Category Archives: coral

climate change, coral, coral reefs, reef health

Marine Pollution Bulletin: Viewpoint: The Coral Reef Crisis: The Importance of <350 ppm CO2 by Veron (a), Hoegh-Guldberg (b), Lenton (c), Lough (d), Obura (e), Pearce-Kelly (f,i), Sheppard (g), Spalding (h, i), Stafford-Smith (a), Rogers (j, i).

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Since this is a copyrighted article, we refer you to the Marine Pollution Bulletin 58 (2009) 1428-1436 and provide this abstract:

Temperature-induced mass coral bleaching causing mortality on a wide geographic scale started when atmospheric CO2 levels exceeded 320 ppm. When CO2 levels reach 340 ppm, sporadic but highly destructive mass bleaching occurred in most reefs worldwide, often associated with El Nino events. Recovery was dependent on the vulnerability of individual reef areas and on the reef’s previous history and resilience.

At today’s level of 387 ppm, allowing a lag-time of 10 years for sea temperatures to respond, most reefs world-wide are committed to an irreversible decline. Mass bleaching will in future become annual, departing from the 4 to 7 years return-time of El Nino events. Bleaching will be exacerbated by the effects of degraded water-quality and increased severe weather events. In addition, the progressive onset of ocean acidification will cause reduction of coral growth and retardation of the growth of high magnesium calcite-secreting coralline algae.

If CO2 levels are allowed to reach 450 ppm (due to occur by 2030–2040 at the current rates), reefs will be in rapid and terminal decline world-wide from multiple synergies arising from mass bleaching, ocean acidification and other environmental impacts. Damage to shallow reef communities will become extensive with consequent reduction of biodiversity followed by extinctions. Reefs will cease to be large-scale nursery grounds for fish and will cease to have most of their current value to humanity. There will be knock-on effects to ecosystems associated with reefs, and to other pelagic and benthic ecosystems.

Should CO2 levels reach 600 ppm, reefs will be eroding geological structures with populations of surviving biota restricted to refuges. Domino effects will follow, affecting many other marine ecosystems. This is likely to have been the path of great mass extinctions of the past, adding to the case that anthropogenic CO2 emissions could trigger the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.

Authors are from the following institutions:
a Coral Reef Research, Townsville, Australia
b Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
c School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
d Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Australia
e IUCN Coral Specialist Group, CORDIO East Africa, Mombasa, Kenya
f Zoological Society of London, London, United Kingdom
g Department of Biological Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom
h The Nature Conservancy, Newmarket, United Kingdom
i Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
j International Programme on State of the Ocean and Zoological Society of London, London, United Kingdom

climate change, coral, coral reefs

Coral-list discussion: Change Global Behavior

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#ChangeGlobalBehavior

This comment from Nohora Galvis posted on the NOAA Coral-list is part of a discussion of how to reduce the impacts of climate change. It is the best summary I have read yet:

Fundación ICRI Colombia en Pro de los Arrecifes Coralinos icri.colombia@gmail.com via coral.aoml.noaa.gov

Dec 2 (1 day ago)

Dear Leslie,

This is about all, as all of us are decision makers. Of course, the
main responsibility goes to the top decision makers who work in our
representation to rule the world by applying new regulations and
enforce them. It is about the communities and Civil Society who should
be listened without discrimination to allow them to speak up (Civil
Rights) and request as many times as needed to promote better
conservation of coral reefs. It is about scientists who should open to
other scenarios to publish their findings e.g. social media, without
feeling that they are losing rigor by expressing that they also FEEL
passion about coral reef conservation.

It is also about organizers of international meetings who allow online
participation to reduce the environmental / economic cost of
travelling. It is about Environmental International and National
Organizations who should allow participation of scientific based
advocacy. It is about every one of the human beings who decide what to
buy, how to move from one place to other, who recycle, who diminish
consumption, who update their information to become more environmental
friendly, who are open to advice to improve local and global behavior.

At #COP21 We are starting to #ChangeGlobalBehavior !!!

All the best,
Nohora Galvis

coral, coral disease

Toxicopathological Effects of the Sunscreen UV Filter, Oxybenzone (Benzophenone-3), on Coral Planulae and Cultured Primary Cells and Its Environmental Contamination in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands by CA Downs, et. al.

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Coral-list post by Cheryl Woodley

I’d like to bring to your attention a new study published yesterday in the
journal *Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology* showing
that a chemical widely used in personal care products such as sunscreen,
poses an ecological threat to corals and coral reefs and threatens their
existence.

Oxybenzone (also known as BP-3; Benzophenone-3) is found in over 3,500
sunscreen products worldwide, and pollutes coral reefs from swimmers
wearing sunscreens and through wastewater discharges from municipal sewage
outfalls and from coastal septic systems. Between 6,000 and 14,000 tons of
sunscreen lotion are emitted into coral reef areas each year, much of which
contains between one and 10% oxybenzone. The authors estimate that this
puts at least 10% of global reefs at risk of high exposure, based on reef
distribution in coastal tourist areas.

Toxicopathological effects of the sunscreen UV filter, oxybenzone on coral
planulae demonstrates that exposure of coral planulae (baby coral) to
oxybenzone, produces gross morphological deformities, damages their DNA,
and, most alarmingly, acts as an endocrine disruptor. The latter causes the
coral to encase itself in its own skeleton leading to death.

