Coral Reef News

So long and thanks for all the fish

So, the final, dying embers of the conference to rake over. Dick Dodge kicks things off by saying what a diverse bunch of topics we’ve covered. This symposium has been one of synthesis, he says. Here’s how we’re going to do things over the next couple of hours…

Each Mini-Symposium chair has submitted a report. Nancy Barron is going to explain more.

The goal today, she tells us, is to make this fast food… er, fun. She emailed the idea through to her “victims” and got this from Steve Palumbi. “One,” he replied. “This is an amazing thing to do. Two, this is an impossible thing to do. Since one is more important than two, let’s do it.”

SP gets up and talks about this being the coral reef Olympics. Sure is, Steve.

Oh no. They’ve each got four minutes to explain. Pity me, dear reader…

First, NB talks about how many stories from the conference have been picked up by the press elsewhere. There’s been some good stuff coming out of here. Arghh. NANCY! You’ve done it again. We’ve all got to stand up and take a bow. You won’t get a third chance.

Wow! There’s been some excellent news coverage. Well done guys. We get to listen to John Neilsen’s NPR piece. Top work, as ever. Especially as he wasn’t even here! What a star.

Now for the SuperChairs…

First up, Chuck Birkeland from Hawaii. He was prepared for bad news, but was pleasantly surprised to hear that coral reefs miles from the nearest naked ape are still doing OK. American Samoa has been hit by bleaching, crown of thorns and hurricanes, but is in better shape than ever.

We’re talking philosophy now, Neitsche to be exact. “If it doesn’t kill coral reefs it makes them stronger.” He said something like that after a snorkeling trip to Biscayne Marine Reserve.

Now we’re back to that coal mine canary again. DD apparently said that it’s dead, but we still have time to save the miners. Confusing, isn’t it?

Marea Hatziolos takes the stand. She talks about the “Tragedy of the commons” being played out along the world’s coral reefs – the “race for the last fish”. Communicating the economic plight of the reefs is essential to help managers allocate conservation effort and to assist policy makers to visualize the economic impacts, such as habitat protection.

We need to use more condoms! Where did that come from??? Oh, it’s to keep the population growth rate down (by 2015, half of the world’s population will live in a narrow strip of land by the coast). “Condoms or bust!” is the clarion call. O… K…

Technofixes include coral reef nurseries and the SuperSucker, an underwater vacuum cleaner that can suck algae off coral reefs and clean them up ready for the corals to move in. How cool is that?

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is next up. 99% of what lives in or around a coral cannot be cultured, he says. But that’s changing through better molecular techniques, and we’re starting to better understand the role these little guys play. We’re all hosts to hundreds of microbes, it would seem (some more than others). Eeuww. Ah, but they’re not all bad, and the point is that we need many of them just to get by. Like the ones you get in yoghurt.

One of the Olympic gold medals of the conference he says (meaning one of the major revelations), is that viruses are now associated with corals. And you thought it couldn’t get any worse.

There isn’t a silver bullet with which to shoot the elephant on the reef (climate change). It’s getting tricky with all these euphemisms. We’ll talking about collateral damage before long. The scale of change required to pull us back from the climate change brink is to act definitively within eight years. How do they know that?

Joanie Kleypus is here to tell us about ocean acidification. There has been a real awakening at the conference – largely due to her, one suspects – of the threat it poses. There is now evidence that coral reef calcification rates are decreasing. Ocean acidification reduces the ability of coral larvae to settle. Not all species are hit in the same way, she says. It’s a case of “there goes the neighbourhood,” with the nice species getting killed off and just the icky ones left.

Where water is naturally more acidic (like in the Galapagos islands) they are less well fortified against the impact of further acidification. There are no local fixes, though, and global action is needed to tackle this one.

Steve Palumbi finishes up. Corals make their own sunscreen, he tells us. Neat. His point is that we’re learning more about genetic interactions to tell us more about things like the timing of sexual reproduction. It’s possible that they are communicating to get things exactly right, so that “pillow talk” possibility could inform us about minimum population sizes needed for a reef to survive.

Another Olympics analogy. Seems athletes were running behind buses to acclimate themselves to the air pollution in Beijing. Not a good idea (duh!) but corals are being forced to do just that right now. Let’s hope they fare better. It can’t be easy for a polyp to keep up with a bus. They haven’t got any legs.

Understanding spatial scale (and many interactions are happening at tiny scales) could be a great help. Local human communities can be persuaded much more easily when the problem is perceived at a local scale, he says.

He’s banging the drum good and proper now. Get local people involved, set up victory gardens, showcase success stories. He’s right though.

Scientists are done. Now it’s the journalists. They’re going to grill the boffins.

Tim Radford tells us that coral is amazing, coral scientists are extraordinary (and underfunded, probably). They know the deal, and us journos don’t need to help so much as take notes.

The population explosion is important because “the pool of ignorance is growing faster than the pool of knowledge.” So, scientists, what can YOU do to get the message across? We’re listening, as multiple Frasiers would say.

JK: It’s a political nightmare because you’re talking about people’s reproductive rights.

But isn’t it so that when education improves, birth rates go down?

MH: Female education is at the center of the issue.
SP: Even if the population stabilizes we still have a problem [applause]. Quotes EO Wilson saying that if everyone lived like Americans we’d need four Earths to supply them. And that was when an Earth was a lot of resources.
CB: How about focusing these questions directly to the president?

