A new report spotlights a U.N. estimate that at least 275 million people rely on healthy coral reefs. A sea turtle near the Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef is seen above. THE OCEAN AGENCY / XL CATLIN SEAVIEW SURVEY
In a new report about how the world's coral reefs face "the combined threats of climate change, pollution, and overfishing" — endangering the future of marine biodiversity — a London-based nonprofit calls for greater global efforts to end the climate crisis and ensure the survival of these vital underwater ecosystems.
<p>The report, entitled <a href="https://ejfoundation.org/resources/downloads/EJF-Report-Coral-Reefs.pdf" target="_blank"><em>Marine Havens Under Threat: The impacts of the climate crisis on tropical coral reefs and the communities that rely on them</em></a>, was published Wednesday by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF).</p>
<p>EJF warns that because of <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/13/humanitys-destruction-oceans-nearly-doubled-over-decade-scientists-warn-and-could" target="_blank">human activities</a> that heat and pollute the planet, coral reefs "are under imminent risk of destruction," pointing to a recent estimate from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that global warming of 2°C could kill 99 percent of all corals.</p>
<div id="c5894" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="X2PHE71579807416"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1220032163036434432" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#coralreefs are incredibly biodiverse, but they also provide a huge range of benefits, from medicines to protection… https://t.co/E2Z19ZKeEh</div> — Environmental Justice Foundation (@Environmental Justice Foundation)<a href="https://twitter.com/ejfoundation/statuses/1220032163036434432">1579713309.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The ocean, which <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceanwater.html" target="_blank">covers</a> more than 70 percent of the planet, "has taken up between 20–30% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the 1980s causing further ocean acidification," <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/25/un-climate-report-oceans-frozen-regions-warns-unprecedented-transitions-all-aspects" target="_blank">according to</a> an IPCC special report from last year. The lead author of a study published last week <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/14/adding-five-six-hiroshima-bombs-heat-each-second-study-shows-oceans-warming-record" target="_blank">said</a> that "the amount of heat we have put in the world's oceans in the past 25 years equals to 3.6 billion Hiroshima atom-bomb explosions."</p><p>Some scientists refer to three key climate-related pressures on the marine environment — warming, acidification, and oxygen loss — as the "<a href="https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/ocean-acidification" target="_blank">deadly trio</a>." Experts also warn that human-caused global heating leads to sea level rise and certain <a href="https://www.climatecommunication.org/climate/global-warming/" target="_blank">extreme weather events</a> becoming more frequent and intense.</p><p>"As the global temperature rises, reefs will be put at risk from warming oceans, higher frequency cyclones, increased precipitation, sea level rise, rising acidification, and changing ocean circulation," the EJF report says. "These factors alter the delicate balance of conditions necessary for tropical coral reefs to function, causing bleaching and destruction of reefs. In many cases, this damage is irreversible."</p>
<div id="ed3f4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="IT1H081579807416"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1220003197558906881" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Some of the most diverse ecosystems on earth rely on coral reefs. Find out about their vital role in a new… https://t.co/OcF99JBEJU</div> — Environmental Justice Foundation (@Environmental Justice Foundation)<a href="https://twitter.com/ejfoundation/statuses/1220003197558906881">1579706403.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Marine heatwaves, which experts <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/16/scale-failure-has-no-precedent-scientists-say-hot-ocean-blob-killed-one-million" target="_blank">warn</a> will become more common as humans continue to heat the planet, have led to major coral bleaching events around the world in recent years. A study from 2018 <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/19/beyond-comprehension-just-two-years-half-all-corals-forever-damaged-great-barrier" target="_blank">concluded</a> that the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, the world's largest coral system, was "forever damaged" following back-to-back bleaching events that collectively killed half of the corals.</p><p>Bleaching refers to when stressors such as warm water and pollution lead coral to expel algae, its main food source, and turn white. Bleached coral faces a greater risk of disease and death but can recover if surrounding conditions improve. Last year, a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/09/example-unknown-unknowns-study-detailing-almost-instant-mortality-corals-suggests" target="_blank">study</a> about severe marine heatwaves heightened alarm about the future; researchers found cases where "the water temperatures are so warm that the coral animal doesn't bleach—in terms of a loss of its symbiosis—the animal dies and its underlying skeleton is all that remains."</p><p>EJF, in its new report and an accompanying video, highlighted the consequences of coral bleaching and death events for both marine wildlife and humans.</p>
Coral Reefs in Crisis
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/386250260" width="100%" height="480" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fcffbfeac80dddb74a304966b7f5995a"></iframe><p>"Tropical coral reefs support an estimated quarter of all marine species: hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species, who rely on the reef for food, shelter, and a safe place to live and reproduce," the report says. "These complex ecosystems include hard and soft corals, sponges, crustaceans, molluscs, fish, sea turtles, sharks, dolphins, and much more—including 'foundation' and 'keystone' species such as corals and sea turtles."</p><p>The report also spotlights a U.N. estimate that at least 275 million people rely on healthy coral reefs as an "essential source of food, employment, income, and storm protection for coastal communities."</p><p>In terms of the economic value of coral reefs, EJF puts tourism and recreation at $9.6 billion, coastal protection at $9 billion, fisheries at $5.7 billion, and wildlife at $5.5 billion. Directly below the economic figures, the report features "a note of caution: Valuing biodiversity in this way is of course subjective, how do we put a value on a species' intrinsic right to exist?"</p><div id="96a58" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="OUGNN41579807416"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1219881136559722497" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#Coralreefs are more than just beautiful. They are a source of income, protein, recreation and safety from storms f… https://t.co/TmKaBvTQy3</div> — Environmental Justice Foundation (@Environmental Justice Foundation)<a href="https://twitter.com/ejfoundation/statuses/1219881136559722497">1579677301.0</a></blockquote></div><p>To combat the triple threat that coral reefs are facing, EJF puts forth recommendations to end the climate crisis: implement the Paris agreement and fully transition all industrial economies to zero carbon by 2030, create a European Union inter-agency taskforce "to drive a more effective, integrated" global response, and establish a U.N. special rapporteur on human rights, economic well-being, and climate change.</p><p>EJF presents another set of specific recommendations to ensure that remaining corals "survive the climate change that is irreversible," calling for an end to illegal and unsustainable fishing as well as pollution that harms coral, including agricultural runoff, sewage, and plastic. The group also calls for expanding marine protected areas to cover at least 30% of the ocean, and assuring that such zones have "clear restrictions and effective conservation aims."</p><p>"In all deliberations and future negotiations," the report adds, "all stakeholders must be included, with special reference to local communities."</p><p>Acknowledging that coral reefs "are not only a vital source of food and income for millions of people" but also "home to a vast diversity of irreplaceable wildlife," EJF executive director Steve Trent <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/01/22/corals-and-communities-ejf-report-highlights-devastating-impacts-climate-crisis" target="_blank">warned</a> Wednesday that "failure to act now to protect them will cause environmental ruin and with it a human tragedy."</p>
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Australia Throws Great Barrier Reef a $300 Million Lifeline, but Will It Cut Emissions?
20 April
Science
Australia's Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program will further investigate 43 potential fixes for the Great Barrier Reef in a wide-scale rescue effort. Australian Institute of Marine Science
The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble. The Australian government is trying to buy its crown jewel some time, but is it willing to support what the reef needs most — a reduction in emissions?
