Coral Reef Protection & Restoration

[GordMay]

These corals could survive climate change — and help save the world’s reefs
Ocean warming threatens to wipe out corals, but scientists are trying to protect naturally resilient reefs, and are nursing some others back to health.
Ocean ecologists hope that, even as the climate warms, corals still have a fighting chance. When these scientists hear that 70–90% of reefs could be gone by mid-century, they focus on the 30% that might live.

➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03629-7

➥ https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...orals-survive/

[tkeithlu]

Any shift in the environment results in large percentage deaths, but if not complete extinction, the bottleneck serves as the engine for natural selection. The tighter the bottle neck, the greater the expected shift. On the artificial selection side, Luther Burbank produced several of our modern foods by planting forty acres, selecting the ten or so best plants, burning the rest, and planting again. Repeat for ten years, and...

[Puddleduck]

Ahhh a positive conservation story

As a triage tool the concept is certainly ‘A’ means of evaluation conservation priorities. But there’s little new here.

Dirk and seacore have been breeding A. palmata In Vitro for nearly 20 years with good results.

2/3rds of the hypothesis relate to environmental anomalies. Local Current and flow dynamics and zooplankton availability are environmental factors conversationalists have no control of.

The final 1/3rd relates to reefs that have overcome historical stress measured by stress bands observed in skeletal core samples. This technique favours massive boulder corals over branching sp. for obvious reasons

I’ve covered this in previous posts...
Massive boulder corals (predominately Porites) show good resilience to increased temperature fluctuation (a small population of coral reefs).

Water flow and current aids recovery and health

Increased ZooPlankton availability as a food source allows less reliance on photosynthesis which ‘buffers’ against temperature induced bleaching events.

Porites corals will be just fine

[Puddleduck]

Originally Posted by tkeithlu

The tighter the bottle neck, the greater the expected shift. On the artificial selection side, Luther Burbank produced several of our modern foods by planting forty acres, selecting the ten or so best plants, burning the rest, and planting again. Repeat for ten years, and...

Indeed the majority of fish rely on complex reef structures as an environment to close their lifecycle. Complex structures equate to ‘weedy’ branching corals that support the majority of biodiversity. loss of biodiversity will never benefit ‘team human’ in the long run. I could plant coral all day long that survive environmental changes but benefit humans very little!

Weather it is loss of reefs or mangroves as nurseries for food fish or extinction of bees as pollinators, nature aids our existence. Monocultures have even less resilience or benefit and end up more intensive in the long run. Bring on the locusts (or crown of thorns)

[Puddleduck]

➥ https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...orals-survive/[/QUOTE]

The price tag to replant the extensive Great Barrier Reef system, 2,300 kilometers in length, has been estimated at nearly $200 billion, using fragments at $5 apiece. But even that cost could be well worth it because the recovery would restore large fisheries that feed many people, create many jobs, and protect valuable coastlines and communities from storms.

I’m off to reefs house with my collection tin!

[GordMay]

Largest Known Deep-sea Coral Reef Habitat:

A coordinated multi-year ocean exploration campaign, on the Blake Plateau, offshore of the southeastern US ( North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida), has mapped, what appears to be, the most expansive cold-water coral (CWC) mound province, thus far discovered, according to a NOAA Press Release [1], citing a paper [2], recently published in the scientific journal Geomatics.
Nearly continuous CWC mound features span an area up to 500 km long, and 110 km wide, with a core area of high-density mounds up to 254 km long, by 42 km wide, and covering 6.4 million acres.

The largest area found has been nicknamed "Million Mounds" by scientists, NOAA said, and is mostly made up of stony, cold-water coral, known as Desmophyllum pertusum – previously called Lophelia pertusa – that's commonly found between 656 feet and 3,280 feet, below the ocean surface. At those depths, there is no sunlight, and the water has an average temperature of 39°F.

The newly uncovered region has the "most extensive" ecosystem of Desmophyllum pertusum ever found within U.S. waters, with mounds estimated to be thousands of years old.
Many [deep-sea corals] live for hundreds of years, with some colonies living over 4,000 years, with latest discovery revealing nearly 84,000 individual coral mound peak features. Over time, these slow-growing corals can build mounds, that rise over 150 meters (500 feet) off the seafloor.

[1] “Multi-Partner Mapping Effort Reveals Largest Known Deep-sea Coral Reef Habitat” ~ NOAA Press Release
➥ https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/news/...tag=MSF0951a18

[2] “Mapping and Geomorphic Characterization of the Vast Cold-Water Coral Mounds of the Blake Plateau” ~ by Derek C. Sowers et al
➥ https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7418/4/1/2

[SailOar]

Six Spongy Sea Creatures Suggest Warming Might Be Worse Than Thought

Research on a long-lived but rarely seen species in the Caribbean is helping scientists piece together a revised history of climate change.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/c...smid=url-share

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Six Spongy Sea Creatures Suggest Warming Might Be Worse Than Thought

Research on a long-lived but rarely seen species in the Caribbean is helping scientists piece together a revised history of climate change.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/c...smid=url-share

The study*, cited in SailOar’s NY Times article:
* “300 years of sclerosponge thermometry shows global warming has exceeded 1.5 °C” ~ by Malcolm T. McCulloch et al (05 February 2024)
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01919-7

See also, the “other evidence”:
“Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents” ~ by Nerilie J. Abram et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19082

[Montanan]

Florida Keys' coral reefs devastated by 2023's marine heat wave

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/to...e34860c&ei=138

The preliminary results show that less than 22% of the approximately 1,500 staghorn coral surveyed are still alive.

Of the five reefs surveyed by NOAA's Mission: Iconic Reefs program and the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, only the two most northern ones, Carysfort Reef and Horseshoe Reef, had any living staghorn coral.

And of those surveyed, live elkhorn coral was only found at three sites.

No living staghorn or elkhorn corals were found at sample areas surveyed at Looe Key Reef, located in the lower Florida Keys, NOAA stated in a release.


The coral mortality seen as a result of last year's marine heat wave — which came on earlier — was more severe and lasted longer than usual for this region.

According to Katey Lesneski, the monitoring coordinator for NOAA's Mission: Iconic Reefs program, the roughly 30,000 staghorn coral outplants at these five reefs (planted between 2020 and 2022) had one-year survival rates from an average of 40% to over 75%.

"Outplanting" refers to planting coral fragments that were grown in nurseries, back onto reefs.

[Montanan]

Conservation group expands Hawaii coral reef insurance programme

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/co...b43c453&ei=146


Conservation group The Nature Conservancy has purchased a new, expanded insurance policy that could see up to $2 million paid out to help protect coral reefs around the main islands of Hawaii in the event of storm damage.

The policy is an example of so-called parametric insurance, which pays out when certain predetermined triggers are reached and is increasingly seen as a quicker way for money to be disbursed to damaged areas in the event of natural disasters.

. . .

Describing the new cover as "a major upgrade", TNC said it added an extra 314,976 square kilometers to the coverage area.

The minimum payout also increased to $200,000 to enable "a more meaningful response", with a cap of $1 million per storm.

The policy is triggered when tropical storm winds of 50 miles an hour or more hit the coverage area. While the previous policy was not triggered, worsening climate impacts meant the new policy was needed, TNC said in a statement.

Protecting the reefs is important as they can help reduce wave energy by 97%, TNC said, helping protect communities from flood damage. The reefs also contribute more than $1.2 billion a year to the local economy.