Isn’t his favorite book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”?

Ken Weiss: Thanks everyone for treating us journos as symbionts, rather than parasites. Appreciate murmer ripples through the rabble.

He wants a (short!) one sentence answer as to shy we should care?

SR: 30% of the world’s coral reefs are being foreclosed on, forcing thousands of species homeless. Sweet as a nut, Steve. And he knows it.
MH: Losing the species on the reef is like losing the color from a VanGogh painting.
OHG: Once they’re gone they’re gone for ever.

I think Steve won that one.

Corinne Podger: Damaged reefs mean lost ability to provide food for many of the world’s poorest families. She says we should all make an effort to offset our carbon emissions when we get back.

Frankly, we should have done it before we got here. See my earlier rant about those silly shuttle buses.

OHG: Five days can’t solve everything, and there’s a lot thinking about outcomes to still do.
MH: We have to form coalitions with powers that be.
CB: He wants to answer the previous question. Well, better late than never. “We don’t inherit our resources from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

Jeff Burnside: He lives nearby, so his carbon footprint is much less. But he’s double parked somewhere. Should have taken the bus. You can find one outside, Jeff, with the engine running, aircon on thermonuclear winter setting, and door open. So the rest of us can enjoy it.

Go to the Society of Environmental Journalists (www.sej.org), he says. Bet most you never realized there was such a thing. Well there is, and you do now.

His editor talks about the price of fish. I hope that’s in response to specific cues, rather than just as a general icebreaker. “Lofty [ideals] doesn’t always win,” he says. So how do we get stories out there?

MH: Coral reef services are worth billions every year. There’s a start.
JK: Get kids in the water so they have an appreciation of live fish rather than fish on the plate. But [turning the tables] how do we stop writing for the sixth grade and get the argument out there for real?

JB: We don’t dumb things down, but simplify.

Open question time…

A guy from NOAH. It’s not just children but elected officials that we need to get in the water.

Let’s face it, they have more power.

Next questioner: we humans don’t care… the next years are critical… ONLY TWO MORE ICRS’s. We should all think how we’re going to modify our work to avoid the disaster. How are the panelists going to do this?

Corinne: You need to be media savvy, and think about how you’re going to communicate with journos and scientists. Find the human angle, and a human to interview who doesn’t say “um” a lot. Local goes national. Think of your Nanna – say human, not anthropomorphic. Unless she’s an astrophysicist.
KW: If we’d persuaded GWB to swim with sharks we’d have the problem sorted. Audience roars. He’s got them eating out of his hand.
TR: Think of a different way to get your message across, then another… We’ll get there in the end.

Someone from Cairo talking about population growth.
TR: The Grauniad won an award for talking about population growth, but no one at the paper could remember writing anything about. He suspects it was simply for talking about it at all.

Audience again. The elephant has been in the room for a long time.

MH: We can’t drop it because it’s fallen off the table.

What? The elephant has fallen off the table. That’s going to hurt.

Marlin Atkinson (surely one of the coolest names ever). He wants the Society to call for large scale atmospheric CO2 sequestration. He thinks there are technological solutions. “Anyone taking oil out of the atmosphere should be taking it out of the atmosphere.”

I’m assuming he means carbon.

He doesn’t really get to ask a question (NB gets to him – he was taking too long) but OHG has a go at answering it anyway. Unfortunately, I completely miss it.

CB: You should be prepared to say things to politicians and the media that you wouldn’t say in a peer-reviewed paper.

The trouble with that is the slight issue of scientific credibility. You can be a back-stabbing lot. I should know.

TR: returns to the issue of climate change skepticism. You make two assumptions: one that the reader is intelligent, the other that he hasn’t got a clue what you’re talking about.

A remarkably robust rule of thumb.
Bloke from the audience gets out and reels of a list of how we can all make a difference.

Someone else stands up and takes responsibility for the elephant in the room! Or at least talking about it a lot. We’re going to find out where you live.

NB moves it on. I think she wants real question.

But she doesn’t get one. She gets a long, heartwarming story about a scheme to take school children to an athol. They all grow up to be marine biologists. Cool.

But now a Real Question, and from a student!

Off he goes. After a short pre-amble (he’s learning), “What can I get high schools to do to make sure reefs are protected in the longer term?”

SP: Get a Facebook thing going.

That was to the point. Facebook can do everything.

NB wraps it up. She has a challenge, for the journalists. I move discreetly to the side of the room. What headline would you use to sum up the conference’s take home message?

JK: Bumper stickers: Either The world is our aquarium, or Reefers vote
OHG: Bury some carbon, save a reef?
SP: Even Dick Cheney thinks coral reef victory gardens will work
TR: What is protected about a MPA if you can…
KW: Population, the undersea mine.
CB: Coral on acid. Just say no.
JB: The plight of the world’s coral reefs is getting more bad news but coral reef experts are meeting in Florida this week to figure out out best to save them.

Apologies for the ones I missed. I was hiding in case we told roped in again. I told you, Nancy.

Nancy sits down. Thanks, that was really well done. Innovation’s the name of the game.

Now the final, final wrapping up bit. Thanks to everyone. We all file out.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading. Apologies for having to ditch the calendar at the last moment, but matters outside our control etc. Still think it was a good idea though. And next time, let’s hope the conference takes it’s own carbon footprint a bit more seriously.

