[Coral-List] 2014 Eco-Audit on Mesoamerican Reef

04/04/2014 admin Leave a comment

Melanie McField mcfield@healthyreefs.org via coral.aoml.noaa.gov

Apr 2, 2014
Of interest to the Coral Reef Community – the latest report from the
Healthy Reefs Initiative

No Reef Left Behind: Is Management of the Mesoamerican Reef Making the
Grade?

The coral reefs of Mesoamerica – Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico –
are known for their striking beauty and colorful diversity, but are we
doing enough to protect these natural underwater treasures? That is the
focus of a just published study by the Healthy Reefs Initiative. Their 2014
Eco-Audit of the Mesoamerican Reef (MAR) Countries is a systematic
multinational evaluation involving four countries, over 50 organizations
and more than 350 analytical documents – and is thought to be the only
multi-national environmental audit of its kind globally.

The region-wide results for 2014 measured a ‘Fair’ level of positive
implementation (2.9 out of a possible score of 5.0); with Belize
maintaining the highest score (3.2) followed closely by Mexico (3.1),
Honduras (2.7), and Guatemala (2.4). The theme with the highest ranking
(Good) was *Research, Education and Awareness* (3.9), followed by *Marine
Protected Areas* (3.4), which also showed good improvement since the last
audit. *Sustainability in the Private Sector *got a “Poor” score (2.4),
although it showed improvement since the last audit. *Sanitation and
Sewage Treatment* had the lowest score (2.3) with no improvements.
Additional NGO and government effort in improving sanitation will not only
benefit the regions reefs but also the health of the millions of people
living along the coast.

The full press release is attached. The Eco-Audit brochure and all
documentation can be downloaded from www.healthyreefs.org.

Regards

Melanie

—
Melanie McField, PhD
Director, Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative, Smithsonian
Institution
1648 NE 47th St, Ft Lauderdale FL 33334
Cell: 754 610 9311 Tel: 954 990 8842
email: mcfield@healthyreefs.org
www.healthyreefs.org

Join the International Society for Reef Studies
www.fit.edu/isrs/

coral reefs, reef health

Chemical defenses and resource trade-offs structure sponge communities on Caribbean coral reefs by T. Loh and J. Pawlik

03/19/2014 admin Leave a comment

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/11/4151

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America PNAS,
vol. 111 no. 11 Tse-Lynn Loh, 4151–4156, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1321626111

by Tse-Lynn Loh1 and Joseph R. Pawlik2

Author Affiliations
Edited* by Jerrold Meinwald, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and approved January 22, 2014 (received for review November 19, 2013)

Significance

Chemical defenses are known to protect some species from consumers, but it is often difficult to detect this advantage at the community or ecosystem levels because of the complexity of abiotic and biotic factors that influence species abundances. We surveyed the community of sponges and sponge predators (angelfishes and parrotfishes) on coral reefs across the Caribbean ranging from heavily overfished sites to protected marine reserves. High predator abundance correlated with high abundance of chemically defended sponge species, but reefs with few predators were dominated by undefended sponge species, which grow or reproduce faster than defended species. Overfishing may enhance competition between palatable sponge species and reef-building stony corals, further impeding the recovery of Caribbean coral reefs.
Abstract

Ecological studies have rarely been performed at the community level across a large biogeographic region. Sponges are now the primary habitat-forming organisms on Caribbean coral reefs. Recent species-level investigations have demonstrated that predatory fishes (angelfishes and some parrotfishes) differentially graze sponges that lack chemical defenses, while co-occurring, palatable species heal, grow, reproduce, or recruit at faster rates than defended species. Our prediction, based on resource allocation theory, was that predator removal would result in a greater proportion of palatable species in the sponge community on overfished reefs. We tested this prediction by performing surveys of sponge and fish community composition on reefs having different levels of fishing intensity across the Caribbean. A total of 109 sponge species was recorded from 69 sites, with the 10 most common species comprising 51.0% of sponge cover (3.6–7.7% per species). Nonmetric multidimensional scaling indicated that the species composition of sponge communities depended more on the abundance of sponge-eating fishes than geographic location. Across all sites, multiple-regression analyses revealed that spongivore abundance explained 32.8% of the variation in the proportion of palatable sponges, but when data were limited to geographically adjacent locations with strongly contrasting levels of fishing pressure (Cayman Islands and Jamaica; Curaçao, Bonaire, and Martinique), the adjusted R2 values were much higher (76.5% and 94.6%, respectively). Overfishing of Caribbean coral reefs, particularly by fish trapping, removes sponge predators and is likely to result in greater competition for space between faster-growing palatable sponges and endangered reef-building corals.

chemical ecology
indirect effects
community structure
marine protected areas
trophic dynamics

Footnotes

1Present address: Daniel P. Haerther Center for Conservation and Research, John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, IL 60605.
2To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pawlikj@uncw.edu.

