Tag Archives: Coral Reefs

New monitoring system for the Great Barrier Reef

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Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, will today announce the establishment of the Great Barrier Reef Ocean Observing System by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville (note – read here for more detailed information).

“The Observing System will apply a ‘digital skin’ of sensors, over the Great Barrier Reef, producing the highest resolution pictures ever produced,” Senator Carr said.

“It will be the most exciting development in coastal ocean observation in Australia since the launch of Earth-orbiting satellites, providing real-time data on current conditions throughout the region.

“This will help drive multi-scale ecological and physical models, making possible more accurate forecasting and improved understanding of the process sustaining the biodiversity of the Reef.

“This great collaborative project is led by AIMS on behalf of a consortium of agencies including AIMS, James Cook University, Great Barrier Reef Island Research Stations, University of Melbourne and CSIRO. The Great Barrier Reef marine tourism industry is participating in the Observing System by including ship board sensors on some of their vessels.

“The Observing System is a regional ocean observation network covering the eastern Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef. It will give researchers and managers more comprehensive and subtle understandings of the complexities of the Reef, particularly as threats from climate change loom.

“From the kilometre to the millimetre scale, diverse forms of Reef data gathered by multiple sensors will be integrated for the first time to produce detailed models reflecting real conditions on the Reef and enabling forecasts of future conditions.

“The Observing System will have an important role in future research into and management of one of Australia’s greatest natural assets, the Great Barrier Reef,” Senator Carr said.

Coral reefs – a “Canary in a Coal Mine”

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http://blip.tv/play/AbXFHgA

“In this episode of MicrobeWorld Video marine scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Ph.D., chair of marine studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and Kiho Kim, Ph.D., director of the environmental studies program at American University, explain the important relationship between microbes and corals, and how this delicate symbiosis that sustains life on and around reefs is facing numerous threats from human interactions to global climate change. In addition, Tundi Agardy, Ph.D., founder and executive director of Sound Seas, discusses the need for public policy and community-based conservation efforts that may help stave off the degradation of these vital ocean ecosystems.According to a 2004 report issued by the World Wildlife Fund, 24% of the world’s reefs are under imminent risk of collapse through human pressures; and a further 26% are under a longer term threat of collapse. If nothing is done to protect these resources, many scientists estimate that reefs around the West Indies in the Caribbean will be gone by 2020, while the Great Barrier Reef may only last for another three decades.”

Hurricanes and storms can wipe out coral recruitment process

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ANI, May 4th 2008

A new study has revealed that hurricanes and storms limit the ability of corals to “recruit” new corals into their community.

The study, supported by Earthwatch Institute in the US, was carried out in Belize, a Central American country, by Earthwatch scientist Dr. James Crabbe in 2006 and 2007 with Edwin Martinez, Earthwatch Field Director in Belize, as well as with the help of young local scientists.

Coral Reefs, which can grow to be thousands of years old, form and grow when free-swimming coral larvae in the ocean attach to rocks or other hard surfaces and begin to develop.

But, the new study has determined that intense storms can wipe out this “recruitment” process.

“Increasing evidence now shows that storms are becoming more intense due to climate change,” said Crabbe. “Storms threaten the survival of the entire reef itself,” he added.

According to Crabbe, who is doing a lecture tour related to this work throughout 2008, “If the storms don’t destroy corals outright, they render them more susceptible to disease, and that is certainly apparent on the Belize reefs.”

A team from Earthwatch measured the size of more than 520 non-branching corals in two major coral reef areas in southern Belize: the Sapodilla Cayes Marine Reserve, a world heritage site in the second largest barrier reef in the world, and the Port Honduras Marine Reserve.

In addition to providing habitat for an array of marine life, non-branching massive corals robust and shaped like mounds, and sometimes called ‘brain corals’ buffer coastal zones from erosive wave energy.

Crabbe’s team determined the surface area covered by the corals and entered the growth rates of the corals into a computer model to determine when in history the coral colonies first settled.

They compared numbers of corals that started life in each year with hurricane and storm data, and as suggested by data from fringing reefs of Jamaica, the coral recruitment was much lower during storm years.

According to Crabbe, the study holds implications for marine park managers.

“They may need to assist coral recruitment and settlement by establishing coral nurseries and then placing the baby corals (larvae) in the reef at discrete locations, or by setting up artificial reef blocks to help the corals survive,” he said.

“Understanding and managing the threats to our Reef, Rainforest and Torres Strait environment”

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MTSRF Annual Research Conference, 28th April

“Many of Australia’s leading environmental and social scientists will be joining industry leaders in Cairns for a four day conference on the environmental risks facing our Reef, Rainforest and
the Torres Strait.

The 2008 Marine and Tropical Science Research Facility (MTSRF) Conference is being held from Monday 28th April until Thursday 1st May 2008. The Conference will provide an opportunity to share information and explore solutions to the threats facing the unique natural systems of North Queensland.

