From a University of Exeter press release, another inconvenient truth about our planet sure to be denounced by some who claim that global warming is irreparably damaging reef systems.
A study by the University of Exeter provides the first evidence that coral reefs can recover from the devastating effects of climate change. Published Monday 11 January in the journal PLOS One, the research shows for the first time that coral reefs located in marine reserves can recover from the impacts of global warming.
Scientists and environmentalists have warned that coral reefs may not be able to recover from the damage caused by climate change and that these unique environments could soon be lost forever. Now, this research adds weight to the argument that reducing levels of fishing is a viable way of protecting the world’s most delicate aquatic ecosystems.
Increases in ocean surface water temperatures subject coral reefs to stresses that lead quickly to mass bleaching. The problem is intensified by ocean acidification, which is also caused by increased CO2. This decreases the ability of corals to produce calcium carbonate (chalk), which is the material that reefs are made of.
Approximately 2% of the world’s coral reefs are located within marine reserves, areas of the sea that are protected against potentially-damaging human activity, like dredging and fishing.
The researchers conducted surveys of ten sites inside and outside marine reserves of the Bahamas over 2.5 years. These reefs have been severely damaged by bleaching and then by hurricane Frances in the summer of 2004. At the beginning of the study, the reefs had an average of 7% coral cover. By the end of the project, coral cover in marine protected areas had increased by an average of 19%, while reefs in non-reserve sites showed no recovery.
Professor Peter Mumby of the University of Exeter said: “Coral reefs are the largest living structures on Earth and are home to the highest biodiversity on the planet. As a result of climate change, the environment that has enabled coral reefs to thrive for hundreds of thousands of years is changing too quickly for reefs to adapt.
“In order to protect reefs in the long-term we need radical action to reduce CO2 emissions. However, our research shows that local action to reduce the effects of fishing can contribute meaningfully to the fate of reefs. The reserve allowed the number of parrotfishes to increase and because parrotfish eat seaweeds, the corals could grow freely without being swamped by weeds. As a result, reefs inside the park were showing recovery whereas those with more seaweed were not. This sort of evidence may help persuade governments to reduce the fishing of key herbivores like parrotfishes and help reefs cope with the inevitable threats posed by climate change”.
Professor Mumby’s research was funded by National Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation.
Reef facts
- A coral reef is made up of thin layers of calcium carbonate (limestone) secreted over thousands of years by billions of tiny soft bodied animals called coral polyps.
- Coral reefs are the world’s most diverse marine ecosystems and are home to twenty-five percent of known marine species, including 4,000 species of fish, 700 species of coral and thousands of other plants and animals.
- Coral reefs have been on the planet for over 400 million years.
- The largest coral reef is the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches along the northeast coast of Australia, from the northern tip of Queensland, to just north of Bundaberg. At 2,300km long, it is the largest natural feature on Earth.
- Coral reefs occupy less than one quarter of one percent of the Earth’s marine environment, yet they are home to more than a quarter of all known fish species.
- As well as supporting huge tourist industries, coral reefs protect shorelines from erosion and storm damage.
To download high quality reef videos by Professor Peter Mumby: www.reefvid.org
The main funding for the research came from Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation and the Natural Environment Research Council.
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (www.livingoceansfoundation.org) is dedicated to conservation and restoration of living oceans and pledges to champion their preservation through research, education and a commitment to Science Without Borders®.
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Science will be deemed recovered, when “but we need to curb CO2 emissions” will be not mandatory ending of whatever study.
Omega Protein produces fish meal. The main use for fish meal is for fish food (and cat food but fish food is the primary use). The US was in 2004 the fifth largest producer. OP operates mostly in the Gulf of Mexico. If the US passes a law, they just move to Mexico (or Peru or Chile and get the same fish someplace else).
What would you suggest as an alternative for fish meal to make into fish food for such things as farmed trout, salmon, and catfish? Why not develop an alternative feed?
I have a problem with people whose answer to something is a negative. “Stop them from doing this!”, yet offer no alternative path. How do you keep fish farmers in business if you can’t get fish feed? If the fish farmers are out of business then you must harvest more of the fish farther up the chain. It is like squeezing a water balloon. Sure, it sounds emotionally appealing until you start to think it through. Once you begin to look at the larger picture, the overall “system” involved, things get a little more difficult then they appear on the surface.
