Researchers find large patch of algal reefs

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Taiwan Journal, 22nd August 2008

Researchers from Academia Sinicia have uncovered the largest algal reef in eastern Taiwan along the coast of Shanyuan Bay in Taitung County.

"It’s quite surprising to discover such a large patch of algal reefs that are relatively undisturbed by human activities," said Allen Chao-lun Chen, an associate researcher at Academia Sinica’s Research Center for Biodiversity Aug. 14.

According to Chen, algal reefs, formed by crystalline calcium carbonates left by dead calcareous algae, usually grow at the extremely slow rate of 0.1 centimeters to 0.2 centimeters in thickness per year. Coral communities can be found in waters 1 kilometer off the coastline at a depth of 8 meters to 10 meters.

In addition to the newly-discovered algal reef, Shanyuan Bay also boasts a dense and diverse cornularia coral community in which a wealth of fish, shrimp and shell species live–a phenomenon not seen in other areas in Taiwan, Chen noted.

The largest algal reef in Taiwan was located off Taoyuan County in northwestern Taiwan, which is 4 kilometers long and 500 meters wide. Most of Taiwan’s coral reefs are found off the island’s southern coastlines, as well as its outlying islands.

The discovery coincides with a U.N. global coral reefs survey and the International Year of the Reef. Chen’s decade-long study to conduct a survey of the marine ecology in Shanyuan Bay, Green Island, and the Penghu Islands was commissioned by the ROC government this year.

According to the researcher, the most encouraging part of his find was that a stem of Oulophyllia bennettae coral was seen in the bay. Chen explained this was the first time the coral strain, which is normally seen in the Indian Ocean, had been recorded in Taiwanese waters.

But Chen expressed concern that unchecked tourism development could harm coral reefs in the region. "Since some areas of the algae reefs have already been damaged, the government should take immediate steps to better manage and protect Shanyuan Bay."

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Drilling for Oil Way, Way Offshore

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Time Magazine, 18th August

Anyone who ever doubted the centrality of oil and natural gas to the global economy should have been convinced by the political events of the past few months. As petroleum prices have risen to record levels, the spiraling price of gasoline has become issue number one in the American Presidential election. That’s prompted Republican candidate John McCain to make expanded offshore oil drilling a focus of his campaign. For years, offshore drilling has been illegal outside parts of the Gulf of Mexico due to environmental concerns, with public support. But that has reversed in recent months, with even green Californians moving in favor of drilling. Barring a sudden national move to adopt alternative fuels, we can expect that reversal to continue — as oil prices rise, so will pressure to "drill here and drill now," as McCain has put it.

Whatever that means for offshore drilling in the U.S., the real victims of the global thirst for petroleum will be overseas — areas that, until the recent price rise, were too remote and forbidding to be worth drilling. Case in point: the vast, impenetrable western reaches of the Amazon. Touching parts of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Brazil, the western Amazon has remained relatively unscathed compared to the eastern stretches of the rainforest, which have been ravaged by logging. With few roads, the western Amazon has remained so undisturbed that there are still new indigenous tribes living somewhere inside the jungle who have never encountered the outside world.

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Blog wars – Marohasy and Rush Limbaugh to the rescue

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August 09, 2008

HAS global warming stopped? The question alone is enough to provoke scorn from the mainstream scientific community and from the Government, which says the earth has never been hotter. But tell that to a new army of sceptics who have mushroomed on internet blog sites and elsewhere in recent months to challenge some of the most basic assumptions and claims of climate change science.

Their claims are provocative and contentious but they are also attracting attention, so much sothat mainstream scientists are being forced to respond.

The bloggers and others make several key claims. They say the way of measuring the world’s temperature is frighteningly imprecise and open to manipulation. They argue that far from becoming hotter, the world’s temperatures have cooled in the past decade, contrary to the overwhelming impression conveyed by scientists and politicians.