Author contributions: J.R.P. designed research; T.-L.L. and J.R.P. performed research; T.-L.L. and J.R.P. analyzed data; and T.-L.L. and J.R.P. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1321626111/-/DCSupplemental.

coral reefs, land-based pollutants

Cecilia D-Angelo, Jorg Wiedenmann: Impacts of nutrient enrichment on coral reefs: new perspectives and implications for coastal management and reef survival

03/14/2014 admin Leave a comment

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2013.11.029

Open Access view full pdf: Impacts of Nutrient Enrichment
Highlights

• Nutrient enrichment negatively affects coral physiology and ecosystem functioning.
• Integrative model of reef survival in dependence of direct and indirect nutrient effects.
• Coastal run-off-induced phytoplankton blooms impose nutrient stress on coral reefs.
• Regional nutrient management is crucial for reef survival under the pressure of climate change.

Anthropogenic nutrient enrichment is often associated with coral reef decline. Consequently, there is a large consent that increased nutrient influxes in reef waters have negative longterm consequences for corals. However, the mechanisms by which dissolved inorganic nutrients can disturb corals and their symbiotic algae are subject to controversial debate. Herein, we discuss recent studies that demonstrate how nutrient enrichment affects the heat and light stress tolerance of corals and their bleaching susceptibility. We integrate direct and indirect effects of nutrient enrichment on corals in a model that explains why healthy coral reefs can exist over a rather broad range of natural nutrient environments at the lower end of the concentration scale and that anthropogenic nutrient enrichment can disturb the finely balanced processes via multiple pathways. We conceptualise that corals can suffer from secondary negative nutrient effects due to the alteration of their natural nutrient environment by increased phytoplankton loads. In this context, we suggest that phytoplankton represents a likely vector that can translate nutrients effects, induced for instance by coastal run-off, into nutrient stress on coral reefs in considerable distance to the site of primary nutrient enrichment. The presented synthesis of the literature suggests that the effects of nutrient enrichment and eutrophication beyond certain thresholds are negative for the physiological performance of the coral individual and for ecosystem functioning. Hence, the immediate implementation of knowledge-based nutrient management strategies is crucial for coral reef survival.

Special thanks to Coral-list @ noaa.gov

natural resources

WOrld Resources Institute releases Coastal Capital: Ecosystem Valuation for Decision Making in the Caribbean

03/12/2014 admin Leave a comment

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, coastal ecosystems provide a range of valuable goods and services to people and economies across the Caribbean, including tourism, fisheries, shoreline protection, and more. Despite their importance, these ecosystems are highly threatened from numerous human pressures including overfishing, pollution, and climate change.

Economic analysis is a widely used approach to inform investment and development decisions, and ecosystem valuation can help make the economic case for protection and sustainable use of coastal resources. While more than 100 valuations have been conducted for the Caribbean’s coastal ecosystems to date, only a minority have actually helped to inform policy, management, or investment decisions. Why have some valuations had more impact than others, and what can we all do to increase the likelihood that future valuations will help safeguard the Caribbean’s valuable coastal resources?

The World Resources Institute (WRI) and partners recently released the newest publication in our Coastal Capital series, a guidebook called Coastal Capital: Ecosystem Valuation for Decision Making in the Caribbean. This guidebook is intended for economic valuation practitioners-both economists and non-economists-who would like to conduct coastal ecosystem valuation to achieve influence and inform real-world decisions. Summarizing best practices from previous coastal valuations that have successfully informed decision making in the Caribbean, our guidebook leads practitioners through the scoping, analysis, and outreach steps of a valuation effort.

This guidebook grew out of conversations with a broad partnership of organizations working on the protection and sustainable use of coastal and marine ecosystems in the Caribbean. We build upon existing economic valuation guidelines and tools to fill three main gaps in the literature:

1. Step-by-step advice on conducting coastal ecosystem valuation with a specific emphasis on informing decisions.
2. Examples of best practice studies that use valuation to address the most pressing coastal policy questions in the Caribbean.
3. Best practice reporting and outreach guidelines for new coastal valuation studies.

We will give an overview of the guidebook and facilitate a discussion about it during a webinar on March 18 at 1PM EDT in collaboration with the Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership.

If you would like to receive a hardcopy of the guidebook, you may order directly here (search on “Coastal Capital”) or send us an email at ReefsatRisk@WRI.org. Please feel free to forward this message to your networks.