Bon voyage,
Nick

The usual suspects

Tim Radford chairs the session and begins by asking “who’d be a polyp?” He’s got a point. It’s not a great life.

Joanie Kleypas says that ocean acidification is climate change’s “evil twin”. Acidification will cause a slowdown in the building of reef structures and the recruitment of corals. Studies from around the world suggest it’s having a major effect – coral larvae are having a hard time, although not all. Some are actually pretty resilient. There’s going to be winners and losers, but for the coral community the overall picture isn’t good. “There goes the community,” says Joanie.

There isn’t a practical way to solve this “osteoporosis of the reef” (she’s been thinking hard about analogies) until we start to address climate change issues more generally… and seriously.

Steve Palumbi says being a polyp is bad ‘cos you only have sex once a year, but you do get to live forever and make your own sunscreen.

The way that corals respond genetically to changing conditions does offer some hope. Some corals are living in places where we used to think the environment was “too harsh to survive”. Go figure, as he would say. I’m sure he will.

Protecting reefs from sewage, run-off and overfishing – local things, in other words – help reefs to become more resilient to the global stresses they face. So by acting locally we can at least give reef communities the best chance possible against climate change.

Nancy Knowlton takes over. “Dr Doom” (or “Dr Gloom”, I can never remember, the other half of the double act being Jeremy Jackson) as she styles herself, been studying corals for 25 years. She talks about coral taxonomy and the revisions required, but points to the Science paper out this week that calls for one third of coral reef species to be given IUCN protection.

We need to find ways to stop coral reefs from going the way of the dinosaurs, she says. The removal of top predators, for example, has released lesser mortals to unleash untold damage. So by stopping over-fishing – sport fishing in particular – the recruitment of coral larvae and fish species would be helped.

We’ve got to go beyond writing better and better obituaries. Doctors don’t write obituaries, they spend time trying to fix their patients. Nice imagery.

Rich Aronsen wraps up. He points to the protective effects that coral reefs offer in the face of storms. Human fallout will follow the destruction of the reefs. Reefs are only growing up at a fraction of the rate that sea levels are rising – they’re going to be starved of light.

The news isn’t all bad. He points to examples where pristine coral reefs remain and where others are recovering.

At last! We’re fighting our own internal battles over “compassion fatigue”. We need to find a way to really push the positive side of things – corals don’t just look pretty, they protect coastline, feed people.

Tim opens the floor for questions. Shall I ask one? Shall I?

Steve Connor: why don’t corals migrate in the face of warming temperatures?
RA: They do. “But the reef ecosystem as a whole entity isn’t going to go tripping up the Florida coastline”
NK: Coral reefs need suitable alternative places to move to, and the aren’t always available.
SP: Other parts of the planet aren’t empty – we are there.
JK: Ocean acidification increases at higher latitudes, so reef-building might not be possible.

Steve Leahy: Joanie, what’s the magic number for CO2 levels?
JK: Around 3.3 (aragonite saturation, I think. Something neither I, nor the Great Unwashed, will ever understand). It dips down to that at night time as organisms respire CO2. Under acidification that dissolution would happen all the time. So a CO2 level of 450 – 700 ppm, depending on where you are in the world.

Dave Lawrence: How do we get the message across? (Paraphrase)
RA: When we start caring about people’s farms in Iowa, the farmers of Iowa will start caring about coral reefs.
NK: Corals can be viewed as the canary in the coal mine. That canary has passed out on the floor of the cage and we need to start reviving it.
SP: People need to think on a global basis. When we see these things happening

Lady from PR: Isn’t it good that corals are going deeper in response to pressures?
RA: There are reasons other than light why reefs are built in shallow water. It doesn’t relieve me.
NK: I don’t totally agree. Deep water reefs are more protected from human populations than shallow water ones.

Me! It’s me! Little Nick Atkinson, lowly freelancer from the UK: Is the glass half full or empty?
JK: I’d like to talk to those people? [who said it was empty]
RA: There has been a sea change, and we’ve seen it even over this week.
JK: We don’t know quite what to do – we don’t understand these ecosystems as well as we do in terrestrial ones.
RA: Part of a scientist’s job is do disagree with one another. However, we don’t disagree that coral reefs need to be saved.
NK: Ditto. We aren’t deeply divided. As for the US, and the younger generation, things are changing very fast. There are so many environmental issues that people are taking interest in. Young people don’t want to write obituaries. Things could be very different in fifteen years time.

LfPR: Are you going to aggressively to plant coral?
SP: Planting coral is very expensive…
LfPR (interrupts): So?
SP: … well, if it’s expensive you can’t do it over a large area. That’s why we need to have coral reef gardens, areas where the corals can grow themselves.

Tim rescues us all. It was starting to deteriorate. That’s pretty much it from the conference. It’s been wonderful.

Unbreaking the camel’s back

Darwin Medal Lecture: Terry Hughes

OK, so after an involuntarily induced solar radiation based hiatus (sunstroke) break, I’m back. And just in time – it’s the Darwin Medal lecture by the latest recipient, Terry Hughes. I’ll blog it before my kidneys pack in.

As you’ll know, Charles Darwin wasn’t just a bit cluey about how species form. He also knew a thing or two about geology, and brought the two disciplines together in his brilliant work on coral reefs. So this medal is a Big Deal.