As such, they say there should be far greater scepticism towards the apocalyptic predictions about climate change. Even widely accepted claims, such as that made by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong that “the 12 hottest years in history have all been in the last 13 years”, are being openly challenged.

“She is just plain wrong,” says Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs. “It’s not a question of debate. What about the medieval warming period? The historical record shows they were growing wine in England, for goodness sake; come on. It is not disputed by anyone that the Vikings arrived in Greenland in AD900 and it was warmer than Greenland is now. What Penny Wong is doing is being selective and saying that is a long time ago.”

But selective use of facts and data is fast becoming an art form on both sides of the climate change debate now that real money is at stake as the West ponders concrete schemes to reduce carbon emissions. So what is the validity of some of the key claims being made by these new blogger sceptics?

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Queensland’s climate has shifted south, research shows

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The Courier-Mail, August 07, 2008

TAKING a dip in the ocean at Redcliffe these days is like swimming at Maryborough in 1950, new research has revealed.

Scientists say global warming sceptics should dip their toes in the water off a Queensland beach if they want proof the phenomenon exists.

They claim climate zones have moved south by more than 200km in the past 60 years, so Brisbane’s climate has moved to Byron Bay to make way for a more balmy weather pattern.

Australian Institute of Marine Science researcher Janice Lough revealed the findings in a paper published by the American Geophysical Union.

She said she was in no doubt the changes were due to global warming caused by increased greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

“Sea surface temperatures are significantly warming along the northwest and northeast coasts of Australia – regions containing well-protected and internationally significant tropical marine ecosystems,” she says in the research paper.

Dr Lough looked at sea surface temperatures recorded by ships and from satellite technology from 1950 to 2007.

She analysed results from measurements taken as far north as Thursday Island in the Torres Strait and south to Coffs Harbour. She also analysed temperatures off the northwest coast of Australia.

She found sea surface temperatures had been rising by as much as 0.12C per decade, which, with no further increases in greenhouse gas emissions, would make waters off southeast Queensland 2C warmer within the next 100 years.

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Two new studies on coral symbiont specificity released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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"Dedicated partnership may be corals weakness"

(Sampayo et al 2008, PNAS 105[30] 10444-10449)

"Great Barrier Reef coral communities may not be able to recover from bleaching as easily as previously proposed, according to new UQ research. A two-year study by a team of UQ researchers, in the Centre for Marine Studies, has found that contrary to popular theory, it is not possible for bleached corals to recover or become more resistant to bleaching by taking up more heat tolerant species of their micro-algae partners. All corals have a symbiotic (sharing relationship) with single-celled dinoflagellates, commonly referred to as zooxanthellae. The coral provides a habitat for the zooxanthellae, which in turn produce essential nutrients for the corals.  Under stressful conditions, such as high or low water temperatures, the symbiotic zooxanthellae are expelled from their host, causing a whitening of the coral tissue or bleaching.  Coral bleaching events have caused significant mortality of corals worldwide and the frequency as well as intensity of bleaching events is predicted to increase as a result of climate change. Dr Eugenia Sampayo, who performed the research as part of her PhD, said past research had suggested that bleached corals could take up new, more tolerant symbionts, which would make them less susceptible to future bleaching events" (Read more)

 

 

"New indicator uncovered that can predict coral health"

(Stat et al 2008, PNAS 105[27] 9256-9261)

A new indicator of coral health has been discovered in a community of microscopic single-celled algae called dinoflagellates. The study, released in the July 8th edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that a particular type of these algae renders corals more susceptible to disease. "Corals are fascinating organisms whose survival is dependent on dinoflagellates that live inside the coral’s tissue," says lead author Michael Stat, an assistant researcher at the Hawaii Institute for Marine Biology (HIMB) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "The relationship between these dinoflagellates and corals has long been considered mutually beneficial, with the dinoflagellates supplying the coral with food via photosynthesis in return for recycled nutrients and shelter. Over the last 20 years it has been made clear that there are many different types of dinoflagellates in corals and that the unions or symbiosis between a given coral and their dinoflagellates can be very specific." It had previously been considered that all dinoflagellates found in coral are equally beneficial to their coral host, but in this study Stat, along with HIMB researchers Ruth Gates and Emily Morris, present evidence that a particular type of dinoflagellate can be found in corals that are diseased or show evidence of having had a disease. (Read more)