<p>A few weeks ago, the world's greatest coral reef suffered its <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coral-bleaching-great-barrier-reef-2645576557.html" target="_self">third major bleaching event</a> in five years, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/great-barrier-reef-bleaching-2020-2645655957.html" target="_self">most widespread to date</a>. The frequency and severity of the bleachings have caused some scientists to speculate whether the reef has reached a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coral-reef-bleaching-frequency-2645625927.html" target="_self">tipping point</a> of no return.</p><p>On Thursday, Minister of the Environment Susan Ley announced the launch of the <a href="https://www.gbrrestoration.org/rrap-r-d-program" target="_blank">research and development (R&D) phase</a> of the government's <a href="https://www.gbrrestoration.org/home" target="_blank">Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP)</a> to combat the declines the reef is experiencing.</p>
<p>Following a <a href="https://www.gbrrestoration.org/investment-case-reports" target="_blank">two-year feasibility study</a> led by the <a href="https://www.aims.gov.au/" target="_blank">Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS)</a>, a list of 160 potential fixes was whittled down to 43 promising concepts that will be funded for further investigation.</p><p>AIMS Chief Executive Paul Hardisty described how the R&D phase will "provide the scientific basis to help the reef survive in the coming decades," noted a <a href="https://app.wipster.io/Review/CYd0JQB8xsdI6pVHEelJXg9d9n6MKF2hFwrJS8xnAHVqhhilgA#asset=1" target="_blank">media statement</a>. The program is designed to uncover adaptations for the reef that are cost-effective, safe, and acceptable to the public and regulators, Hardisty said.</p><p>But how effective can an adaptation and resilience program really be against the backdrop of ever-increasing global emissions and ocean temperatures?</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE0NjE0NS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMTkyNDg1OH0.FDEh9YBEUzrdku4Jvq4_EzR6VBEvcYJDmcQJgqHFyI4/img.png?width=980" id="22914" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="16bd31453bd95bfc997c1ccbfd4b9efe" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef ecosystem. Stretching 2,300 km along Australia's northeast coastline, this complex of shallow water reefs and islands is home to thousands of species of fish, invertebrates, algae, reptiles, birds and algae. This image, taken by the VIIRS sensor on the Suomi NPP satellite on Aug.19, 2017 uses the high resolution SVI 3, 2, and 1 bands, commonly referred to as "natural color" RGB. NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)
<p>The feasibility study found that global warming might kill the entire Great Barrier Reef by as early as 2050, reported Hack.</p><p>Most tropical coral reefs will disappear even if <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-ipcc-report-2610866229.html" target="_self">heating can be limited to 1.5°C</a>, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/" target="_blank">said</a>, reported <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/16/brightening-clouds-and-coral-larvae-study-picks-best-great-barrier-reef-rescue-ideas" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. Reefs will still be "at very high risk" at 1.2°C warming, and the globe is already over 1°C since the Industrial Revolution, The Guardian explained.</p><p>The feasibility report concluded, "We are facing the very real prospect that, within a generation and without concerted action to reduce emissions and help drive adaptation and faster recovery from damage, the Great Barrier Reef as we have known it will cease to exist," reported <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/australias-daring-attempt-to-save-great-barrier-reef-has-begun/12155326" target="_blank">Hack</a>.</p><p>To avoid this, the scientists are calling for an intervention at a scale never seen before, and they're trying to find adaptation solutions before climate change destroys what remains of the reef, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/18/rebuild-it-shade-it-breed-it-three-tactics-to-buy-time-for-the-great-barrier-reef" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p>
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<p>Daniel Harrison, a biological oceanographer at Southern Cross University, led one of the 43 experimental trials being funded for further research.</p><p>"This is a race against time," he said to The Guardian. "If we can go really hard on emissions and meet or beat the Paris [climate] targets, then these interventions have the potential to help get the reef to a sustainable future – but only under that very aggressive emissions reduction scenario."</p><p>Therein lies one of the historically sticky points for environmentalists when it comes to Australia's "hypocritical" environmental protection efforts contrasted against its broader, coal-friendly environmental policies, reported <a href="https://fortune.com/2018/04/30/australia-great-barrier-reef-climate-change/" target="_blank">Fortune</a>.</p><p>In 2017, <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org.au/news/governments-coal-crush-real-threat-great-barrier-reef/" target="_blank">Greenpeace</a> called the government's "coal crush" the real threat to the Great Barrier Reef because it "[ignored] the simple reality of climate change." In 2018, Australia invested $379 million into saving the reef. The government <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-removing-safeguards-on-food-2645756313.html" target="_self">concurrently promoted the building of new coal mines</a>, which fuel global warming that harms the reef.</p><p>In 2019, Australia continued its "love affair with fossil fuels," setting <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-emissions-record-high-2639152810.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">new record highs for emissions pollution</a>. That same year, the marine park authority approved plans to dump one million tonnes (approximately 1.1 million U.S. tons) of sludge onto the reef.</p><p>As recently as December 2019, coal advocate and current Prime Minister Scott Morrison received backlash for vacationing in Hawaii and seeming "<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-fires-michael-mann-2644442561.html" target="_self">remarkably indifferent</a>" while bush fires devastated the country, reported <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/as-fires-devastate-australia-a-coal-loving-leader-faces-an-early-test/2020/01/08/a7827ebc-3178-11ea-91fd-82d4e04a3fac_story.html" target="_blank">The Washington Post</a>. The fires were exacerbated by climate change and the spike in greenhouse gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels, explained The Washington Post.</p><p>In response, Morrison said, "Our emissions reductions policies will both protect our environment and seek to reduce the risks and hazards we are seeing today," reported The Washington Post.</p>
<p>The realities of climate change and coral bleaching have led even the scientists spearheading this latest effort to save the reef to characterize the RRAP as a long shot, reported <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/australias-daring-attempt-to-save-great-barrier-reef-has-begun/12155326" target="_blank">Hack</a>.<br></p><p>AIMS principal research scientist Ken Anthony told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/18/rebuild-it-shade-it-breed-it-three-tactics-to-buy-time-for-the-great-barrier-reef" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, "It's a bit like the Apollo 11 mission. It really is on that scale."</p><p>Hardisty also metaphorically compared the new program to the "high-risk but successful U.S. mission to put a man on the moon before the end of the '60s," reported <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/australias-daring-attempt-to-save-great-barrier-reef-has-begun/12155326" target="_blank">Hack</a>. He agreed that success might seem like a "moonshot," given the current situation on the reef and global emissions, but optimistically added, "If we work hard and are smart and are courageous we can turn this around," reported Hack.</p><p>The R&D phase will be funded by the Australian government and a consortium of universities and marine studies institutes. The government committed $150 million for the next five years, and that figure could jump to $300 million with promised donations from the private sector and in-kind investments from R&D providers, noted a <a href="https://minister.awe.gov.au/ley/media-releases/150-million-drive-innovations-boost-reef-resilience" target="_blank">government press release</a>.</p><p>The feasibility study found that the efforts could result in a net benefit to Australia of tens of billions of dollars, much greater than the initial investment, the <a href="https://www.gbrrestoration.org/investment-case-reports" target="_blank">investment case</a> said.</p>
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EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Humpback whale splashing in the North West Atlantic Ocean, Massachusetts. Tim Graham / Getty Images
By Jake Johnson
In a move that environmentalists warned could further imperil hundreds of endangered species and a protected habitat for the sake of profit, President Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation rolling back an Obama-era order and opening nearly 5,000 square miles off the coast of New England to commercial fishing.
<p>"We're opening it today," Trump said during a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-roundtable-supporting-americas-commercial-fishermen/" target="_blank">roundtable talk</a> in Maine with commercial fishermen and the state's former governor Paul LePage. "What reason did he have for closing 5,000 miles? That's a lot of miles. Five thousand square miles is a lot. He didn't have a reason, in my opinion."</p>
<p>The reason behind the establishment of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2016, conservation groups hastened to point out, was to shield endangered species and their ecosystem from harmful intrusion and permanent damage by commercial interests.</p><p>Fishing industry interests challenged former President Barack Obama's designation of the marine monument but were <a href="https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2019/12/27/northeast-canyons-seamounts-monument-fishery" target="_blank">rebuffed</a> in federal court last year.</p>
<p>"Opening up the nation's only marine national monument in the Atlantic will help no one but a handful of fishers while risking irreparable damage to the marine wildlife that have no other fully protected areas off our eastern seaboard," <a href="https://defenders.org/newsroom/president-trump-opens-only-marine-national-monument-atlantic-commercial-fishing" target="_blank">said</a> Bob Dreher, senior vice president of Conservation Programs at Defenders of Wildlife. "Ancient and slow-growing deep sea corals, endangered large whales and sea turtles, and an incredible array of fish, seabirds, sharks, dolphins, and other wildlife—these are the species and habitats that will pay the price."</p><p>During the roundtable discussion Friday, Trump said "I love that" when Interior Secretary David Bernhardt—a former <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/oil-mining-lobbyist-david-bernhardt-nomed-to-be-secretary-of-interior/" target="_blank">oil and mining lobbyist</a>—informed the president that his proclamation is effectively "taking down a 'no fishing' sign" in the Atlantic Ocean.</p><p>"The minute you sign it, we will begin planning," Bernhardt said.</p>
<p>Trump's order Friday is just the latest move the president has taken to gut environmental protections under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic and a nationwide uprising over police brutality. On Thursday, as <em>Common Dreams</em> <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/04/groups-denounce-gutting-environmental-rules-when-trump-thinks-no-one-paying" target="_blank">reported</a>, Trump signed an executive order allowing federal agencies to waive environmental rules to speed approval of energy projects like oil pipelines.</p>
<div id="47f4e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1431750a6a1c5950b96b7a78a46362f1"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1269079062447828992" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Trump just opened up a marine sanctuary to commercial fishing, undermining protections for endangered whales, sea t… https://t.co/H3gTJU3oEQ</div> — Friends of the Earth (@Friends of the Earth)<a href="https://twitter.com/foe_us/statuses/1269079062447828992">1591407001.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Brad Sewell, senior director of oceans for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement that commercial fishing "poses a range of threats, such as harm to deep-sea corals from heavy fishing gear, and entanglement of bycatch and marine mammals."</p><p>Sewell said NRDC is prepared to take legal action against the Trump administration to "protect these marine treasures from harm and exploitation by commercial fishing and other extractive industries." </p><p>"These fragile, extraordinary ocean areas are full of thousand-year-old corals, endangered whales, and other precious marine life," said Sewell. "They belong to all Americans, and they are held in trust for future generations."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/06/quietly-putting-hundreds-species-risk-trump-opens-5000-square-miles-atlantic-ocean" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em><em></em></p>
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Aerial view of Cancun coastline. Dronepicr / Wikipedia / CC BY 3.0
Buying insurance is one way to protect something of value, such as a car or a home. And now businesses in Cancun, Mexico, have insured a coral reef.
