks are well below MSY (Maximum Sustainable Yield). On the other hand,
most fish species on coral reefs are too small to eat, the largest families
of reef fish are gobies, blennies, damsels, cardinalfish and wrasses. They
are too small, not fished, and so not overfished. The pressure on fish
depends on their size, for two reasons. First, the larger the fish is, the
more it takes to feed them, and the ecosystem can't support as many large
individuals as small individuals. Second, the payoff, whether it is in the
number of people that can be fed or in the money they can be sold for,
increases with fish size. Fishermen are not dumb, and they respond to
incentives like everybody else. The net effect is the biggest fish are the
first to go, the hardest hit.
Those are fisheries in developing countries. In Florida, there is a
2 day recreational fishing season for lobster, before the commercial
season. Every year, about 50,000 divers descend on Florida and in 2 days
remove about 80-90% of all the lobsters. Coral reef fisheries in developed
countries are mainly viewed as recreational. In Hawaii, there is also a
segment of the fishing population who are not the rich outsiders that come
and buy everything up and just play at fishing for fun, but who struggle in
that expensive place, where they grew up, to put food on the table, and
fish for that reason. So fishing on coral reefs can be very intensive in
developed countries just as it is in developing countries.
Cheers, Doug
On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 8:49 AM Austin Bowden-Kerby <abowdenkerby at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 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
>> AAUS Scientific Diving Lifetime Achievement Awardee
>> cell: 910-200-3913<tel:(910)%20200-3913>
>> EMAIL: alina at cisme-instruments.com<mailto:alina at cisme-instruments.com>
>>
>> CISME IS NOW SOLD BY QUBIT SYSTEMS; https://qubitbiology.com/cisme/
>>
>>
>> **********************************************************
>> Videos: CISME Promotional Video 5:43 min
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAYeR9qX71A&t=6s
>> CISME Short version Demo Video 3:00 min
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa4SqS7yC08
>> CISME Cucalorus 10x10 Sketch 4:03 min
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12sAV8oUluE
>>
>>
>> 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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