Managing Director, Sheriden Morris, said “Over 300 of Australia’s best scientists are involved in the MTSRF program and are working on answering questions such as what can we do about climate change impacts on tropical rainforests and the reef? How do we fix up poor water quality? How do we deal with a rapidly increasing population in this region and what will the impact be on our surroundings? Will the Cassowary survive? How will recreational fishers respond to more people and less fish? What do we do about sea level rise for the low lying islands in the Torres Strait?”

“This Conference is an opportunity for scientists, government and industry leaders to hear about the latest research and to discuss solutions to the problems we are facing now and into the future.”

The Reef & Rainforest Research Centre represents the Australian Government’s Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF) and is part of the Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities Program. The aim of MTSRF is to provide world class solution based science to ensure the future health of North Queensland’s public environmental assets.

The Australian Government has invested $40 million over four years into North Queensland to fund scientific research to support the conservation and sustainable use of our environment. The fund also aims to build capacity in the north to assist in the understanding and management of our environment.

“Industries such as tourism rely heavily on our environment to generate over $8 million annually and employ over 50,000 people so it is crucial that the scientific research generated through the MTSRF program delivers meaningful and useful solutions for both our region and Australia as a vital part of our natural heritage,” said Ms Morris”

More checks as coral suffers

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Courier Mail, 5th April 2008

Southeast Queensland’s coral reefs are set to get regular health checks under a worldwide United Nations program. The better known coral ecosystems on the Great Barrier Reef have been kept under the UN’s watchful eye for the past seven years but until now equally important reefs around the southeast have missed out.

Renewed threats from pollution and global warming have prompted Reef Check to turn its goggled sights on the vast marine wonderland stretching from the NSW border to the Sunshine Coast. Marine biologists and volunteer divers will measure and study the reefs around Moreton Bay and off the Gold and Sunshine coasts to help determine the impacts of climate change, nutrient run-off and over-fishing.

“A lot of people aren’t aware that we have some great coral reefs, even off the Gold Coast here,” Griffith University marine biologist Jonathan Werry said.

Mr Werry, who was at Sea World yesterday to launch the extended Reef Check monitoring program, said there were already signs of destructive coral bleaching on southeast Queensland reefs. He said, however, the biggest threat so far still came from land-based pollutants washing into the ocean.

“Our reefs are very important for biodiversity off the coast. You lose your reef and you lose a good chunk of biodiversity from the area,” he said.

Sea World marine sciences director Trevor Long said he had seen some worrying changes in the decades he has spent diving the southeast’s reefs.

“There’s far less diversity of marine species now than there used to be.”

Mr Long said Reef Check would yield scientific “ammunition” to help in the fight to save the reefs. About 20 volunteer divers have been recruited for the campaign and will be trained at the artificial reef at Sea World’s Shark Bay.

Flat-Faced Fish: First in Family?

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Scientific American, 5th April 2008

Divers have discovered an unusual flat-faced fish with forward-looking eyes that may represent an entirely new piscine family. If so, researchers say, it would be one of only a handful of new fish families found in the past 50 years. First photographed in January off Ambon Island, Indonesia, the critter has crooked, leglike pectoral fins on its sides—typical of anglerfish, which crawl or walk along the seafloor. Unlike others of its kind, however, which typically use lures on their heads to attract prey, this new flathead works its pliable body into crevices and cracks of coral reefs in search of food. Researchers say that DNA testing is needed to determine whether this zebra-striped fish will inaugurate a 19th family of anglerfish, or whether it simply had an unfortunate run-in with the business end of a hammerhead shark.

Study: Coral reefs like ‘junk food’

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United Press International, 28th March 2008

Townsville, Australia — Australian scientists have discovered coral reefs have an addiction to “junk food” and order symbiotic algae to produce it. James Cook University researchers said the symbiosis between coral, a primitive animal, and zooxanthellae — tiny one-celled plants — has not only built the largest living organism on the planet, the Great Barrier Reef, but also underpins the economies of many tropical nations.

The issue of whether the partnership is robust enough to withstand climate change is driving a worldwide scientific effort to decipher how corals and their symbiotic algae communicate, said JCU Professor David Yellowlees.

“It’s an incredibly intricate relationship in which the corals feed the algae and try to control their diet, and the algae in turn use sunlight to produce ‘junk food’ — carbohydrates and fats — for the corals to consume,” said Yellowlees. “Where it all breaks down is when heated water lingers over the reef and the corals expel the algae and then begin to slowly starve to death.

“This is the bleaching phenomenon Australians are by now so familiar with, and which is such a feature of global warming.”

Has the Great Barrier Reef got a future?

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Once I would have thought that a ridiculous question. Yet today, if we assemble all the best science we have, the answer can at best be “maybe”.

It may seem preposterous that the greatest coral reef in the world – the biggest structure made by life on Earth – could be seriously (I mean genuinely seriously) threatened by climate change. The question itself is probably already relegated in your mind to a ‘here-we-go-again’ catch-bag of greenie diatribe about the state of our planet. This view is understandable given that even a decade ago, there were many scientists who had not yet come to grips with the full implications of climate change.