<p>"The coral reef actually reduces the risk of storm impact on the hotels and resorts in Cancun," Dave Jones said. He's with the Nature Conservancy and is the former insurance commissioner of California.</p>
<p>He said a healthy coral reef can reduce 97 percent of a wave's energy as it barrels toward land.</p><p>"So having a healthy coral reef makes a big difference in terms of whether the hurricane or storm is going to destroy your community or not," he said.</p><p>But a reef can also be damaged by a strong storm, which puts communities at greater risk in the future.</p><p>So in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, coastal property owners pay a fee that helps fund an insurance policy for the nearby reef and beaches.</p><p>"If a storm of a certain magnitude hits, the policy pays out," Jones said.</p><p>The money will be used by local residents trained to remove debris that could cause further damage, reattach coral pieces and set up nurseries where corals can regrow.</p><p>Jones says it's a way to pay for the restoration of an ecosystem that can, in turn, protect people from the intensifying effects of global warming.</p><p>Listen below:</p>
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<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/01/cancun-businesses-take-out-insurance-policy-on-a-coral-reef/" target="_blank">Yale Climate Connections</a>. </em></p>
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The icebreaker Polar Star in Antarctica. Ville Miettinen / The Revelator / CC BY-NC 2.0
By Tara Lohan
Part of Joellen Russell's job is to help illuminate the deep darkness — to shine a light on what's happening beneath the surface of the ocean. And it's one of the most important jobs in the world right now.
<p><a href="https://www.geo.arizona.edu/Russell" target="_blank">Russell</a> is a professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona. From that dry, landlocked state, she's become a leading expert on how the climate is changing in the Southern Ocean — those vast, dark waters swirling around <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/Antarctica">Antarctica</a>.<em></em></p>
<p>"This is an age of scientific discovery," she says. But also, "it's very scary what we're finding out."</p><p>Researchers like Russell have been ringing alarm bells in report after report warning that the world's ocean waters are dangerously warming. Most of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gas emissions we've spewed into the air for decades has actually been absorbed by the ocean. Over the past 25 years, that heat amounts to the equivalent of exploding <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/ioap-row010920.php" target="_blank">3.6 billion Hiroshima-sized atom bombs</a>, according to Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of a new study on ocean warming.</p><p>Now we're beginning to witness the cascading repercussions of that oceanic warming — from supercharged storms to <a href="https://therevelator.org/?s=coral" target="_blank">dying coral reefs</a> to crashing fisheries.</p><p>There's still a lot left to learn about these problems, but here's a look at some of the top findings from researchers, along with what they hope to uncover next.</p>
1. Yes, It’s Definitely Getting Warmer
<p>There's no doubt among scientists that the ocean is heating and we're driving it.</p><p>The latest confirmation is the <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7.pdf" target="_blank">study by Cheng and colleagues, published this month</a> in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, which bluntly stated, "Ocean heating is irrefutable and a key measure of the Earth's energy imbalance."</p><p>The study found ocean waters in 2019 were the warmest in recorded history. And that follows a pattern: The past decade has also seen the warmest 10 years of ocean temperatures, and the last five years have been the five warmest on record.</p><p>"Every year the ocean waters get warmer, and the reason is because of the heat-trapping gases that humans have emitted into the atmosphere," says <a href="https://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/faculty/john-p-abraham.html" target="_blank">John Abraham</a>, one of the study's coauthors and a professor in mechanical engineering at the University of St. Thomas. "It's concerning for sure."</p>2. The Southern Ocean Has Been Hit Worst
<p>Much of this warming occurs between the surface and a depth of 6,500 feet. It's happening pretty consistently across the globe, but some areas have experienced higher rates of warming. One of those is the Southern Ocean, which has acted as a giant sink, absorbing 43 percent of our oceanic CO2 emissions and 75 percent of the heat, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0516-2" target="_blank">scientists have concluded</a>.</p><p>That's because the ocean basin functions like an air conditioner for the planet, says Russell. Strong winds pull up cold water from deep below, and then the cold surface water takes up some heat from the air. When the winds slow, the water sinks, more cold water rises, and the process repeats.</p><p>"The sinking water isn't warm, per se, just a bit warmer than it was when the wind pulled it up," she says. "In this way the Southern Ocean can sequester a lot of heat well below the surface."</p><p>For that reason what happens in the Southern Ocean is globally important. And it makes new findings all the more concerning.</p><p>Normal upwelling of waters from deep in the Southern Ocean has traditionally brought nutrients to the surface, where they then get moved by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the world's strongest ocean current, to feed <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life">marine life</a> in other areas. But <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0502-8" target="_blank">new research</a> from Russell and colleagues found that this process will be disrupted as warm waters cause the Southern Ocean's ice sheets to melt even faster. This will change the historical upwelling and could trap nutrients instead of pushing them out.</p><p>That, she says, will "begin to starve the global ocean of nutrients."</p>3. A Lot of Changes Are Happening
<p>As bad as that sounds…there's a lot more.</p><p>One of the most obvious results of ocean warming is higher sea levels. That's caused in part because water expands as it warms.</p><p>But there's also the effect on sea ice. The warmer the water gets, the more ice melts — as is happening in Antarctica. Not surprisingly <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2680/new-study-finds-sea-level-rise-accelerating/" target="_blank">rates of global sea-level rise are accelerating</a>. This means more property damage, storm surges, and waves lapping at the heels of our coastal communities.</p><p>Warmer waters also mean more supercharged storms. An increase in heat drives up evaporation and adds extra moisture to the atmosphere, causing heavy rains, more flooding and more extreme weather events.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYzNjk2Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NjkzMjM5OH0.bhKjRgMbhxksaqF3cbAaR47hB1qOwEhfu57i-5Zq4vM/img.jpg?width=980" id="cfea2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="03961faaf4043365957badd47c4abfd2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />The aftermath of Cyclone Idai, one of the deadliest storms in history, in Mozambique, March 2019. Denis Onyodi / IFRC / DRK / Climate Centre / CC BY-NC 2.0
<p>it can make drier conditions worse, too. When air rises and cools below the dew point, it turns into clouds or precipitation. "But in places like Arizona or Australia, where rain is generally formed when air is pushed upward over mountains, "the warmer atmosphere might not be cold enough to cause rain," explains Russell. "This is how a warmer atmosphere carrying more moisture might actually rain less in some places — contributing to drought and therefore fire."</p><p>The recent study in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences identified warming waters as "one of the key reasons why the Earth has experienced increasing catastrophic fires in the Amazon, California, and Australia in 2019 (extending into 2020 for Australia)."</p><p>And that's not all.</p><p>Warming ocean waters also contribute to the rise of colonies of algae that can produce toxins deadly to wildlife and sometimes people.</p><p>These harmful algal blooms pose a problem even way up in the Gulf of Alaska, where the annual algae season has gotten longer, says Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the <a href="https://uaf-accap.org/" target="_blank">Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy</a> at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.</p><p>"That's all, of course, due to warmer water," he says.</p><p>The biggest change in the region may be along the coast of the Bering Sea, where water temperatures have historically been too cold for the blooms to occur — but that's starting to change.</p><p>"Now the water temperatures are getting up to the point where they're warm enough to support these harmful algal blooms," Thoman says. Toxins from the blooms can work their way up the food chain and have even shown up in some marine mammals in the areas. "People are concerned about whether it's safe to eat their staple foods," he says.</p>
4. Marine Heat Waves Are Getting Worse
<p>While temperatures are rising across the world's oceans, some areas are also seeing dangerous short-term spikes known as <a href="http://www.marineheatwaves.org/all-about-mhws.html" target="_blank">marine heatwaves</a>.</p><p>Scientists anticipate that these heatwaves, which can be fatal to a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-tasmania/" target="_blank">long list of sea creatures</a>, will continue to get more severe and more frequent as the ocean warms. By the end of the century, conditions in some areas may be akin to a permanent heatwave.</p><p>That's likely to be bad news for everything from seaweed to birds to mammals, and it could result in fundamental changes for food webs and the animals and coastal economies that depend on those resources.</p><p>"Collectively, and over time, an increase in the exposure of marine ecosystems to extreme temperatures may lead to irreversible loss of species or foundation habitats, such as seagrass, coral reefs and kelp forests," a <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00734/full?utm_source=ad&utm_medium=tw&utm_campaign=ba_sci_fmars" target="_blank">December 2019 study</a> in<em> Frontiers in Marine Science</em> found.</p><p>And these changes likely aren't far off. These marine heatwaves "will emerge as forceful agents of disturbance to marine ecosystems in the near-future," the researchers wrote.</p><p>We're already seeing what that would look like.</p><p>Marine heatwaves off Australia have spurred oyster die-offs and losses to the abalone fishery, and one event in 2016 caught the world's attention when it caused <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04660-w" target="_blank">severe bleaching of the biodiverse Great Barrier Reef</a>, triggering mass coral deaths.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYzNjk2Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODU4NTI3OH0.nn6BGq9q8yOZAxYZKGnYtrmWETVdBEoeOZ_thH1pEm0/img.jpg?width=980" id="62e5a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4df8b69188d6484a2932664481c2b6f5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />An aerial view of widespread coral bleaching in the northern Great Barrier Reef, 2016. Terry Hughes / ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies / CC BY-ND 2.0