“More acidic ocean could spell trouble for marine life’s earliest stages”

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EurekAlert!, 31st July 2008

Increasingly acidic conditions in the ocean—brought on as a direct result of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere—could spell trouble for the earliest stages of marine life, according to a new report in the August 5th issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. Levels of acidification predicted by the year 2100 could slash the fertilization success of sea urchins by an estimated 25 percent, the study shows. " If other marine species respond similarly—and there’s no evidence yet that they don’t—then we’re in trouble," said Jon Havenhand of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. "The analogies are quite simple: we observed a 25 percent reduction in fertilization success at reduced pH, which is equivalent to a 25 percent reduction in the spawning stock of the species. Apply equivalent changes to other commercially or ecologically important species, such as lobsters, crabs, abalone, clams, mussels, or even fish, and the consequences would be far-reaching. It could be enough to "tip" an ecosystem from one state to another." However, he emphasized, more data about the response of growing acidic conditions on more species is needed before any such extrapolation can be made. Widely cited estimates show that the average level of acidity in the oceans has risen by about 25 percent in the last 150 years, since the advent of fossil fuel burning, Havenhand explained. The most recent data show that levels of ocean acidification predicted for the end of this century—about a three-fold increase over current levels—have already been measured in some coastal waters. Continue reading →

Deporting Plants and Animals to Protect Them from Climate Change

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Scientific American, 17th July

As San Diego and Los Angeles have grown, the scrub land of southern California has been paved and built over. That has squeezed out the Quino checkerspot butterfly’s habitat, and with the climate changes coming as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions, its listing as an endangered species by the U.S. government may not be enough to save the pretty little butterfly from extinction.

But a group of biologists suggest in this week’s Science that simply moving the butterfly into similar habitat in nearby mountain ranges might solve the problem by overcoming the unnatural barriers humans have erected in the path of any potential shift in its natural range to follow such changing conditions. They call the idea "assisted colonization."

"Humans have dominated the landscape to such an extent that natural dispersal cannot take place in many areas," says biologist Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas at Austin, who helped craft the proposal. "It is in those cases that assisted colonization makes the most sense—use it on species that would have been able to do it on their own, if not for humans."

Specifically, Parmesan and an international group of biologists are proposing moving certain carefully selected species, such as the Quino checkerspot butterfly, as their historic habitats change rapidly because of global warming. They aren’t calling for drastic moves, though. "We are not recommending placing rhino herds in Arizona or polar bears in Antarctica," the group writes, as, for example, the polar bear would then devastate Antarctic penguin and seal populations that have never encountered such a predator. "We are, however, advocating serious consideration of moving populations from areas where species are seriously threatened by climate change to other parts of the same broad biogeographic region," meaning in nearby locations sharing similar ecosystems.

The cost of such an effort is unknown, but could range from nearly free for a small-scale effort such as shifting the Quino a few 100 miles (kilometers) north to multimillion dollar projects such as, for example, moving a monkey species from one cloud forest to another, according to marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and lead author of the proposal. Not every potential project makes sense: The researchers offer a list of conditions under which such assisted colonization would be appropriate, including imminent extinction, feasibility and a favorable cost–benefit analysis.

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“One third of coral species face extinction”

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The Telegraph, 10th July

One third of the major reef-building coral species are vulnerable to extinction, and the pace of destruction is increasing so it is conceivable that the "rainforests of the ocean" could be wiped out this century.

