Coral Reef News

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.