<p>And scientists now believe that "the blob," a mass of warm water that persisted off the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska from 2014 to 2016, led to the starvation of <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0226087#sec012" target="_blank">an estimated 1 million common murres</a> (<em>Uria aalge</em>) — a normally resilient seabird. The warm waters likely reduced and changed phytoplankton communities — an essential part of the marine food web. But that's not all. The warm waters increased the metabolism — and the appetite — of big fish like pollock and salmon. That demand spike crashed populations of forage fish that murres usually find plentiful.</p><p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/hundreds-puffins-washed-dead-alaskan-beach/590356/" target="_blank">Tufted puffins</a>, <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/06/05/ocean-warming-junk-food-prey-cause-of-massive-seabird-die-off-study-finds/" target="_blank">Cassin's auklets</a>, sea lions and baleen whales also suffered losses, although the murres were hit worst.</p><p>Most recently a prolonged marine heatwave off the coast of Alaska led to the closure of region's commercial Pacific cod fishery for 2020 — the first time that's ever happened.</p><p>"When you cancel whole fisheries, that really impacts people's lives and livelihoods," says Thoman.</p>
5. What We Don’t Know
<p>Scientists have enough information now to tell us that we need to quickly change course. But there's still a lot to learn about how warming temperatures will affect myriad species in the sea, not to mention weather patterns and coastal economies.</p><p>One current line of research is to better understand how ocean warming affects weather.</p><p>"We know that a warmer ocean means more water evaporates into the atmosphere," says Abraham. "Consequently, it makes the weather more severe because humidity drives storms. We would like to quantify this. So how much worse is weather now and how bad will it be?"</p><p>Some of that information will come from existing systems.</p><p>"We live in a time of great change, and the ocean is telling us these stories mostly through our incredible <a href="http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/About_Argo.html" target="_blank">Argo floats</a>," says Russell. This global network of nearly 3,900 floating sensors can measure temperature, salinity and pressure at varying depths across the world's oceans.</p><p>But in the Southern Ocean, Russell works with an even more advanced group of biogeochemical sensors. They measure nitrates, which can tell researchers about the building blocks of nutrients for the food web. They also measure oxygen, "how the ocean is breathing," she says, and pH, which helps tell the carbon content of the water.</p><p>Russell says she'd like to see this technology put to use in more waters around the world.</p><p>"We're trying to get a global biogeochemical Argo array, but so far haven't gotten funding for it," she says. "I'm desperate to see the rest of the ocean because it's all connected and it's mixing quickly."</p><p>The Arctic, she says, is one place where this technology would play a particularly valuable role.</p><p>"It's so shallow in many places, and under ice for so much of the year, that we haven't really been able to get a big float array up there," she says. "But the Arctic is critical to our national interest and it's relatively unstudied. Can you imagine that, in this day and age?"</p><p>There's plenty to keep researchers busy, but the rest of us also need to act quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because, the researchers of the Advances in Atmospheric Sciences study concluded, the oceans are so vast that they'll require years to dissipate all of this excess heat and register the changes we're starting to make today. Cutting emissions, they wrote, is the only way to reduce "the risks to humans and other life on Earth."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/ocean-climate-change/" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef in 2016. Oregon State University / CC BY-SA 2.0
The Great Barrier Reef's third mass bleaching event in five years is also its most widespread, according to new data released Tuesday.
<p>Professor Terry Hughes, director of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, spent nine days in a plane surveying 1,036 reefs from the air, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/07/great-barrier-reefs-third-mass-bleaching-in-five-years-the-most-widespread-ever?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco&fbclid=IwAR1-d44F2zLeqzTlILpNyrT7E7TWHMxYd5eMYvFOGnHaVFwx-tN1EQyQf2Q" target="_blank">The Guardian reported</a>. He found that 25 percent of the overall reef was severely bleached. What's more, he observed bleaching in the north, center and south of the reef for the first time.</p><p>"It's the first time we've seen severely bleached reefs along the whole length of the reef, in particular, the coastal reefs," Hughes told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/australia/great-barrier-reefs-bleaching-dying.html?campaign_id=51&emc=edit_MBE_p_20200407&instance_id=17430&nl=morning-briefing&regi_id=88631294&section=whatElse&segment_id=24116&te=1&user_id=d8eb7cee9d3c5ab39515239b6ec54d19" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p>
<div id="7fa36" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="18a3fd14e9b6d517b7cc3bed9b62bc51"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1247271799613603840" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#GreatBarrierReef research: First the north, then the middle, now widespread #coral bleaching including in the sout… https://t.co/7O3D47sbrv</div> — Terry Hughes (@Terry Hughes)<a href="https://twitter.com/ProfTerryHughes/statuses/1247271799613603840">1586207744.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>The Great Barrier Reef has <a href="https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/climate-change/coral-bleaching/bleaching-events.html" target="_blank">suffered six mass bleaching events</a> due to warmer than normal ocean temperatures: in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2016, 2017 and now 2020. While the 1998 and 2016 bleachings occurred during El Niño events, a natural climate variation that brings warmer than average ocean temperatures to the region, the 2002 and 2017 events did not, The Washington Post pointed out. Neither did this year's, but it is the second most intense after 2016's. This suggests warmer temperatures caused by the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> are ultimately driving these events.</p><p>"It's now clear that we can have major bleaching events caused by global climate change alone with no tropical forcing," Mark Eakin, coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch program, told The Washington Post.</p><p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coral-bleaching" target="_self">Coral bleaching</a> occurs when heat stress causes corals to expel the algae that live within them, providing them both with food and their bright colors. When the algae leave, the corals lose those colors. If the algae stay away for too long, the corals can die.</p>
<p>2016 and 2017's bleachings together killed around half of the corals in the reef. But Hughes told <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-07/great-barrier-reef-most-widespread-coral-bleaching-on-record/12107054" target="_blank">Australia's ABC News</a> that he didn't know how deadly this year's bleaching would be. He told The Guardian that the north and central portions of the reef would probably see less death because the less heat-resistant corals had already died off in 2016 and 2017.</p><p>But the south, which remained relatively untouched in previous years, was a different story.</p><p>"They hadn't bleached before, which means there are more corals and more of the corals that are particularly susceptible to heat stress," he told ABC News.</p>
<div id="4320a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a0e8364a0be8b2cb46e3c4770be57cb7"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1247367294029672448" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">I'm not sure I have the fortitude to do this again. It's heartbreaking to see the #GreatBarrierReef decline so fast. https://t.co/LHgP5cIAQW</div> — Terry Hughes (@Terry Hughes)<a href="https://twitter.com/ProfTerryHughes/statuses/1247367294029672448">1586230512.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>This means the makeup of the reef is changing, but some of the losing corals include branching corals, which provide important habitat for many fish.</p><p>"Branching corals make all of the nooks and crannies that the rest of the biodiversity — the fish and so on — depend on," he told ABC News. "So having fewer and fewer corals is having a much broader effect, not just on the corals themselves, but in the broader ecosystem."</p><p>Hughes told The Guardian that only urgent climate action could save the reef.</p><p>"It's not too late to turn this around with rapid action on emissions," he said. "But business-as-usual emissions will make the Great Barrier Reef a pretty miserable place compared to today."</p>
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Coral restoration in Guam. U.S. Pacific Fleet / CC BY-NC 2.0
By Erica Cirino
Visit a coral reef off the coast of Miami or the Maldives and you may see fields of bleached white instead of a burst of colors.