The warning that coral communities are faring even worse than their terrestrial counterparts, notably tropical rainforests, is given by an international team led by Prof Kent Carpenter, Director of the Global Marine Species Assessment Of Conservation International And The International Union For Conservation Of Nature, IUCN.

Built over millions of years, coral reefs are home to more than 25 percent of marine species, making them the most biologically diverse of marine ecosystems.

The loss of reefs could have huge economic effects on food security for around 500 million people who are dependent on reef fish for food and/or their livelihoods and tourism is also likely to suffer.

"The results of this study are very disconcerting," said Prof Carpenter, lead author of the Science article.

"When corals die off, so do the other plants and animals that depend on coral reefs for food and shelter, and this can lead to the collapse of entire ecosystems."
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"Whether corals actually go extinct this century will depend on the continued severity of climate change, extent of other environmental disturbances, and the ability of corals to adapt," the article concludes.

"Our results emphasize the widespread plight of coral reefs and the urgent need to enact conservation measures."

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So long and thanks for all the fish – A roundup from the ICRS from SeaWeb

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Coral Reef News – SeaWeb, July 10th 2008

So, the final, dying embers of the conference to rake over. Dick Dodge kicks things off by saying what a diverse bunch of topics we’ve covered. This symposium has been one of synthesis, he says. Here’s how we’re going to do things over the next couple of hours…

Each Mini-Symposium chair has submitted a report. Nancy Barron is going to explain more.

The goal today, she tells us, is to make this fast food… er, fun. She emailed the idea through to her “victims” and got this from Steve Palumbi. “One,” he replied. “This is an amazing thing to do. Two, this is an impossible thing to do. Since one is more important than two, let’s do it.”

SP gets up and talks about this being the coral reef Olympics. Sure is, Steve.

Oh no. They’ve each got four minutes to explain. Pity me, dear reader…

First, NB talks about how many stories from the conference have been picked up by the press elsewhere. There’s been some good stuff coming out of here. Arghh. NANCY! You’ve done it again. We’ve all got to stand up and take a bow. You won’t get a third chance.

Wow! There’s been some excellent news coverage. Well done guys. We get to listen to John Neilsen’s NPR piece. Top work, as ever. Especially as he wasn’t even here! What a star.

Now for the SuperChairs…

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Coral reef deaths bring bleak outlook – The Age

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10th July, The Age

Food supplies will run short, tourism will be hit and coastal communities affected as the world’s coral reefs gradually decline under climate change, scientists say.

The reefs already were dying at an increasing rate because of global warming and acidification of the oceans, said researchers meeting this week at the International Coral Research Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Chair of the climate change session, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (Ove Hoegh-Guldberg) of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Townsville, said there was evidence that all coral reefs were in trouble.

“The evidence suggests reef systems are becoming more brittle, as a result of bleaching, disease and the effects of acidifying water,” he said on Thursday.

“This means we are likely to see more moonscape-like areas where reefs once used to be.

“This will be accompanied by a switch from the spectacularly colourful fish that people normally associate with reefs to much fewer and plainer ones.”

Prof Hoegh-Guldberg said around 500 million people, mainly in developing countries, depended on coral reefs for food and their livelihoods and developed countries used them as a tourism drawcard.

But weakened coral would no longer provide enough protection against the threat of storm surges and tsunamis, particularly with rising sea levels.

“This will be accompanied by murkier, less productive waters as water quality suffers.”

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said researchers had found evidence that the rate at which coral reefs have been deteriorating and disappearing had accelerated in the past five years.

“For the past 30 years, the loss has been between one to two per cent of the world’s coral per year,” he said.

“The latest data suggest that the rate is now around two per cent a year. This doesn’t give us much time.

“If we continue on the pathway that we are on right now, we get to levels where you are looking at the total loss of reef structures worldwide.”

Urgent action was needed to cap the use of oil, gas and coal contributing to global warming, he said.

“With no other solutions in front of us, then it would be foolhardy and unethical for us not to consider these urgent actions.”