cnn story on coral

[sidd129]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/05/08/global.warming.reefs.reut/index.html

Well, that settles it. We will have to go on a campain and harvest as much coral as possible to protect it in our own tanks.

J/K

I do belive that the goverment should allow large public aquariums and universities to harvest rare corals to try and culture them and plant them back into the ocean. I wonder if the corals will spread to deeper deapths as the ocean warms?

[Nano Chris]

I think we stop taking corals from the ocean, take what we have and aqua-culture it keep some for our tanks, and place some back into the ocean.

In a way i cant see why the reefs cant adapt to warmer temperatures after existing for a long time.

[frederickk]

I agree with you Chris

[justinzimm]

All,

Right now the government is allowing some zoos and aquariums to collect and propagate corals that are growing in US waters.

Charles Delbeek and the Waikiki Aquarium are holding montipora dilitata, a coral that is only native to hawaii, known to exist in a couple places and may just be the last of a species.

Many zoos in the US participate in the SECORE project and have now cultured hundreds of sexually propogated Acropora palmata colonies. Acropora palmata has been listed as threatened under the endangered species act.

Other aquariums, such as the Florida Aquarium are removing coral fragments from the areas around boat grounding and piers that are being dismantled. They then culture and grow these fragments and return them to the wild.

The real problem with returning corals is this: If a healthy wild coral cannot survive on a reef then why would a captive raised coral do any better? We need to fix the problems that are killing the reefs before we can start rebuilding them.

Other problems are keeping the corals free of exotic strains of zoox and parasites.

And finally wild corals propagate themselves both asexually and sexually. Hobbyist are good at the asexually reproduction part but don't do so well with the sexual reproduction... yet! We can't be introducing hundreds of identical clones onto a reef if they are not genetically strong and will contaminate the gene pool. Finally, we are now learning that some patches thickets are all one species (clones) and it might be that way for a reason. Then adding diversity could work to dilute a strong genotype.

Justin

[sidd129]

one of the things I Thought but failed to post in my first post was that more needs to be done than stop taking corals. But is there anything else that we can do? Without getting into the whole global warming debate please...

[jacmyoung]

Tax credit for keeping reef tanks.

[airinhere]

What a terrible bit of reporting. The writer should be ashamed of themselves.
Here is a link to the actual scientific report
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050124
"Alternatively, rising ocean temperature or an increase in summertime anomalies could inhibit marine epidemics."

I make my point in a thread in the responsible reefkeeping forum
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1116709

The scientists are good.
The study was applaudable.
The results are very open ended.
The reporter should be smacked.

This sort of reporting should concern all of us who enjoy reefkeeping. CNN is a very well regarded news agency with massive exposure.

[jacmyoung]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9912823#post9912823 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by airinhere
What a terrible bit of reporting. The writer should be ashamed of themselves.
Here is a link to the actual scientific report
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050124
"Alternatively, rising ocean temperature or an increase in summertime anomalies could inhibit marine epidemics."

I make my point in a thread in the responsible reefkeeping forum
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1116709

The scientists are good.
The study was applaudable.
The results are very open ended.
The reporter should be smacked.

This sort of reporting should concern all of us who enjoy reefkeeping. CNN is a very well regarded news agency with massive exposure.

I think I should add: You have taken words out of context.

That comment was followed by the explanation that the reason it may inhibite the white bleaching could be that the thinning of the most dense coral covers, which were most susceptible to such disease, may result in the reduction of such disease.

It is like saying, temperature rise can cause sever death wave in areas where human population are the most dense, but after the death wave the population density reduces in those areas to the point that the disease is no longer effective.

[airinhere]

Here is the conclusion as presented at http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050124

Warm temperature anomalies and coral cover are clearly important drivers of white syndrome on the GBR. No previous study has demonstrated a link between ocean temperature and coral disease dynamics, especially at regional spatial scales. Our results are supported by basic epidemiological principles, and could apply to other coral disease systems and to disease ecology in general. However, coral disease dynamics are likely to be affected by a variety of biotic and abiotic factors, the relative importance of which will vary among regions, scales, and species [32]. In some locations, coral disease outbreaks are apparently decoupled from temperature, and several other factors are also known or suspected to influence the dynamics of coral and other marine diseases [19]. For example, the severity of at least three coral diseases is linked with nutrient concentrations [25,32,75], whereas the frequency of others, like white syndrome, is greatest on remote reefs in highly oligotrophic waters [30].

Coral reefs around the world have been dramatically transformed over the last several decades as coral cover decreased and reefs became dominated by macroalgae [71,78–80]. These changes affect entire coral reef ecosystems, resulting in declines in biodiversity, fisheries yield, and other ecosystem services [81]. Our results indicate warm temperature anomalies can drive outbreaks of coral disease under conditions of high coral cover. The general increase in coral disease prevalence and the emergence of several new coral diseases over the last two decades [20,82,83] could also have been caused in part by thermal anomalies. Deciphering these and other effects of increasing temperature on disease dynamics in the ocean presents an urgent challenge to marine scientists.

[airinhere]

and the quote I preented on the other thread was
"Alternatively, rising ocean temperature or an increase in summertime anomalies could inhibit marine epidemics. Environmental stress is often assumed to increase disease severity, but stresses that directly reduce host density can have the opposite effect "

[jacmyoung]

So what is your beef with the reporter? It was the scientists who made the higher temp a central scene of the probable cause of the disease in dense covers, the reporter was just the messenger.

At least you should smack the scientists as well.

[conorwynne]

I remember watching a documentary on BBC1, whereby some scientists were testing using a small electric current (wire mesh) over an area of bleaching coral.

After a few months, the coral under the mesh started to recover big time - compared to the struggling/dying coral nearby.

I wonder will we be resorting to this in the future?
The sea's are not getting any cooler, and salinity is dropping too, what with rising sea levels.

[airinhere]

I guess my beef with the reporter would be the alarmist way he wrote the paper. Many people will read the article only and not look for the research paper to find out anything more. Those same people wil develop strong feelings about the effects of Global Warming regarding another danger it poses to the Earth. The people who read the article will feel like they are well informed about coral disease and bleaching, but are likely to be in support of useless or possibly hurtful policies in a misguided attempt to repair the situation. I dont claim to be an expert, I am only slightly more aware of the problem than the general public. I thnk the stance that Global Warming causes the death of corals is misleading. Not altogether wrong, but not the whole picture either.
It just seems wrong that a major media outlet like CNN is projecting such a lopsided version of the research.

[airinhere]

As for the scientists, They took an idea and have run with it for six years. I think any concepts of Global Warming being a killer of the reefs has been subdued in their minds. They admit in the paper that there are many things they have to look at. I hope they figure it all out. I would really love to visit the Great Barrier Reef someday. Would be a shame if it was almost all gone by then.

[shred5]

But now they are finding coral reefs in place farther north than normal. The reefs will survive global warming, maybe not polution though. As the water warms the reefs will move more north and south away from the equator. There will most likely be less deversity because as this happens alot of the corals will not survive and alot will depend on how fast the warming happens.

Look at where they find coral skeletons now, places that are way to cold to ever hold corals, but it must have been warm enough at one time.

Dave

[sidd129]

Do you guys think that corals will be able to adapt to the lowering salinity in the ocean? Is the salinity lowering? they keep talking about all the ice thats melting but they never talk about all the new sea ice.

[frederickk]

I think that the stronger one will be. Shrooms and zoa's will still be as what they look now.