These effects were observed as low as 62 parts per trillion, the equivalent
to a drop of water in six and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools

Measurements of oxybenzone in seawater within coral reefs in Hawaii and the
U.S. Virgin Islands found concentrations ranging from 800 parts per
trillion to 1.4 parts per million. This is over 12 times higher than the
concentrations necessary to impact on coral

Article
Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, pp 1-24

First online: 20 October 2015

Toxicopathological Effects of the Sunscreen UV Filter, Oxybenzone (Benzophenone-3), on Coral Planulae and Cultured Primary Cells and Its Environmental Contamination in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands
C. A. Downs, Esti Kramarsky-Winter, Roee Segal, John Fauth, Sean Knutson, Omri Bronstein, Frederic R. Ciner, Rina Jeger, Yona Lichtenfel and 5 more

UV light on corals

Special thanks to Coral-list@noaa.gov

$39.95 / €34.95 / £29.95 *

* Final gross prices may vary according to local VAT.
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Abstract

Benzophenone-3 (BP-3; oxybenzone) is an ingredient in sunscreen lotions and personal-care products that protects against the damaging effects of ultraviolet light. Oxybenzone is an emerging contaminant of concern in marine environments—produced by swimmers and municipal, residential, and boat/ship wastewater discharges. We examined the effects of oxybenzone on the larval form (planula) of the coral Stylophora pistillata, as well as its toxicity in vitro to coral cells from this and six other coral species. Oxybenzone is a photo-toxicant; adverse effects are exacerbated in the light. Whether in darkness or light, oxybenzone transformed planulae from a motile state to a deformed, sessile condition. Planulae exhibited an increasing rate of coral bleaching in response to increasing concentrations of oxybenzone. Oxybenzone is a genotoxicant to corals, exhibiting a positive relationship between DNA-AP lesions and increasing oxybenzone concentrations. Oxybenzone is a skeletal endocrine disruptor; it induced ossification of the planula, encasing the entire planula in its own skeleton. The LC50 of planulae exposed to oxybenzone in the light for an 8- and 24-h exposure was 3.1 mg/L and 139 µg/L, respectively. The LC50s for oxybenzone in darkness for the same time points were 16.8 mg/L and 779 µg/L. Deformity EC20 levels (24 h) of planulae exposed to oxybenzone were 6.5 µg/L in the light and 10 µg/L in darkness. Coral cell LC50s (4 h, in the light) for 7 different coral species ranges from 8 to 340 µg/L, whereas LC20s (4 h, in the light) for the same species ranges from 0.062 to 8 µg/L. Coral reef contamination of oxybenzone in the U.S. Virgin Islands ranged from 75 µg/L to 1.4 mg/L, whereas Hawaiian sites were contaminated between 0.8 and 19.2 µg/L. Oxybenzone poses a hazard to coral reef conservation and threatens the resiliency of coral reefs to climate change.

coral, coral reefs, dredging

Coral-List: Coral Morphologic presents “The Endangered Elkhorn Corals of Fisher Island & Miami’s Deep Dredge (Part 1 of 3)”

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May 26

With so many dredge projects being proposed on reefs around the world, here
is another reminder of just how negative the impact can be.

The massive Army Corps of Engineers’ Deep Dredge of Port Miami has now been
ongoing for 18 months nearly non-stop (with several more to go). Not only
have the Army Corps failed to transplant a large number of
federally-protected staghorn corals (*Acropora cervicornis*) living within
the offshore dredging area, they have also produced copious amounts of silt
that has smothered acres of adjacent reef area outside where they claimed
would be impacted. We have documented multiple corals having been
improperly transplanted by their paid contractors, in some cases not even
bothering to use adhesive to reattach them. In other cases, corals that
were transplanted still wound up smothered to death due to their horizontal
attachment on boulders which collects falling silt on their tissue and
doesn’t allow for easy sloughing off.

After our most recent health survey of several highly unusual elkhorn
corals (*Acropora palmata*) living on a coastal seawall along Fisher
Island’s marina here in Miami, we have decided to bring their plight
public. While staghorn is not particularly uncommon offshore Miami, elkhorn
is so extremely rare that is almost absent. It is quite possible that these
are the most ‘coastal’ of all of Florida’s elkhorn colonies… they are
literally growing along the shoreline in knee-deep water adjacent to a
marina and a wastewater treatment plant. The fact that they have persisted
for so long in man-made urban habitat is a testament to their resilience.
However, it is clear that over the past year and half of dredging, the
health of these colonies has declined precipitously. Coral Morphologic
proposes that these elkhorn corals, which are receiving the full brunt of
siltation stress, should be given special protection to ensure their
survival before the summer heat adds to their stress. Given that there are
multiple independent elkhorn branches as a result of past white pox die-off
(that caused them to become discontinuous sub-colonies), we propose that
they are ideal for in-situ mariculture in a coastal coral nursery here in
Miami where they can be carefully propagated into large enough numbers for
subsequent laboratory research and local reef restoration.

Video of the elkhorn coral and improperly transplanted corals on Fisher
Island can be found here:

http://coralmorphologic.com/b/2015/05/21/fisher-island-corals-the-saga-of-the-deep-dredge-part-1-of-3

Stay tuned for Part 2 follows up with the fate of two different hybrid
fused-staghorn (*Acropora prolifera*) corals living alongside the elkhorn
corals on Fisher Island.

Cheers,
Colin Foord
Coral Morphologic coralmorphologic@gmail.com via coral.aoml.noaa.gov