Terry gets his gong. Then goes into his thank you speech. It’s just like the Oscars, only shorter and without the tears. Thanks for your consideration Terry.

He seems a little nervous, having counted the number of seats in the Grand Floridian Ballroom. Over two thousand. Wonder whether he counted a sample then scaled up, or whether he counted each and every one…

He’s going to talk about the concept of reef resilience, then the Caribbean Diadema die-off, which he reckons only “old farts” like him remember. Then he’ll wrap up with a bit about reef governance.

Resilience is the “ability of a system to absorb insults or disturbances without flipping into a fundamentally different state”. So, like loads of sub-tropical sunshine either does or doesn’t cause one to spend the next day with a splitting headache and inability to stand up.

Now for the science. Reefs can be either coral dominated or something-else dominated (like algae). “Slow” drivers like overfishing or nutrients can cause the system to flip from one state to another, but only after it’s soaked up a fair amount of abuse.

Feedbacks hold the systems in a stable state until a tipping point is reached. Once a coral reef flips to an algae-dominated state, those feedbacks prevent it from flipping back in the other direction. In other words, degraded systems are also resilient. Uh oh.

We see some depressing before and after photos of the Great Barrier Reef. Terry says that many scientists are skeptical about such anecdotal evidence. It sure gets the message across though.

Back to the science. As disturbances accumulate, it takes an ever-smaller extra disturbance to flip the system. High coral cover doesn’t necessarily mean the reef is resilient.

Example, the Jamaican coral reef. Terry shows some photos of a study site at 35m depth. Over several years the coral all but disappears. At that depth hurricane damage wasn’t an issue – instead it was more likely overfishing, nutrient inputs and climate change.

But there’s evidence that reefs can flip the other way. Taking action to “divert” sewage outflow or set up no take areas that protect herbivores, for example, can lead to positive changes.

Terry shows us one of his Australian experiments, pointing out how Australian parrot fish are “real ones”. He did an enclosure experiment and kept the fish out of a set of large cages. Sure enough the algae soon took over, but when he removed the cages it took only four weeks for those ’specially butch parrot fish to nibble it all back down again to square one.

Take home: we need to understand the dynamics of thresholds, and feedbacks.

Interventions must focus on all the slow drivers – looking at one in isolation won’t do any good. That kind of echoes the earlier stuff from the conference about how multiple impacts need to be studied together.

Similarly, measures of ecosystem status – such as coral cover – are of limited value on their own.

Next a lovely analogy about paddling down a river in a canoe. We know there’s a waterfall somewhere, and to protect the paddlers we need to know things like the current speed and distance to the waterfall. But what we’re doing at the moment is counting the number of people in the canoe! Stupid us. “When that number goes from two to zero, it’s too damn late”. Point made.

So what killed the Caribbean corals? The Diadema die-off in 1983 caused 99% to die in a ten-day period. There were roughly a million spiky urchins for every kilometer of coastline. Devastating. Following that the reef got choked up in green algae.

Since 1983 there has been little sign of a recovery, although they are coming back in some areas. Shallow areas are showing some signs of recovery, but there’s a long way to go. “Bring on Diadema!” Terry says. We should think about moving them around to get things moving quicker.

“There’s lots of bored tourists out there who might like to lend a hand.” Wouldn’t that be great?

Coral reef protect is a question of governance, Terry continues, moving into the final part of the talk. The area covered GBR MPA would be much harder to set up in the Caribbean, where more than ten island states could be involved.

Managing coral reefs isn’t just about ecology and biodiversity: there are also huge economic issues, such as food security for many parts of the world. We have to live in the real world – we can’t set the whole lot aside as a no-take area because people would starve.

Terry makes the point that there is also a flow of stuff from non-no-take areas into no-take areas, something all to often forgotten. Stuff like disease. Bad stuff. But also larvae too. The non-no-take areas tend to be much larger and more numerous, so their effect on NTAs shouldn’t be underestimated. Non-no-take areas need to be co-managed alongside NTAs. “We can’t just let the rest of the seascape go to Hell”.

Bombshell. The GBR is in just the kind of slowly degrading trouble that Terry’s been talking about. Ah, but then he puts up a slide about the recovery of Coral Trout stocks in NTAs within the Marine Park. We all know the study.

How to manage a coral reef for the future:

Scale up management efforts, learn from elsewhere.
Rezone with the aim of maintaining ecological function and resilience
Introduce new fishing regulations
Reduce nutrient and sediment run-off, improve water quality.

These approaches are forward-looking.

A fast-tracked paper has now appeared on PNAS online to coincide with this talk. Look it up! Click here to find it.

Finally, reefs are threatened but not doomed if we can avoid extreme climate change. That, run-off and overfishing have be sorted out. Local and global actions are needed. Prevention is better than cure. The planet won’t look like it did 100 years ago. We need to plan for the future.

Terry ends up with a message that we need to underline the notion that coral reefs aren’t doomed. Yay! Don’t write them off – it’s not too late to save them! TAKE THAT ONE HOME.

Nuclear fishin’

Who would have thought it a Good Thing to put a nuclear power station on the shore of a Marine Protected Area? The argument runs that because it’s such a dangerous place, people aren’t allowed to build houses next to it. So there’s less human pressure on the coral reef next door.