<p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coral-reefs">Coral reefs</a> are in a death spiral. Many of the world's major reefs — which give the oceans life, support fisheries, prevent storm damage, provide medicine and create ocean-based tourism opportunities — are <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1676" target="_blank">expected to disappear</a> by 2100. Experts say coral decline has numerous causes, including chemical runoff, plastic pollution, disease and overfishing.</p><p>But the main culprit is <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a>, a crisis with no quick fixes.</p><p>As the late Ruth Gates — one of the world's foremost coral experts and former director of the Hawaii Institute for Marine Biology — told me two years ago, shortly before her death: "A significant cut in greenhouse gas emissions is required to save corals … not to mention, us. Such an endeavor will require government and public cooperation, and it will take time."</p><p>Coral reefs don't <em>have</em> much time, so experts around the world have used whatever tactics were in their reach to try to give corals a fighting chance. Much of their focus has been on top-down, policy-driven approaches like creating <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12638" target="_blank">marine protected areas</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50963080" target="_blank">banning toxic sunscreens</a>, and <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/12/murky-underwater-world-of-the-aquarium-trade/" target="_blank">cracking down</a> on the illegal capture of reef fish.</p><p>But a growing number of experts, building on efforts by Gates and others, have taken a more bottom-up approach: coral reef restoration, or the process of repopulating deteriorating reefs with healthy coral. And they're tapping citizen scientists to help with the effort — people participating in scientific projects organized by experts.</p><p>There's evidence that this type of restoration could solidly support the full range of reef-conservation efforts underway. But given the extent of the crisis and what's at stake, is repeatedly putting new crops of corals into harm's way the answer?</p>
<p> <em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/coral-reef-replanting/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>. </em><em></em></p>
Climate Change Threats
<p>Though reefs cover less than 1 percent of Earth's surface, they support more than a million different species, including many types of algae — like sea grasses and sea lettuces — and a broad range of animals from starfish to shrimp to sharks, as well as people. Experts estimate that corals pull <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/corals/coral07_importance.html" target="_blank">$375 billion</a> into the global economy every year, mainly by fostering tourism, supporting fisheries, and contributing to medicine and storm protection.</p><p>Despite their value corals have been in decline for decades. Scientists responded by initiating the first reef-restoration efforts about 50 years ago. Since then restoration efforts have been tailored to meet the needs of corals prioritized at specific times and places. In the 1970s, as coastal development boomed, scientists focused on expanding corals' habitat by strategically placing shipwrecks, concrete pipes, tires and other manmade structures underwater on which corals could grow. By the early 2000s, scientists had become more interested in addressing other localized risks to reefs — such as overfishing, irresponsible tourism and invasive species.</p><p>But climate change poses an even more far-reaching threat.</p><p>Bleaching — a precursor to coral death caused by stressors including warming waters — has left nary a reef unscathed around the world. Most corals thrive in temperatures between 73-84 degrees Fahrenheit. Oceans naturally undergo seasonal warming, which leads to temperature fluctuations high enough to bleach some corals. In the past corals could recover from bleaching events once waters cooled. Scientists say it takes 15 to 25 years for a reef to recover from serious bleaching and become healthy enough to support a rich host of marine life. But today, with the relentless and extreme warming our oceans now face, corals are running out of possible recovery time. It's becoming much harder for them to make a comeback.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYyMDAzMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTM4MTc0NX0.4yY0nPy9P2wVxS7-oQelaw25JhphOkf_kbxXGoam8k8/img.jpg?width=980" id="44834" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="313ce486f8f995a433918e52e6494828" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />A major coral bleaching event on part of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Oregon State University / CC BY-SA 2.0
<p>Not only does climate change raise the temperature of the oceans, resulting in inhospitable conditions for corals, it deposits excess carbon dioxide into the water — increasing seawater's acidity. More acidic waters can erode hard corals' skeletons and make it more difficult for corals to grow. The cumulative effects have been seen around the planet. <a href="https://coast.noaa.gov/states/fast-facts/coral-reefs.html" target="_blank">According</a> to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 27 percent of the world's coral population has died over the past three decades.</p><p>According to UNESCO, bleaching on coral reefs across the world was first documented in 1983, but since then its frequency and severity has quickly accelerated. In a 2017 report, the organization identified the cause of bleaching on 72% of its so-called "globally significant" reefs from 2014 to 2017 as record-breaking ocean temperatures.</p><p>Marine biologist Maria Anderson said a dying coral reef is a painful thing to witness.</p><p>"During bleaching, the usual reef hues of browns, purples and greens are replaced by a white ghost town," said Andersen, a resident marine biologist at Ocean Group Maldives who is part of an upstarting coral reef replanting project based at InterContinental Resort, a hotel on Raa Atoll. "Soft corals appear as white blobs that melt off rocks and hard corals turn into fragile skeletons. The only way I can describe it is heartbreaking."</p>
Secret Weapon # 1: The Public
<p>To stem this tide, restoration efforts now mostly involve growing corals in undersea nurseries and transplanting them onto dying reefs that are losing coral. Like saplings being replanted in a fallen forest, young corals can help regenerate an ecosystem that's becoming barren.</p><p>But the work can be expensive and labor-intensive. According to researchers it can cost <a href="https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.rc0jn" target="_blank">more than $150,000</a> to restore one reef — a small fortune in low-income coastal communities that may struggle to find funding.</p><p>That's why restoration efforts have grown increasingly reliant on the help of citizen scientists. This has significantly reduced the high price tag of restoration by replacing paid labor with volunteers — without any noticeable decline in success. Research shows the growth and survival rate of the corals planted by citizen scientists is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1617138117301504" target="_blank">almost identical</a> to corals planted by experts. When handled properly, the corals replanted by volunteers survive at a rate of at least 80 percent, and often exceeds 90 percent, said Dalton Hesley, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Benthic Ecology and Coral Restoration Lab, who led that study.</p><p>"Replanting is an investment," Hesley said. "These corals should, in theory, live indefinitely, and you should expect to see growth over the years."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYyMDAzNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MjQwODgwMX0.TpiaDcCidHgwJlZoyH_dYLp9Iuq0d38-Yh34jbwroHs/img.jpg?width=980" id="f7520" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fa1108fd8244c77a8b6657041c5892a5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />A healthy staghorn coral colony two years after it was planted on a reef in the Florida Keys.
FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
<p>But that's only if we also take necessary action to prevent further degradation of, and ultimately remediate, the oceans, he said. Unless the world addresses climate change, runoff, pollution and development, reefs will continue to decline and risk being lost forever.</p><p>At this moment in Earth's history, "I don't think it should be a matter of choosing one over the other," said Andersen. Both large-scale efforts to address the climate crisis and labor-intensive replanting efforts are necessary to give reefs a chance of surviving Earth's current extinction crisis. "We have to meet somewhere in the middle, finding renewable resources while also restoring reefs. We can't just sit around and wait, leaving corals in limbo."</p>
Secret Weapon # 2: Genetics
<p>"On first glance replanting may seem like a distraction from mitigating climate change, which is what we have to do if we want to save reefs," said Andersen. But she says restoration can give corals a better chance — especially when they're coupled with recent efforts to supercharge replanting by <a href="https://www.newsdeeply.com/oceans/articles/2017/08/28/race-to-decode-coral-dna-to-save-worlds-reefs-from-extinction" target="_blank">genetically identifying</a> the most diverse and resilient species.</p><p>A well-planned, diverse reef is probably the best remedy to bleaching, Andersen said.</p><p>"I've heard of hundreds of restoration projects around the world, but none that have failed," she said. "But if one happened to fail, I would assume its leaders failed to create enough coral diversity."</p><p>Hesley agreed: "With high diversity there's strength."</p><p>Thousands of species of hard and soft corals have been identified to date, and each of these species has varying levels of resistance to stressors. Even within a species, scientists have identified different <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/21/10586" target="_blank">gene patterns</a> that can convey different benefits.</p><p>"Some corals grow very quickly, some are less prone to disease, some bleach less, some are hardier during storms, for example," Hesley said. "There's not one coral species or individual that excels across the board, so we must focus on creating high levels of coral diversity."</p><p>Larger-scale reef restoration projects, like the <a href="http://rescueareef.rsmas.miami.edu/" target="_blank">program</a> Hesley is involved in at the University of Miami, keep track of coral genetics using DNA analysis, ensuring coral diversity. Smaller-scale programs in rather remote places, like Andersen's project in the Maldives, often do not have in-house access to labs and genetics testing, which can be prohibitively expensive.</p><p>Andersen said these challenges require her to go through a complex research process and collaboration with coral geneticists on a different atoll to pinpoint the most and least resilient coral species. Then, she must carefully remove fragments of coral from reefs known to have survived past bleaching events so that they can be used to spawn more hardy corals. After that, she monitors the donor reef and fragments to ensure they stay healthy. These preliminary parts of the replanting process, which require permits and extraordinary precision, are left up to the professionals.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYyMDAzNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNDQ4NjkyNn0.EJgvphllBv-4WXC6n2Q98AJJ1x5UNydcM2c7Ah-ITA0/img.jpg?width=980" id="cf825" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0b5fd81aa53152e76daf921add21a303" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Choosing coral parent colonies to aid reef restoration efforts.
FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Promise and Challenges
<p>When it comes to giving dying corals another shot, Hesley acknowledged that coral reef restoration is not a perfect solution. He said finding adequate funding, staff and volunteer labor, and addressing the root causes of reef decline — climate change and local stressors to reef health — are lingering challenges.</p><p>However, Anderson said the benefits of reef restoration, especially those powered by citizen scientists, are strong compared to their drawbacks. This has led to projects cropping up on reefs all around the world, developed by scientists hired by research institutions and hotels alike.</p><p>One of the most exciting she's seen is a citizen-science restoration project led by Peter Harrison of Southern Cross University in Australia, who has developed a backpack-sized inflatable coral spawn catcher and nursery pool in which baby corals can grow until they're big enough to be replanted.</p><p>Of course, even volunteers can only do so much. Harrison has also pioneered use of robots to swiftly distribute baby corals onto nearly 7.5 acres of damaged reefs, doing a job in just six hours that would take several human hands at least a week. If perfected, it could put volunteer seeding efforts effectively out of business.</p><p>But there's always a role for people willing to help. After corals are propagated, whether it's by hand or machine, citizen scientists can help care for them in undersea nurseries.</p><p>All of this requires careful planning. Andersen emphasizes the importance of establishing clearly defined goals for restoration, based around a community's needs and available resources. Another aspect of a successful restoration effort, she said, is an effective and accessible training program that primes citizen scientists on how to participate and, ultimately, care about the future of corals.</p><p>And that ties into the fundamental reason why citizen science still matters: because restoration buys time for corals. Experts at the Smithsonian Research Institute have <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0988-x" target="_blank">found</a> that the more living coral a reef has when exposed to highly acidic waters, the more likely it is to survive, instead of bleaching and dying.</p><p>Meanwhile, the efforts help to connect people to something that otherwise might stay out of sight and out of mind beneath the surface of the ocean.</p><p>"I don't think a lot of people who get involved in restoration initially have that emotional attachment to coral reefs simply because they haven't had a chance to care about them," Andersen said. "Restoration gives them the opportunity to make a connection, to really understand how dire the situation is, and to do something that can help."</p>From Your Site Articles
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An ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus), one of the target species of a broadcast which hopes to attract various species. Grayson Smith / USFWS
It's a quiet May morning on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. We're high on a cliff inside the fences of the Nihoku Ecosystem Restoration Project, with only the sound of the wind rushing past our ears and the crash of waves breaking on the shoreline far beneath. Only the slightest hints of animal cries reach our ears — until ecologist Lindsay Young turns on a loudspeaker. Then the air fills with the breathy squawks and raucous chirps of seabirds.
<p>It's hardly Barry White, but for Pacific seabirds, it's music to their ears.<em></em></p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/sound-help-species-ecosystems/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>
<p>"These guys are so cued into the sound, at our other sites we have birds mounting the speakers, doing bad things to them," Young says as she tromps back up the hill from the loudspeaker.</p><p>As the executive director of <a href="https://pacificrimconservation.org/" target="_blank">Pacific Rim Conservation</a>, Young has made it her mission to protect endangered seabirds. On this site that means Newell's shearwaters and Hawaiian petrels, known as <em>ʻaʻo</em> and <em>ʻuaʻu</em> on the islands. Both nocturnal species have declined due to predation by invasive species and the lure of artificial lighting, which often causes fatal collisions with power lines and other urban obstacles.</p><p>Young's organization and a handful of others began working on the <a href="https://www.nihoku.org/" target="_blank">Nihoku nesting site</a> in 2014, after all the resident birds had been wiped out. They started by constructing a predator-proof fence to prevent everything from mice to feral cats from getting inside. The team also planted native shrubs and installed 50 artificial burrows to enhance the habitat. Then, beginning in 2015, they used helicopters to translocate chicks from mountain colonies down to Nihoku, where they raised them on a slurry of squid and fish, hoping the chicks would imprint on the night sky from this new location and return to it in three to five years when they reached breeding age.</p>
<p>But in the meantime, the conservation team saw the need to lure additional adult birds to this newly predator-free habitat.</p><p>There was just one problem: silence.</p><p>Hawaiian seabirds are social animals — they need to know the party has started before they're willing to settle down in a new colony. With no adult birds at Nihoku, passing birds had no one to listen to and invite them in.</p><p>Enter the seabird stereo. It plays every night, sundown to sunup, from March to November, and is audible up to about a half-mile away.</p>
<p>And it works, to a degree. When I followed up with Young nine months after our trek to the site, she told me that some other bird species have been attracted to the site, but not the target birds — at least, not yet.</p><p>"Most seabird species nest in multi-species colonies," she explains, "so I think regardless of what species calls you're playing, it is going to be attractive on some level to closely related species." One of the species that did come to Nihoku, wedge-tailed shearwaters, is more abundant than Newell's shearwaters, so Young says it's not surprising that they might arrive sooner.</p><p>She's still hopeful the target species will arrive, lured in by the daily broadcasts. In the meantime it's a waiting game: When will any of the several dozen chicks that have fledged here return to look for mates? Young's listening for their calls.</p>
Echoes and Questions
<p>Nikoku and other degraded habitats are the flip side of the story of noise pollution. While human-generated sounds have harmed wildlife and ecosystems around the planet, the absence of natural sounds also causes cascading ecological problems.</p><p>Scientists around the world have started to investigate the soundscapes — or lack of them — for a range of species, and they're realizing just how crucial critter calls are for healthy ecosystems. Planting native vegetation and removing sources of pollution aren't necessarily enough to get an ecosystem functioning again. For that wildlife needs to fulfill key ecological roles such as pollination and seed dispersal — and eating, or being eaten by, other animals.</p><p>Darren Proppe has been investigating the role of sound in habitat restoration for years. He's currently the research director at the Wild Basin Creative Research Center of St. Edward's University in Texas, but he previously studied songbirds in Michigan and the effect that birdcall recordings might have on conservation efforts.</p><p>"One of the challenges that drove this whole thing initially is that there were areas where people had restored habitat and it looked great, but it was left vacant," Proppe says.</p><p>Previous research had already established that broadcasting sounds of bird calls could attract individual songbirds to a specific area. Proppe wanted to test whether that technique could be expanded for a larger number of species. In a key <a href="https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/26/5/1379/242959" target="_blank">2015 study</a>, his research group used recordings of six different songbirds in northern Michigan to see whether playing those calls together would attract more birds to a given tract of forest. The speakers, camouflaged as rocks and powered by solar-charged batteries, broadcast the calls on daily playback loops between May and July.</p><p>The study was a resounding success. Multiple species nested in higher densities near the playback speakers than in other parts of the forest. The only problem was that birds of related species whose calls <em>weren't</em> broadcast seemed to be avoiding the areas with the speakers, perhaps because they feared the area was already overpopulated by competitors.</p><p>In addition to understanding the reasons for that avoidance, Proppe says there are plenty of other questions that need to be answered. Researchers don't know what happens when the recordings are no longer played, or whether there might be ecosystem-wide impacts they haven't yet noticed. They also want to make sure that birds moving into the sound-scaped environments are also doing well over the long term, that the habitat provides them with the right living conditions.</p><p>And they want to find out what these sounds mean for the next generation of birds.</p><p>"What we're working on now is, what does this do for reproduction? This is breeding season. If we bring them into certain areas, do they reproduce poorly? If that's the case, this isn't a conservation methodology we want to use."</p>
