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

[Austin Bowden-Kerby]

Doug,   The so-called "recovery" of the unpopulated Southern Line Island
reefs is not recovery of the original coral populations- it is a completely
different species mix, dominated by a single species of Montipora, with the
local extinction of multiple Acropora species.  There is nothing much to
celebrate there, except the fact that the species that dominates happens to
be a plating species, with small spaces between the plates that
provides good habitat for small fish.  For Tarawa Atoll, however, where
recovery has resulted in single species dominance by Porites rus, the small
fish do not have good habitat.  And so the bleaching-driven collapse of
coral reefs is happening as phase shifts which then become locked in.

These phase shifts are undetected by GCRMN, as coral cover measurements
mask the collapse of the original coral populations.  This situation makes
me feel that we are lost.  The same with reporting % bleaching, each genus
must be reported separately, as Porites and Montipora are incredibly
resilient, and so a bleaching that kills off Acropora may be considered a
minor event, when it may be a local extinction event for dozens of coral
species.  And no coral can adequately replace Acropora as far as fine
branched fish habitat, and no coral can do what Acropora has done for us
geologically in the region.

Vinaka,

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
TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRLJ8zDm0U
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/






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On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 3:37 PM Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Alina,
>      The people on the remote Pacific islands have had impacts from the
> time they arrived, but in time they worked out systems of survival.  After
> 3000 years on tiny chips of land, they had to be sustainable or they would
> be dead.  By the very definition of sustainable, they were sustainable.
> The outsiders wrote that people were living in a tropical paradise.  I
> strongly suspect it was no garden of Eden.  People had to work or they
> would have nothing to eat.  People fought over land, maybe quite
> frequently.  Some risked their lives to try to find other, uninhabited
> islands, and when they did, they left taking their families.  Would be
> interesting to have anthropologists tell us how they managed it, in
> particularly how did human population not grow to become unsustainable?
> Sky high infant mortality?  Periodic starvation periods?  Wars?  It may
> have been a more Malthusian situation than we realize.  Something had to
> give.
>        The contact with the outside has changed many things in these
> societies as well as nearly everywhere else on the planet.
>         You are right of course about human societies being highly
> variable.  In fact, I don't know a single big city on the planet that can
> feed itself.  They are all highly dependent on rural farming areas.  On the
> other hand, people in rural farming areas today, depend on factories in
> more urban areas, for much of what they have and would not want to live
> without.  Essentially NOBODY could live the way they do now, without other
> people in other places doing, making, creating, and on and on, a myriad of
> things.  Our lives are all connected.  "No man is an island" is truer now
> than ever before.  No one is sustainable without other people, at least
> living the way we do now.  And who is willing to go back to living in caves
> and making stone tools??  And we don't have to.
>          My understanding is that scholars now have pretty much
> abandonded the use of the term "carrying capacity" because it is so hard to
> define.  I suspect that instead of having a hard, very sharply defined
> ceiling, it is more likely that with increasing population, there are
> increasing problems and that there are increasing advantages for reducing
> population.  Malthusian theory predicted that when population exceeded the
> food supply, there would be a catastrophe.  Those who adhered to it ignored
> the fact that continuing inventions and improvements have increased food
> supplies faster than the population has grown.  And while there have been
> famines at various places and various times, in recent years, if anything,
> more people are well fed on earth than ever before.  That does not imply
> that resources are infinite, clearly they aren't.  But the doomsayers have
> been proven wrong again and again, Ehrlich predicted one time when he said
> the world would collapse due to population, it didn't, he predicted a later
> date, and it didn't that time either, still hasn't.
>        There are many arguments over what constitutes "carrying
> capacity."  People can survive in situations that people in developed
> countries would find incredibly intolerable.
>         Different people define "resilient" in different ways.  Some say
> it means recovery from disturbance, others say it means both the ability to
> withstand disturbance and the ability to recover from it.  I think those
> are two very different processes, and whatever we call them, they should be
> distinguished.  I think the data at this point indicates that having what
> we think is a healthy reef has little or no effect on the size of a mass
> bleaching event.  However, there are some lines of evidence that point to
> healthy reefs being able to recover better.  Among the stronger lines is
> the fact that north shore Jamaica reefs have not recovered in 40 years, but
> those very remote southern Line Is reefs (which we saw the video of a while