That’s the somewhat contradictory story of the Biscayne National Park, where a bunch of journalists headed out to see the reef up close and personal. The story isn’t quite so simple, of course, as our visit taught us. Apart from nuclear fuel, the power plant burns coal. The tanker that delivers it has a nasty habit of running aground. Just as long as it doesn’t hit the signposts…

This was a day of two halves for me. On the one hand was revelation after revelation about how many things were deemed to be acceptable in a supposedly protected area. This highlighted the problems faced by marine biologists here in restoring coral reef ecosystems. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Not by a long way…

Having tooled up with flippers, snorkels, masks and life jackets, we were shepherded aboard our boat. It took a long time to back out of the quay, but once away we roared off up the manatee channel (at a sea-cow friendly 5mph). No sign of ‘em though. They’re perhaps bored with having to swim unceasingly up and down the same channel.

After what seemed like a lifetime, and for some undersea creatures probably is, we arrived at the first patch of coral. After a short flight hostess safety talk, we stepped off into the Blue. Ahhh. Now this is living. Curious thing, marine biology. You guys work somewhere that the rest of the world has to take holiday to go to, but your findings are, by and large, depressing stuff.

Below the surface the sea teemed with life. Well, maybe that’s going a bit too far. There were lots of corals and lots of stuff going on among them, but it wasn’t exactly the opening scene out of Finding Nemo. The dangers of Disneyfication!

We splashed around happily with varying degrees of grace for the allotted thirty minutes, before it was time to climb aboard once more and head off for the next destination. Oh, dry land. It’s lunch time. Some of the “crew” had trouble resisting the resident raccoon, who by his sheer audacity signaled he knew that was going to be the case. He didn’t have too much luck though, and his mangy appearance signaled that he was expecting as much. Being a raccoon seems to be one of Life’s Thankless Tasks.

Lunch over, it was time to get to the next snorkeling site, this time a ship wreck from the early 1800s. Yours truly completely failed to make the connection, but in my defense that was because I was enjoying the amazing underwater world I was seeing. There was a full size stingray, someone saw a nurse shark, and a whole host of other fishy things going on among the beautiful coral garden.

There you go. Conversion point. Once you’ve seen it up close, you know there’s no question about acting to save it. I’m hooked. Job done, SeaWeb. I’m not alone. Here’s Steve Connor of The Independent.

I was being unfair. The poor guy had only just got out of the water. It has to be said though, the sense of bewilderment was palpable. That was my interviewing technique…

Next, it’s back in the boat. The SCUBA guys kept putting their cameras in the water. We’re not allowed to go anywhere near the bucket. We return to the jetty where we had lunch, to be surprised by the revelation that it doubles up as a coral nursery. Whenever pieces of coral can be rescued – after the weekly groundings of the coal tanker I guess – they are picked up and carefully allowed to recover. Then they’re sliced up into as many pieces as possible. Each slice is fitted with an RFID tag – a tiny gizmo that allows each lump of coral to be identified with a scanner – then stuck onto a plastic peg. Each of these coral peglets is stuffed into a hole drilled on some hefty timbers submerged a few feet below our picnic jetty.

We get to go in the water to look. There are squeals of excitement: someone has spotted a barracuda! There’s safety in numbers, right? The barracuda won’t get me for exactly the same reason I never win the lottery. Oh no, that’s because I don’t play the lottery. Argh! The barracuda is going to get me because I don’t play the lottery!

The coral nursery is a great symbol of hope. They may be hopelessly slow growing, but at least these ones can grow up in peace. Once they hit adolescence though, it’s off to the big bad reef. Good luck, little corals!

A great day. Many, many thanks to all those involved in organizing it. I think everyone learned things in an instant that couldn’t be learned in a month of lectures. Here’s the Guardian’s Tim Radford – who had a little more time to think about it – on what he learned… once again, please excuse the appalling interview technique. I’m learning.

Busman’s holiday

Well, not quite. Us SeaWeb lot are off of to go splashing around in the sea today, on our field trip to the Biscayne National Park. Keep those little grey cells ticking over while I’m gone, dear reader. To make sure you do, here’s a challenge – a thought experiment – laid down by Steve Palumbi. For those who are brave enough, why not leave an answer in the comments section below…

The Big Fight, Live!

It’s the event we’ve all been waiting for, SeaWeb’s journalists vs. scientists bloodfest, endearingly entitled…

Can this relationship be saved? If the intros are anything to go by, it’s touch and go.

We hear that Ken Weiss has just won a Pullitzer prize. Beat that, boffins…

There’s plenty of humor on both sides… for now

We start with “True Confessions… Coming out of the Ivory Tower”. A plethora of scientists explain on camera how they got their fingers, and in some cases toes, truly toasted by the press. And not in a good, drink-laden way.

Nancy kicks in. Scientists and journalists have lots in common, she tells us. We almost believe her. Scientists are obsessive compulsives, journalists have ADD. But that’s a difference. Ah, but we all like to stay up late and drink.

Here we go: in common, a thirst for knowledge. Driving us apart, the desire to communicate.

Scientists thrive in a world of uncertainty, journalists need definite statements. In short, scientists are rational, journalists are emotional.

“Scientists”, Nancy says, don’t think about your peers. Think about the bigger world, who you want to care about your passion. Go on, you know it makes sense.

Scientists’ perceptions of journos are pretty negative, but justifiably. Journos are equally scathing of scientists. So far, we’ve established that we don’t trust each other. That’s not a good start, but not entirely unexpected.