The Sounds Heard 'Round the World'
<p>Birds aren't the only species that could benefit from this emerging research. The possibility of using sound as a conservation tool is being explored across species and habitats. In Kenya <a href="https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2028.1998.113-89113.x" target="_blank">researchers have used broadcasts</a> of hyena and lion vocalizations to draw the carnivores to certain locations in order to more easily conduct population surveys. A similar technique was <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000632070200294X" target="_blank">used in Zimbabwe</a> to count African wild dogs.</p><p>And more recently, biologists in Australia have turned to a different medium to fill with sound: the ocean.</p><p>"We've recently discovered that as coral reefs degrade, their biological soundscape gets quieter," writes marine scientist Timothy Gordon, with the University of Exeter, by email.</p><p>Because some fish species spend parts of their life in the open ocean, they need a way to eventually navigate back to the reef. That's where sound comes in, and why it's such a problem when cyclones or mass bleaching cause reefs to empty out.</p><p>"The animals that usually make a symphony of crackles, snaps, pops, grunts and whoops are dead, and in their absence the reef turns ghostly quiet," Gordon says. "This is tragic to hear, and also concerning — without these sounds, there's a real danger that fishes can no longer hear their way home."</p><p>Gordon and his colleagues wanted to see if they could develop a solution for this problem. Working on the northern Great Barrier Reef, they used underwater loudspeakers to broadcast the sounds of healthy reefs onto coral-rubble patch reefs. Unlike the environment hosting birds, coral reefs are filled with a jumble of sounds. Gordon says it would be almost impossible to disentangle the sounds to target one individual species, since healthy reefs feature a cacophony of sounds (he compared the noise of moving sea urchins to "sizzling bacon").</p><div id="aa583" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="VCYE0C1583276629"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="991063298853474304" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">🐠🎧😢The sound of the dying #GreatBarrierReef is the saddest thing you'll hear today. 🎧🐠😢
Our new #openaccess… https://t.co/C7Q9XZGA9P</div> — Tim Gordon (@Tim Gordon)<a href="https://twitter.com/TimACGordon/statuses/991063298853474304">1525122878.0</a></blockquote></div><p>And it worked: Compared to the parts of the reef without any fishy noises being projected onto them, the artificially loud reefs doubled in overall abundance and had a 50% greater species richness.</p><p>"That's good news for reef restoration," Gordon says, since previous research has shown that <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/20/5193" target="_blank">healthy fish populations can help facilitate recovery of damaged reefs</a>. "At the stage in life that fish are being attracted back to reef habitat from the open ocean, many species are very site-attached and territorial. That means if we can persuade them to settle somewhere, and they're able to survive, they are likely to stay put."</p>
Ghost Sounds
<p>The biggest challenge with all these cases is the lack of high-quality habitat in the first place. Neither Gordon nor Young were particularly optimistic about using animal soundscapes as a panacea for an enormous, multifaceted problem.</p><p>"No reef restoration can work without simultaneous dramatic action on carbon emissions to reduce global warming and prevent further damage," Gordon says. "But if we can limit our emissions to stop ocean warming, new understanding like this gives us a real chance of helping our heavily damaged reefs to recover."</p><p>For Hawaii's seabirds, Young says, the solution must go beyond the sounds of a restored habitat. Although they're making progress with expanding the number of safe spaces for the birds, and have even <a href="https://www.seabirddatabase.org/" target="_blank">created a website</a> to catalogue seabird restoration and social attraction recordings from around the world, they still have to deal with the predators and artificial lights that decimated bird populations in the first place.</p><p>"The restoration only creates another safe site, it doesn't address why they're going extinct on their colonies," Young says. "We're creating a new safe space for them, but it doesn't mean the threat doesn't exist at all the other colonies. And until we really get that addressed, it's not going to be optimistic."</p>From Your Site Articles
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'The Great Barrier Reef is on a Knife Edge': Reef Faces Third Major Bleaching Event in Five Years
21 February
Oceans
Half half bleached coral, great barrier reef. JAYNE JENKINS / CORAL REEF IMAGE BANK
Australian wildlife cannot catch a break.
<p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-wildfires-contained-nsw-2645149309.html" target="_self">Rains have only recently started</a> dousing the historic <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" target="_self">wildfires</a> that killed <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-wildfire-deaths-2644394434.html" target="_self">more than one billion animals</a> on land. Now, scientists and environmentalists are warning that the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/great-barrier-reef" target="_self">Great Barrier Reef</a> could see its third major <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coral-bleaching" target="_self">coral bleaching</a> event in five years if <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">ocean</a> temperatures remain high for the next two weeks, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/20/great-barrier-reef-on-brink-of-third-major-coral-bleaching-in-five-years-scientists-warn" target="_blank">The Guardian reported Thursday</a>.</p><p>"The Great Barrier Reef is on a knife edge," head of oceans at <a href="https://www.wwf.org.au/" target="_blank">WWF-Australia</a> Richard Leck told The Guardian. 'We will know in the next couple of weeks whether we now have a mass coral bleaching event for the third time in only five years."</p>
<div id="c5bb3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="W0AGKS1582297512"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1230298736984612864" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">A mass coral bleaching event could unfold across the Great Barrier Reef during the coming weeks, where sea surface… https://t.co/DJFezqwbxg</div> — Ben Domensino (@Ben Domensino)<a href="https://twitter.com/Ben_Domensino/statuses/1230298736984612864">1582161051.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Scientists with the <a href="http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/" target="_blank">Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority</a> have already found "significant bleaching" at three reefs in the far north, the authority's chief scientist David Wachenfeld told <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/concerns-rise-for-great-barrier-reef-health-as-corals-start-to-bleach-20200220-p542lx.html" target="_blank">The Sydney Morning Herald</a>. Wachenfeld said the reefs in the north were relatively protected from most human activity, but not from the rising of ocean temperatures caused by the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>.</p><p>"Climate change is the great leveller," he said. "There is nowhere that is not affected by it."</p><p>Coral bleaching occurs when corals expel the algae that give them their color and nutrients in response to heat stress. <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-2353658528.html" target="_self">Back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017</a> killed as many as half of the corals in the reef.</p><p>Currently, temperatures across the reef are around two to three degrees Celsius above normal, and summer temperatures do not usually peak until mid March, professor Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, told The Guardian.</p>
<p>"We are down to the wire," he said.<br></p><p>What happens will ultimately depend on the "vagaries of the weather," he said.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/" target="_blank">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</a> has placed the reef on Alert Level 1 for the next seven days, which means a significant bleaching event is likely, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-20/scientists-warn-potential-bleaching-great-barrier-reef/11984626" target="_blank">ABC News reported</a>. However, the agency's Coral Reef Watch also forecast that the bleaching would not be as intense as the bleaching in 2016 and 2017.</p>
<div id="e9fc7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="XZCJJW1582297513"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1230497465905766406" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Based on current heat stress, temperature trends, and our Four-Month Bleaching Outlook model, @CoralReefWatch is ex… https://t.co/atlvgwaZz5</div> — Coral Reef Watch (@Coral Reef Watch)<a href="https://twitter.com/CoralReefWatch/statuses/1230497465905766406">1582208432.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gasses from the burning of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" target="_self">fossil fuels</a>, which is responsible for heating ocean temperatures, has <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-fires-michael-mann-2644442561.html?rebelltitem=2" target="_self">also been blamed for Australia's more extreme wildfire season</a>. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been criticized for his pro-<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal" target="_self">coal</a> policies and his seeming dismissal of climate concerns.</p><p>"Surely after this summer of bushfires, and this marine heatwave hitting the reef, we cannot keep burying our heads in the sand," Leck told The Guardian. "We need a reef-safe climate policy that's consistent with a 1.5C global warming target, or less. No more excuses will be tolerated."</p>
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A loudspeaker on a damaged reef attracts fish. Tim Gordon / University of Exeter
A team of British and Australian scientists have discovered an innovative way to help coral reefs recover from the climate crisis and other human-caused damage: loudspeakers.