Sincerely,
Rich, Lauretta, and Erin

Learn more:

* Download the guidebook PDF – Coastal Capital: Ecosystem Valuation for Decision Making in the Caribbean
* Read our blog – “Making Economic Valuation Count for Coastal Ecosystems in the Caribbean”
* Visit our project page – Coastal Capital
* Sign up for the March 18 webinar

Richard Waite
Associate – Food, Forests & Water Program
World Resources Institute
10 G Street, NE, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20002 USA
WRI.org

Tel: +1 202-729-7734
rwaite@wri.org | Skype: richard.a.waite

WRI focuses on the intersection of the environment and socio-economic development. We go beyond research to put ideas into action, working globally with governments, business, and civil society to build transformative solutions that protect the earth and improve people’s lives.
Special thanks to Coral-list

sea turtles

BBC News: Satellites track turtle ‘lost years’

03/05/2014 admin Leave a comment

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26435342

5 March 2014 Last updated at 02:43 ET

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Very young turtle. Getting tags to stay on fast-growing young turtles has been a challenge

New insights have been gained into the “lost years” of loggerhead turtles.

Tiny satellite tags have tracked months-old animals in the uncertain period when they leave US coastal waters and head out into the wider Atlantic Ocean. The data suggests the loggerheads can spend quite some time in the Sargasso Sea, possibly living in amongst floating mats of sargassum seaweed. The observations are reported in a journal of the Royal Society.

“This has been a fun study because the data suggest the turtles are doing something a little bit unexpected to what everyone had assumed over the past few decades, and it boils down to having the right technology to be able to follow the animals,” said lead author Dr Kate Mansfield from University of Central Florida, Orlando.

Scientists have long struggled to track the earliest years of Atlantic loggerheads (Caretta caretta).

Loggerhead Sea Turtle

Scientific name: Caretta caretta
Loggerheads in the North Atlantic cover thousands of km
Loggerheads are found in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
Considered “endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

After emerging from their nests on Florida’s beaches, the infant turtles, or neonates, make a dash for the water and head out on a great adventure.

Precisely where they go and what they do with their time before returning as large juveniles to the US seaboard has been something of a mystery.

Genetics studies, bycatch, strandings and opportunistic sightings offshore had given broad hints – that they travel in a huge circle within the currents associated with the North Atlantic subtropical gyre, reaching the Azores and Cape Verde before heading back to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. Tracking by satellite would give more definitive answers, but attaching data tags to turtles that are just a few months old, and growing rapidly, has been a struggle.

But by using flexible mounts and preparation techniques usually found in a manicurist’s salon, Dr Mansfield’s team got the tags to stay on the animals’ shells for up to 220 days. And it is with this new data that the scientists can see the young turtles dropping out of the gyre’s predominant currents into the middle of the Atlantic – into what is often referred to as the Sargasso Sea. The way the tags worked indicated also that the loggerheads mostly stayed at the sea surface. This could be seen in the temperature recordings as well, although these readings were quite a bit higher than expected.

Turtles for release. The turtles in this study were released off the US East Coast

Sargassum: The young turtles probably get a warming benefit from associating with sargassum. This has led the team to hypothesise that the turtles are living in and around the great mats of sargassum found in the central Atlantic. The activity is well known and assumed in young turtles to have something to do with the protection from predation and foraging opportunities that the seaweed offers. But Dr Mansfield believes there may be thermal benefits for these cold-blooded creatures, too.

“Their survival, their metabolism, their feeding behaviour – everything is enhanced by optimal temperatures. And the sargassum is almost like a warm, floating micro-habitat. The mats trap water where you can get localised warming,” she told BBC News.

“We actually did a down-and-dirty experiment with sargassum in a bucket of water alongside a water bucket without sargassum, and, sure enough, you get a temperature difference that could explain what we saw from the tags.”

Atlantic loggerheads are classified as endangered, and that concern is heightened because they take so long to reach sexual maturity. It can be 25 years or more before they get reproduce and put back into the population. Knowing what they get up to during their juvenile phases is therefore very useful conservation information.

The new study appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Prof Brendan Godley is a co-ordinator of the Marine Turtle Research Group, which is based at Exeter University, UK. He commented: “This paper marks a major step forward in the development of satellite tracking.

“So far, tracking has focussed on adults, particularly females with few tags on juveniles and a handful on open oceanic life stages. This is the first that has tracked turtles so small. Tracking turtles this way is continually offering new insights into the life history patterns of these elusive species, greatly enhancing our ability to improve the conservation of this important animal group,” he told BBC News.

Hear more from Kate Mansfield on BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science programme with Lucie Green this Thursday at 1630 GMT.