Finally, we go to the panel. The guy from Maine asks “how do you cope with being bored?”. Tim Radford jumps on it. It’s a challenge he relishes.

Andrew Scientist loves it when he’s asked if there’s anything he’d like to retract. Hmm. Nice idea. Might try that one.

Fiji Journo loves it when scientists let him do his job. “Because I can’t do their’s” he says. The audience laughs.

DanSci loves it, period. He tells a long anecdote about how he sussed that a journo who was interviewing him was an English major. But no one’s sure why. Funny though.

PeteSci from the UK loves it when he gets feedback from journos.

SteveHack loves it when scientists make themselves available. Robert Winston took his call when he was skiing down a mountain, it would seem. It’s a tough life juggling the twin demands of being a leading IVF expert (pardon the pun) and a Born Again Christian. Sometimes only a weekend retreat to Val d’Isere will do.

TimHack isn’t too keen when scientists aren’t spontaneous.

MaineSci likes it when hacks do their homework.

A pattern is emerging here. There’s lots of things we love about each other.

PullizerKen likes snappy headlines. Summing it up in a catchy way. You know who you are.

ChristinaHack likes field trips — “The shield on the armour comes down” and that’s when we really get to know what the scientist is up to.

DonovanHost says it’s all getting too cosy. He wanders into the crowd and hands the mic to Jeremy Jackson. He wants to know whether journos feel trapped by the pressures they’re under: the need to find opposing opinions etc.

Question from the rabble: should journos make sure the “expert” they’re talking to is actually an expert in the thing they’re talking about. TimHack responds. He tried to write non-controversial headlines once. Didn’t get ‘im far. We don’t want a sermonizing press, he says.

Next question: preamble about scientists not having time to “waste” talking to journos when there are papers to write, grants to submit, blah blah.

NancySci says, maybe, decades ago. She rightly points to the kudos (hate that word, but in a hurry) that’s now attached to activity in the popular press.

The Rabble again: to the scientists, is accuracy of statement more important than the underlying message? DanSci tackles that one. The need for accurate information is greater than ever, he says. We shouldn’t make inaccurate or exaggerated claims, he says. I’m guessing he thinks there’s plenty of other people to do that.

Rabble: What makes a good story?
ChristinaHack: what’s the human dimension? Why is the scientist interested in that particular thing?
Donovan: And for TV, it’s got to be visual.

Well, yes. Otherwise it’s radio.

RabbleFromVenezuela: You journalists are my heroes.
(Being a journalist in Venezuala is not exactly a safe occupation) We thank you. The feeling is mutual.

How do the boffins feel about being made the focus of the story? Cautionary tale from PaulSci, who apparently got into a muddle about parrot fish pornography just recently. The mind boggles.

JJSci: Why do we have to treat readers like idiots?
(I’m paraphrasing, but you get the drift)

PullizerHack: Because they are. (See disclaimer above)
‘Nuff said though. There is a serious point, but you’ll have to think about it.

We’re talking about Paris Hilton now. She gets around.

TimHack paints an Aladdinesque view of things, saying that the press is hostage to popular opinion. He’s right, you know.

Rabble: In the past it used to be a bit distasteful for scientists to talk to the press. Now it’s all the rage.

MaineSci points to the impact Jacques Cousteau managed to have. It wasn’t by writing papers. It was by wearing small swimming costumes and bobbing around in even smaller submersibles.

Wow. DanSci has a Hippocratic oath for the oceans, according to Nancy. He denies it, but goes on to explain that actually he does subscribe to something along those lines.

Rabble: How do we start a relationship with you journalists?

TimHack: Gently.
SteveHack: By jumping in and doing it yourself.

Oh no! We hacks in the audience have just been told to stand up and identify ourselves. Nowhere to hide now… that was a low blow, Nancy.

Rabble: long question about time lag between a story happening and it being broken.
TimHack sympathizes. As do we all.

RabbleHack: extraordinarily long preamble. I’m seriously worried about the battery on my lappy…

…nope. Still no sign of a question. Or even an anecdote…

Time passes.

… Still waiting. Now she’s answering other people’s questions. She’s supposed to be asking them…

Zzz.

Phew. Nancy rescues us! She appears to be wrapping it up. Must be looking forward to a glass of wine.

Come on, Nancy. Oh, she’s talking about hacks losing their jobs. Ah, it’s a PR thing. Any jobs going at University press offices?

Summing up time. Where are the drinks, DonovanHack asks. His real name is Jeff.

Hacks: Don’t work in a vacuum. Talk to us. We’re the only way you can communicate with the real world.
TimHack doesn’t pass up an opportunity to bash Margaret Thatcher. Sweet.
ChristinaHack wants to know if anyone has anything they want to retract. Rabble laughs appreciatively.

Boffins: MainePaul starts talking a bit jargony. Don’t spoil things now, Paul. He goes on a bit, but finishes by talking about being honest but not depressing. Sort of picked the wrong career, me ol’ marine biologist matey.

GuyInGreenShirt (who hasn’t said a word so far) suddenly has loads to say. It’s flooding out. Let the hacks tell the story! They’re good at it!
Thanks, GIGS.

DanSci gives us a bit of a sermon, but it’s well meaning and gets a round of applause. Time for a beer, guys.

OK, we’re done here. It’s a draw. I reckon we’ve all Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Each Other. At least for now.

