coral reefs

AAAS: Great Barrier Reef keeps World Heritage Site Status

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http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2015/06/great-barrier-reef-keeps-world-heritage-site-status?utm_campaign=email-news-latest&utm_src=email

ScienceInsider–Breaking news and analysis from the world of science policy

By Leigh Dayton 1 June 2015 11:00 am 2 Comments

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA—A threat by a key U.N. agency to list Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as “in danger” has been averted—for now. A draft decision announced on 29 May by a working group of the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture’s World Heritage Committee allows the GBR to keep its current World Heritage Area status but requires Australia to report on progress to safeguard the iconic reef from further decline by 1 December 2016. If “anticipated progress” is not demonstrated, an “in danger” listing will be reconsidered in 2017. Australia will also have to report in 2020 on whether the nation’s Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan is meeting its targets.

Demonstrating progress by the end of next year is “a real challenge given the enormity of the reef and the short time-line,” says Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Townsville. He is critical of the Reef 2050 plan. When it was released in March, he told ScienceInsider it “virtually ignores climate change.”

The World Heritage Committee working group “notes with concern” that the overall outlook for the reef is “poor,” and that climate change, poor water quality, and impacts from coastal development are major threats to its health and have been degrading key habitats, species, and ecosystem processes in the central and southern inshore areas.

The draft decision will be approved—or amended—by the full committee when it meets in Bonn, Germany, later this month. The Australian government lobbied hard to avoid an embarrassing “in danger” listing—spending an estimated AU$76,500 visiting the committee’s 21 delegations in their home countries. That is no guarantee members will accept the draft or the government’s assurances. In recent years, the committee has often amended draft decisions.

Scientists and environmental groups remain skeptical about governmental promises. They argue that the government’s pledge of AU$1.53 billion over 10 years is insufficient to meet its planned targets, and point to state and federal support for development of a complex of coal mines in central Queensland, including the world’s largest thermal coal project. Hughes notes that the “unprecedented expansion” of mines and ports will see the number of coal ships crossing the GBR grow from 1600 in 2012 to more than 4000 by 2020. Greenpeace says the draft decision should not be viewed as a reprieve, calling it in a statement “a big red flag.”

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

climate change, coral disease

Coral-list: Jeffrey Maynard announces Nature Climate Change publication “Projections of Climate Conditions that increase coral disease susceptibility and pathogen abundance and virulence.”

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We’d like to bring your attention to a paper recently published in *Nature
Climate Change *titled: *Projections of climate conditions that increase
coral disease susceptibility and pathogen abundance and virulence. *

We present and compare climate model projections of temperature conditions
that will increase coral susceptibility to disease, pathogen abundance and
pathogen virulence under both moderate (RCP 4.5) and fossil fuel aggressive
(RCP 8.5) emissions scenarios. We also compare projections for the onset of
disease-conducive conditions and severe annual coral bleaching, and produce
a disease risk summary that combines climate stress with stress caused by
local human activities.

Some highlight results:

1. Disease is as likely to cause coral mortality as bleaching in the coming
decades. As evidence of this, at 96% of reef locations at least 2 of the 3
temperature conditions examined occur before annual severe coral bleaching
is projected to occur.

2. There are areas that meet 2 or all 3 of the temperature conditions
examined and have high or very high anthropogenic stress. These
are priority locations for reducing stress caused by local human activities
and testing management interventions to reduce disease impacts.

3. The emissions scenarios RCP8.5 and 4.5 take time to diverge and there is
little difference between the scenarios for the timing of the various
disease-promoting conditions being met. This is further evidence that
reducing stress caused by local human activities will be critically
important to reducing disease impacts in the coming decades.

The role of disease as a significant driver of future reef community
composition is under-appreciated, especially in the Indo-Pacific. Our paper
strongly suggests disease needs to be given greater consideration in
management planning. Further, we need to develop more early warning tools
for disease similar to the few already developed and the tools available
for monitoring bleaching risk from NOAA Coral Reef Watch.

The article can be accessed from the front page here:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2625.html

A short story about the article:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/05/scientists-expect-more-coral-disease-under-climate-change

Our author team: Jeff Maynard, Ruben van Hooidonk, Mark Eakin, Marjetta
Puotinen, Melissa Garren, Gareth Williams, Scott Heron, Joleah Lamb,
Ernesto Weil, Bette Willis, and Drew Harvell.

*Funders: NOAA Climate Program Office and US National Science Foundation.

—
Jeffrey A. Maynard
Research Faculty – Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell
University
Research Scientist – CRIOBE & EPHE/CNRS of Moorea, Polynesia and Paris,
France.
Manager – Marine Applied Research Center, North Carolina.
P (mobile): +1 (910) 616-1096
E: maynardmarine@gmail.com
Skype: jefmaynard
_______________________________________________
Coral-List mailing list
Coral-List@coral.aoml.noaa.gov
http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list

climate change

Coral-list: Oceans 2015 Initiative An updated synthesis of the observed and projected impacts of climate change on physical and biological processes in the oceans (Part I) and An updated understanding of the observed and projected impacts of ocean warming and acidification on marine and coastal socioeconomic activities/sectors

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Part I

Part II

It is my pleasure to send you the links (free access) to two reports of the Oceans 2015 Initiative. These reports summarize the key findings of the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report (AR5) and bring in newer literature to assess the impacts of ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and sea level rise, linking ocean physics and chemistry to biological processes and ecosystem functions (Part I), and ecosystem services and ocean-related human activities (Part II). These reports are the first two of several items being developed to provide input to the upcoming 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Oceans 2015 Initiative, Part I. An updated synthesis of the observed and projected impacts of climate change on physical and biological processes in the oceans — E. Howes, F. Joos, M. Eakin, J.-P. Gattuso — http://www.iddri.org/Publications/The-Oceans-2015-Initiative,Part-I-An-updated-synthesis-of-the-observed-and-projected-impacts-of-climate-change-on-physical-and

The Oceans 2015 Initiative, Part II. An updated understanding of the observed and projected impacts of ocean warming and acidification on marine and coastal socioeconomic activities/sectors — L. Weatherdon, A. Rogers, R. Sumaila, A. Magnan, W.L. Cheung — http://www.iddri.org/Publications/The-Oceans-2015-Initiative,Part-II-An-updated-understanding-of-the-observed-and-projected-impacts-of-ocean-warming-and-acidific

Cheers,
Mark
——————————————————————
C. Mark Eakin, Ph.D.
Coordinator, NOAA Coral Reef Watch
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Center for Satellite Applications and Research
Satellite Oceanography & Climate Division
e-mail: mark.eakin@noaa.gov
url: coralreefwatch.noaa.gov

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President Barack Obama, June 17, 2014