Very likely you have a feeling that dire predictions about anything almost always turn out to be exaggerations. What you really think is: OK, where there’s smoke there’s fire, so there’s probably something in this to be worried about, somewhere. But, it won’t be as bad as those doom-sayers are predicting. When I started writing “A Reef in Time”, I knew that climate change was likely to have serious consequences for coral reefs, but even I was shocked to the core by what all the best science that existed was saying. In a long phase of personal anguish I turned to specialists in many different fields of science to find anything that might suggest a fault in my own conclusions. No luck. The bottom line remains: the GBR can indeed be utterly trashed in the lifetime of today’s children. That certainty is what motivates me to broadcast this message as clearly, as accurately and, yes, as loudly, as I can.

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“Humanity’s extra CO2 could brew a new kind of sea”

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a9391_1148.jpgTerrie Klinger is starting to wonder about the future of kelp sex. It’s a delicate business in the best of times, and the 21st century is putting marine life to the acid test.

Klinger, of the University of Washington in Seattle, studies the winged and bull kelps that stretch rubbery garlands up from the seafloor off the nearby Pacific coast. These kelp fronds do no luring, touching, fusing of cells or other sexy stuff. Fronds just break out in chocolate-colored patches.

The patches release spores that swim off to settle on a surface and start the next generation. The new little kelps don’t look as if they belong to the same species, or even the same family, as their parents. The little ones just grow into strings of cells, but these are about sex.

“Those of us who have spent far too long looking at this can tell the males from the females,” says Klinger. The subtly female-shaped filaments form eggs and release kelp pheromones to call in the male filaments’ sperm.

Sex filaments have kept kelp species going for millennia, but Klinger says she wants to know what’s happening now that carbon emissions are changing seawater chemistry. The intricate reproductive cycle of kelp is an example of a delicate system that can experience big effects from seemingly small changes in ocean chemistry.

This chemistry is already shifting, powered by the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activity. Not all the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels stays in the air. The oceans have absorbed about half of the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial age, says Richard Feely of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. The ocean takes in about 22 million tons of CO2 a day, he says.

The influx causes what scientists call ocean acidification. It’s a term of convenience. The ocean isn’t acid now, nor do Feely and other ocean chemists expect that seawater will become acid in the foreseeable future. However, the extra CO2 is driving the oceans closer to the acidic side of the pH scale. By the end of this century, Feely says, the upper 100 meters or so of ocean water will be more acidic than at any time during the past 20 million years.

Klinger is just one of the biologists trying to figure out what a shift in seawater chemistry will do to seaweed, corals, fish, and other marine life. The filaments of both bull and winged kelps grow noticeably slower in acidic seawater, she reported last week at the 2008 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Biologists are discussing what the chemistry change will do to marine creatures: It looks like bad news for calcium users and a new dawn for slimy rocks. It could begin an age of simplification for ocean ecosystems. Either way, there’s a rising consensus that, by changing the oceans’ chemistry and biology, burning fossil fuels is essentially making new oceans.

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“Fast-growing corals key to Caribbean reef”

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Reuters, 14th March 2008

Two dominant coral species have built a good chunk of the Caribbean reef, and their ability to grow quickly may help the region’s coral reefs keep pace with rising sea levels caused by global warming, researchers say.

The endangered staghorn and elkhorn corals grow about 10 times faster than any other in the Caribbean and reproduce in part by breaking into bits for easy ocean spread.

Ken Johnson, who led the study published in the journal Science, said researchers had found that the staghorn and elkhorn coral were not that important until about 1 million years ago, when half the Caribbean coral species went extinct. Today about 60 coral species remain.

Johnson said one reason they quickly became dominant was they may have been able to keep up with rapid sea level rise by growing quickly, Johnson said. And if sea levels rise as predicted in the coming centuries, they may have to reprise this role.

“These are the species that are going to help coral reefs keep up with sea level change,” Johnson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said in a telephone interview.

Coral reefs, delicate undersea structures resembling rocky gardens that are made by animals called coral polyps, are important nurseries and shelters for fish and other sea life. They are also considered valuable protection for coastlines from high seas, a critical source of food, important for tourism and a potential storehouse of medicines for cancer and other diseases.

But researchers say overfishing, climate change and human development are threatening reefs worldwide. Even the dominant staghorn and elkhorn species are considered threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In the Caribbean, an added concern is that the reefs are especially sensitive because they are dominated by just two species, Johnson said.

“If these two species die out and become extinct, the Caribbean is in trouble,” he said.

The researchers produced their conclusions by using fossils to compare changes in coral diversity and reef development in the Caribbean over the past 28 million years. They showed that the characteristics of a dominant species were more important than the simple number of species, a finding that can better direct conservation efforts, Johnson said.