Ladies and Gentlemen, good night. PS. this blog entry was written in a single take and posted without being edited. Please don’t hate me. At the least this demonstrates why we need editors.

Coral reef fisheries – what’s the catch?

Seems we haven’t got a scooby about how many fish we’re hauling out of the sea every year. One study that’s attempted to fill that particular black hole was reported this morning in the press room. Dan Pauly, Dirk Zeller, Jennifer Jacquet and Alan Friedlander faced the music, and sang like birds.

DP sets the tone. Data on coral reef fisheries catches are thin on the ground, so to speak. Although the big commercial fisheries do submit some figures, it’s the missing ones – Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns” – that are causing the headache.

Recreational fishing, inshore fishing (within three mile of shore), small scale fisheries – which comprise the majority of landings on a global basis – illegal catches (duh! I’m instantly reminded of Tony Blair’s efforts to quantify the number of illegal UK immigrants) and, perhaps saddest of all, bycatch are all seriously under reported, he says.

Next up, Pauly’s UBC colleague DZ. He tells us how the amount of fish taken through recreational fishing is hugely underestimated. Regarding artisanal fisheries, the data problem is being made worse through high fuel prices, which are pricing the larger commercial fisheries out of business, but not affecting the little guys in their dugouts. The disparity between what we know and what we don’t is increasing, and that’s Not A Good Thing.

JJ adds further fuel to the fire. Apparently we only know about the fish caught by the men! The fishing that puts food on the table is often done by women and children. And it goes unrecorded.

In Mozambique, a country with a long coastline and a longer history of trouble, the official statistics would have us believe that the average person eats just three kilos of fish a year. Compare that with the global average (known known, or is that known unknown?) of 16 KG and a sub-Saharan average of 8 KG. It’s not difficult to imagine that something doesn’t add up.

This has potentially dramatic consequences for fish populations: Mozambique and Tanzania are in the process of negotiating shrimp-fishing deals with EU countries, reckoning on having fish to spare. But they haven’t. “It’s the antithesis of the Robin Hood story,” Jacquet says. “They’re robbing the poor to give to the rich.”

And how sad is the bycatch factor? Under the agreements, JJ continues, EU shrimp fishers were obliged to offer their bycatch for sale to local fishermen. She recounted the sorry tale of how one such hopeful paddled his boat out to the side of the trawler, whereupon so many fish were dumped onto the deck that it sank. Point well made.

The Guardian’s Tim Radford was in the crowd. “How long have these reefs got?” he asked the panel.

“The catastrophe has already happened,” DP replied. “It’s like when someone falls off the 14th floor and at the 2nd floor says ’so far so good’.” Ouch.

“So what should be done?” Radford doggedly persisted.

“We have to deal with small scale fisheries not as a side issue but as the main topic,” said DP. They will be the ones that best survive high fuel prices, but current monitoring systems aren’t equipped to deal with them because they’ve always been regarded as a minor issue.

Only time will tell.

Joined up thinking

So, [almost] live from PlenaryWatch this afternoon, and we’re here to see what Bob Cowen has to say about “population connectivity in coral reef systems”.

Connectivity research has increased dramatically of late – over 60 oral and 80 poster presentations are being given here alone. But what’s it all about?

For most marine organisms, we’re talking about larval stages – the grown-ups tend to stay at home. Population connectivity is the main driver of population and community dynamics. Exchange of DNA between areas affects the degree of genetic isolation between populations. Exotic species spread more easily through well-connected areas, as do diseases. Connectivity is a Big Deal.

Bob talks for a while about how the level of connectivity affects how well connected areas are…

Larval supply is driven by egg production, larval avoidance of things that want to eat them, movements – either through swimming or drifting, or both – and the availability of suitable habitat in which to settle.

The scientific understanding of connectivity has to feed into the management side of things to be any use. Bob’s going to concentrate on the sciencey bit, though.

From an evolutionary perspective, he points out, only a few individuals need to be swapped around per generation. But from an ecological point of view, it might be necessary to be replacing a large portion of the population every generation (if, say, it’s under serious fishing pressure). Those are very different things.

Oooh! Virtual larvae! Off they go, swimming through the silicon sea in Bob’s model of the world. Of 10000 larvae, only 28 are left after 30 days! And most of them are nowhere near suitable habitat in which to settle. Life is indeed miraculous, dear reader. Thank goodness it was all made up in a computer.

Ocean currents are really complicated. Bob puts up a batch of slides showing just how unpredictable they are. Although there are general trends there is a ton of variation, making it difficult to understand exactly how connected areas really are. The images really are impressive. They show how even the most complicated models of current patterns are simplifying the message. In reality things are a lot swirlier than that.

The complexity of these oceanic currents doesn’t bode well for the larvae of the future. Survivorship depends on larval condition, which in turn is affected by things like food availability. Climate change impacts could easily affect the condition of larvae, making it less likely they survive even if they do make it as far as settling somewhere. You’ve got to pity those little fellas, cast adrift at such a young age. But then life’s tough for us all.

Science over, we’re talking management and conservation. From that perspective, models of larval dispersal are important because they can help make clear whether the “problem” (of providing sufficiently well-connected fragments of habitat) is a national or an international one. Many of the areas most affected are island nations, with accompanying social and political issues. At least when connectivity is constrained to a single nation’s coastline there’s half a chance people will work together to do something about it.