> back) recovered amazingly well, at least the coral cover.  On the other
> hand, I have a vague memory that there have been studies that failed to
> find that healthier reefs recovered more rapidly from disturbance, maybe
> someone can refresh our memory of those.
>         Cheers, Doug
>
> On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 11:12 AM Alina Szmant <alina at cisme-instruments.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Austin:
>>
>>
>>
>> The Earth is a patchwork of different ecosystem types, different levels
>> of human and natural impact, and different lifestyles and sources of
>> livelihood. By your own description, the Pacific Is you describe are
>> overpopulated because there are more people living on them than the land
>> mass they live on and surrounding fishing grounds can sustain - without
>> importing resources from outside their islands (which they don’t have the $
>> for or goods to trade for money to buy non-local goods). That is exactly
>> the definition of exceeding their island’s carrying capacity. The condition
>> of their local coral reefs may be degraded because of bleaching but you
>> also listed overfishing as a cause. Non-overfished reefs tend to have more
>> climate resilience than fished reefs (stories told to be by Chuck Birkeland
>> decades ago).
>>
>>
>>
>> There are many other places on Earth where human communities can only
>> persist if there is import of food and goods from outside (e.g. Collapse by
>> Jared Diamond was all about this), and these are also places that are above
>> carrying capacity. Many of the Caribbean island have populations too large
>> for their land masses to support and only survive because ships and
>> airplanes bring resources to them (including tourists with their $$$). In
>> ‘Collapse’ Diamond recounts what happened in early Greenland days when
>> human populations grew more that what could be supported by the land and
>> sea, and then died out because they had no trade with Iceland or Europe. So
>> this is nothing new. There are many other examples in the book about humans
>> outgrowing their resources and their populations collapsing (hench the
>> title of the book) and they are mostly pre-industrial.
>>
>>
>>
>> Do I feel really bad for the people living on these Pacific islands right
>> now? Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean that I think that everyone
>> should start sending them more and more food so that their populations
>> increase further and they trend further into calorie debt.
>>
>>
>>
>> Carrying capacity is integral to the concept of overpopulation… in fact
>> by definition! Whether it be people or lemmings or wolves and deer. In
>> today’s world, people decry that one part of the world is not saving
>> another part of the world from hunger or whatever, and colonialism is
>> blamed for the state of affairs of these poor nations, because they were
>> taken advantage of by European colonial powers over the past few centuries.
>> But internal corruption and poor self-governance  is usually the biggest
>> problem most poor countries face NOW, and it’s almost impossible to fix
>> these issues from outside. Take the sad case of Haiti where billions have
>> been spent to try to fix what is basically a failed state with thugs
>> overrunning the country. Venezuela is another example and this one is not a
>> poor country just a corrupt one and you can’t blame Spain for this one.
>> Mexico is headed that way even though it has highly educated people who
>> could try to turn the country around.
>>
>>
>>
>> I just watched an interesting (but too violent for me) movie titled The
>> Woman King about the Kingdom of Dahomey back in the 18th and 19th
>> centuries, when African nations were quite complicit in the slave trade
>> because their kings were making lots of money helping European slave
>> traders capture (in fact they did the capturing for the Europeans) people
>> from competing tribes, a type of symbiosis if you will.
>>
>>
>>
>> Humans for the most part (as a species) are nasty animals and have always
>> been since we evolved from whichever hominid preceded us.
>>
>>
>>
>> To end my missive, yes globalization is impacting all corners of the
>> Earth and much to the detriment of some places and their inhabitants more
>> than other and often not because of anything dramatic they are doing (e.g.
>> low C footprint). The current ‘woke’ tendency is to try to blame all these
>> global woes on a small number (ca. 2,750 people worldwide) of super
>> billionaires for all the ills of the world. However, all the rest of us 8
>> billion people share the blame every day we live and breathe.
>>
>>
>>
>> Alina
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *************************************************************************
>>
>> 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 <(910)%20200-3913>
>>
>> EMAIL: alina at cisme-instruments.com
>>
>>
>>
>> CISME IS NOW SOLD BY QUBIT SYSTEMS; https://qubitbiology.com/cisme/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Austin Bowden-Kerby <abowdenkerby at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Friday, March 17, 2023 3:49 PM
>> *To:* Alina Szmant <alina at cisme-instruments.com>
>> *Cc:* Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>;
>> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> *Subject:* Re: [Coral-List] Coral reef health over time vs human
>> population trends
>>
>>
>>
>> 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 <(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
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>> 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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