<p>A healthy fish population can help fight the degradation of coral reefs, the study's authors explained in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13186-2" target="_blank">Nature Communications Friday</a>, but damaged reefs don't attract as many fish because they don't smell or sound like healthy reefs.</p><p>"Healthy coral reefs are remarkably noisy places – the crackle of snapping shrimp and the whoops and grunts of fish combine to form a dazzling biological soundscape," senior author and University of Exeter professor Steve Simpson explained in a press release received by EcoWatch. "Juvenile fish home in on these sounds when they're looking for a place to settle."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjExNjUwNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MjA2MDAwNn0.LwTN9nfKYrt58HKicUuXxQshgverP-s8aVbAH5m3_pk/img.jpg?width=980" id="426bf" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="27ca05c15d1df537e4733ebc958f3d3e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A loudspeaker on a coral reef. Tim Gordon / University of Exeter
<p>So a team of researchers from the University of Exeter and the University of Bristol in the UK, and Australia's James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science spent October to December of 2017 in the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/great-barrier-reef" target="_self">Great Barrier Reef</a> trying to see if they could replicate these healthy reef sounds in damaged environments.<br></p><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/12/01/scientists-used-loudspeakers-make-dead-coral-reefs-sound-healthy-fish-flocked-them/?fbclid=IwAR0Ny2b3DK_qz34i2AlxXc1PHVzaRaDIBPlbd_21Bd9LUTkYFMLw53v2nbA" target="_blank">The Washington Post</a> explained their process:</p><blockquote>At the start of fish recruitment season, when fish spawn and mature, the team built 33 experimental reef patches out of dead coral on open sand about 27 yards from the naturally occurring reef. They then fixed underwater loudspeakers to the center of the patches, angling them upward to ensure the sound was distributed evenly in all directions.<br><br>Over 40 nights, the team played recordings from a healthy reef in some of the patches. In other patches, they used dummy speakers that emitted no sounds, and they left a third group of patches untouched.</blockquote><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjExNzU0Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTExMzg4MH0.uTGQ67mf4qlJtyunuOhXTCCLzFttRCr710hY1pPg_dc/img.jpg?width=980" id="4a8e0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1204eb080f0f85c49d3a59c0fd4a5a02" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Tim Gordon deploys an underwater loudspeaker on a coral reef. Harry Harding / University of Bristol
<p>The result? The reef patches that broadcasted the healthy reef sounds attracted double the number of fish as the other patches, and the fish species drawn to them were 50 percent more diverse. That diversity included species from every section of the food web, from plankton eaters to predators, which is important for reef health.</p><p>"Reefs become ghostly quiet when they are degraded, as the shrimps and fish disappear, but by using loudspeakers to restore this lost soundscape, we can attract young fish back again," Simpson said in the press release.</p><p>The scientists called this process "acoustic enrichment" and think it could be one tool for helping reef ecosystems recover more quickly.</p><p>"Of course, attracting fish to a dead reef won't bring it back to life automatically, but recovery is underpinned by fish that clean the reef and create space for corals to regrow," Australian Institute of Marine Science fish biologist and study author Dr. Mark Meekan said in the press release.</p><video controls id="138a7" width="100%" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ba1b96ff2dd5b7031e23f4be22db1d69" expand="1" feedbacks="true" mime_type="video/mp4" shortcode_id="1575294501265" url="https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F15228-Summary-video.mp4" videoControls="true"> <source src="https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F15228-Summary-video.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video><p>However, the researchers urged that it is also important to tackle reef threats like the climate crisis or <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/overfishing" rel="noopener noreferrer">overfishing</a> directly. And in this they were backed up by scientists not involved in the study.</p><p>"Using acoustic enrichment to help recolonise degraded reefs with essential reef fish is a novel tool which can add to the reef conservation toolbox," Dr. Catherine Head of the Zoological Society of London and the University of Oxford told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/29/sonic-youth-healthy-reef-sounds-lure-young-fish-to-degraded-areas" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. "Our biggest tool in the fight for coral reefs is the 2016 Paris climate change agreement to curb global CO2 emissions, and we must continue to put pressure on governments to fulfil this agreement alongside doing our bit to reduce our own carbon footprints."</p>
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Scientists Race to Stop ‘Ebola’ of Coral Diseases From Spreading in U.S. Virgin Islands
27 September 2019
Oceans
A scientist treats coral impacted by stony coral tissue loss disease. Brian Walker / Nova Southeastern University / NOAA
Scientists are racing to save coral reefs off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands from a virulent, deadly disease, Reuters reported Thursday, taking the unusual step of removing infected coral from the reef.
<p>Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) was first discovered in Florida in 2014. It begins as white patches that take over the coral, killing 66 to 100 percent of the species it infects. Between 2013 and 2018, it led to a coral decline in Florida's Upper Keys of more than 40 percent. </p><p>"I have never seen anything that affects so many species, so quickly and so viciously—and it just continues," Marilyn Brandt of the University of the Virgin Islands told Reuters. "All the diseases I've studied in the past could be considered like the flu. They come every year, seasonally, and sometimes there are worse outbreaks. This thing is more like Ebola. It's a killer, and we don't know how to stop it."</p>
<div id="3fc35" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="20FEKT1576661399"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1084080304057397249" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">"Once we see [stony coral tissue loss disease] in a colony, it will kill that colony within days, weeks, or months.… https://t.co/8VA8oJv1ge</div> — Yale Environment 360 (@Yale Environment 360)<a href="https://twitter.com/YaleE360/statuses/1084080304057397249">1547299860.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The disease was first spotted close to the U.S. Virgin Islands in early 2019, <a href="https://www.bvibeacon.com/new-coral-disease-spreading-toward-virgin-islands/" target="_blank">The BVI Beacon reported Tuesday</a>.<br></p><p>Once it infects a coral, it spreads quickly, at a rate of a couple of centimeters per day.</p><p>"Within a month, you'll have the entire coral head gone," <a href="http://www.bviark.org/" target="_blank">Association of Reef Keepers</a> Director Dr. Shannon Gore told The BVI Beacon.</p><p>Between corals, it moves at a rate of about five kilometers (approximately three miles) per month. Since its discovery in Florida in 2014, it has impacted more than 96,000 acres of reef and spread 250 miles down the Florida coast.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTE1ODg1My9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTU0NDIyMH0.KzRGzc4b7YOsTgHw6Zk1curHf-gq-dJlE5UZka80nmI/img.gif?width=980" id="6ee93" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5a206402d783ff99d200a60f797203c4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
The spread of SCTLD along the Florida Reef Tract from 2014 to 2019.
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary / NOAA
<p>SCTLD has also been spotted off the coasts of St. Maarten, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Jamaica.<br></p><p>In Florida, it has impacted half of the stony corals that make up the Florida Reef Tract, including five <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/endangered-species" target="_self">endangered species</a>, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/coral-reefs-threatened-mysterious-disease-compared-ebola-1461711" target="_blank">Newsweek reported</a>.</p><p>In addition to removing diseased coral, scientists have attempted to treat it by removing healthy corals and applying antibiotics directly to reefs, but scientists are also working on a long-term solution, including a potential probiotic, according to The BVI Beacon.<br></p><p>Scientists are also hoping to better understand the disease in order to find a cure.</p><p>"NOAA scientists are working with partners to identify a pathogen that causes the tissue loss, better characterize transmission of the disease, and understand the patterns of spread throughout the reef and overall impacts of the disease," Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary research coordinator Dr. Andy Bruckner told Newsweek.</p><p>Corals around the world are more susceptible to disease because of the warmer <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">ocean</a> temperatures caused by the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="_self">climate crisis</a>, according to <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-disease-ravages-coral-reefs-scientists-scramble-for-solutions" target="_blank">Yale Environment 360</a>. <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coral-bleaching" target="_self">Coral bleaching</a>, when warm water forces coral to expel the algae that give them food and color, makes coral more likely to get sick.</p><p>The coral near Miami where the disease was first discovered had just endured both a dredging project and a bleaching event, scientists told Reuters.</p>From Your Site Articles
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