Oops, spoke too soon. More science. But this is really cool! Meet the In Situ Icythological Image Scanner. It’s like a… photocopier for fish! Here’s Bob explaining it after the talk…

To sum up, Bob tells us that the ocean is not “average”. In other words, all those charts we’ve been looking at for years and thinking they told us something, don’t. Second, most larvae have a remarkable ability to get where they want to. Third, ecologically relevant dispersal distances are surprisingly small, in the order of tens to hundreds of kilometres. That’s actually a good thing from a management perspective. Finally, there are promising tools being developed to resolve the “larval black box”. We’ve got to know exactly what species are swirling around in those complicated ocean currents.

The bleach boy

Here be monsters, says Roberto Iglesias-Prieto in this morning’s Plenary session. No, he hasn’t been at sea for too long, he’s talking about the symbiotic nature of corals. Most people think that corals are just rocks, and most of the rest think they’re either a plant or an animal. Of course, we know better, don’t we?

Corals depend on photosynthesis, he reminds us. The “most forgotten protein on the coral reef” is acpPC, which contains among other things, chlorophylls a and b. Poor acpPC. But at least Roberto hasn’t forgotten about it.

Light harvesting by corals is a tricky process. All light reaching the photosynthesizing symbionts is mediated through the host, either through the action of proteins affecting the nature of the light, or through the skeletal structure itself. That’s got to make things tough, right?

Nah. Here’s the good bit. It turns out that symbionts are better at photosynthesizing inside the coral than outside it. The reason lies in the light scattering properties of the coral surface. When you blam a coral with a laser, you get this:

Cool. Corals are very very good at harvesting light. So…?

Ah, photobleaching. A slide about the amount of CO2 us nasty humans have kicked up into the sky (and sea). And it’s not just how much, but how fast…

We’ve created a CO2 spike comparable with that during an interglacial, only on a timescale orders of magnitude faster. That of course means warming. And Roberto tells us that corals interpret thermal stress as light stress: as the temperature rises the maximum rate of photosynthesis is reduced. Even though the amount of light absorbed by the coral is the same, the rate of photosynthesis is lowered. Only one thing to say about that. Groooooo.

Corals are very good at harvesting light, as we’ve said. That’s great while the conditions are right, but photosynthesis is a bruising process. Normally the mechanism is able to recover during the full 24 hour period, so that by the time things kick off the next day all is well once again.

Too much light (or heat) is not a good thing though, and the photosynthetic process goes into overdrive.

That means it can’t recover fast enough, and a baaaad feedback cycle is kicked into action. Thermal stress leads to light stress. If the coral can’t recover from that, it suffers oxidative stress. If it can’t recover from that, the cell dies.

Next up, Roberto scares us with his “nightmare without monsters” — a figure showing how thermal and CO2 concentration changes can wipe corals out. But then something even more sobering: a graph pointing out that although we are currently faced with a range of choices about how we can react to the threat, taking even the most radical course of action might not help. It’s all to do with how long marine biologists live, apparently.

Sobering stuff, as ever.

Why we love supermodels

Monday’s highlight

The trouble with variables is that they’re so, well, variable. The trouble with the real world is that it’s full of variables. Scientists have spent decades refining ways of peeling back the layers, stripping a system down to its bare minimum. Doing so allows them to find out what makes something tick. But that’s all changing now.

Synergy is an oft-heard term at this year’s conference. Small impacts from different sources combine to create a whammy that no simple model could predict. The problem in trying to take this into account is that by increasing their complexity, models can become so complicated as to be meaningless…

Synergistic effects have the unfortunate characteristic that they rarely work against each other. Multiple insults don’t cancel each other out. Rather, it’s more like dealing with a sustained rain of blows: even if getting hit by a left would straighten you out after taking a right, the chances that you would be happy with your lot are slim.

For corals, the ecological blows are so different that it’s less like being hit by a left-right combination than being pummeled and then set on fire.

Coral reef scientists face a dilemma. Keep plugging away with those single variable, nicely predictive models, or live in the real world. If the Great Unwashed are believe the science, and they must if coral reef conservation is to succeed, they have to be fed data that reflect the same coral reefs they snorkel, fish and dredge amongst. For the scientists, that perhaps means going against the grain and building models and experimental systems capable of exploring the effects of more than one variable.

Within the conference climate change symposium, voices for this multivariate approach are being heard.

Josh Madin’s study of water velocity and acidification is a case in point. Increased water acidity affects the strength of coral structures, making them vulnerable to the impact of the more frequent storm lashings predicted by the latest climate change models.

He started with a simple model of how storm surges affect the structure of coral formations, comparing lumpy, middling and big branchy forms. Unsurprisingly, more elaborate forms were more susceptible to the weather, suffering devastating levels of damage with each passing hurricane. However, when acidification was factored in to the mathematical model – no flimsy simulations here, it’s pure maths analysis – the already weakened skeletons went on to become… dead skeletons.

The real world isn’t simple. Nor should models of coral reef survival be. They don’t face stresses in isolation, and it’s becoming clear that we won’t understand how they will deal with multiple stresses until we start modeling them.

Talks throughout the session in which Josh talked have given an inspiring preview of the way things can be. By moving the maths out into the real world, we stand a chance of holding onto it.

Written with SeaWeb’s Christian Reilly