Now, this research adds weight to the argument that reducing levels of fishing is a viable way of protecting the world’s most delicate aquatic ecosystems.
Reducing the levels of fishing with cyanide or dynamite is certainly a viable means of protecting it.
Think somebody might want to clue in the folks who live on all those atolls “threatened by rising sea levels”…?
A scientist at UEA dusting off his reputation in case the gathering storm of opprobrium engulfs him and removes his funding! Or am I being overly cynical?
‘Sceptic’ has become such a sneering, derisory term when uttered by the CAGW faithful that I felt I shoud check my dictionary. Yep, a sceptic is ‘not easily convinced’, according to my newish Compact Oxford English Dictionary, purchased at the end of 2009. In my view, owning a sceptical mindset should be required of every budding scientist and selected for as through rigorous testing before each one is accepted to begin their university courses of study.
Any graduate scientist found to have lost their scepticism and to be ‘cherry-picking’ data to support a theory and therefore not being at all sceptical of the concepts they promote should be drummed out of their profession and retrained in something useful, such as manning a garbage truck or driving a snow plough. And any politician pursuing an agenda by shouting down ‘sceptics’ should be immediately removed from office and fined to the point of real and convincing financial pain.
Society has always had snake-oil salesmen who prey uypon the non-scpetical, the percentage of whom in the general population are increasing through state education systems around the world which seem designed to dissaude people from questioning the current perceived wisdom and killing off the natural curiosity every child is equipped with that demands to know how the world works.
Any form of carbon trading is a variation on the age-old snake oil scam; worse, it is closely allied to the concept of selling indulgences which Martin Luther so vigorously opposed during the Medieval period.
Les Francis (19:34:19) comments on applying extrapolation to computer models call for a witty Ronald Searle type cartoon, ” Breakthrough technology, the Climate Science extrapolating machine.”
Like many posters above I am extremely doubtful whether this Professor Mumby has EVER dived on a coral reef. If he had, he would have heard the grinding and crunching of parrotfish eating coral all day long – their mouth has modified teeth which form an impressive ‘beak’ designed to strip the surface of the coral and digest the living material within it. ALL of the sand on a coral reef is derived from parrotfish voiding ground up coral. Finally, I cannot recall ever seeing anything I would describe as a ‘seaweed’ on a coral reef, and I never saw a parrotfish eat anthing but CORAL. Parrotfish are NOT simply vegetarian – they eat the living polyps and the algae within the coral
One wonders how the ocean ‘acidification’ alarmists can explain how corals, molluscs and echinoderms managed to survive the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (only a 100 my or so ago) when estimated CO2 concemtrations were 4 or 5 times higher than current values and seas were much warmer; or the even higher CO2 levels in earlier periods.
In his university text book, New Views on an Old Planet: A history of global change’, Professor T.H.Van Andel (University of Cambridge) comments that CO2 actually has been gradually declining in the air and ocean waters because it is removed by natural weathering processes on land. It is now at its lowest concentration for 300 my. ‘Eventually there will not be enough (CO2) left to sustain photosynthesis and life on earth will come to an end’. Food for thought?
How many hundreds of millions of years is it going to take warning scientists to figure out that Carbon is the basis of Life on Earth?
For all those who are tired of living on a planet that boasts carbon-based Life, please get on over to your broker and enter the Cap & Trade Sweepstakes.
The lucky winner will get a one-way trip to Pluto.
Google: “coral reef discovered”
The 1.6 million results will keep you busy for a while.
Bob Diaz (22:51:48) :
Comment by: ” John A (17:04:11) :
Another tainted study paid for by fossil fuel funded disinformation companies.”
The sarcasm, often exquisite, at the beginning of a thread here is sometimes lost on infrequent visitors. We often use the /sarcasm anchor for just this reason.
Not only can coral recover from climate change ‘damage’, they can largely recover after atomic bomb tests.
“Sceptic” is a good term. The opposite is “fool”.
Good news, if it holds. Let’s hope it does.
photon without a Higgs (19:22:44) :
Obviously the space aliens don’t care for cold weather. They used their UFO heaters to keep it warm.
As mentioned earlier it would seem that it is man’s other activities such as hunting and fishing that affected the polar bears and corals. AGWers like to point to global warming for any adverse effects without asking themselves “could there be any other cause?”
After over 400 million years corals are still here despite being subjected to much warmer periods, much higher levels of CO2, much higher sea level rises, much lower sea level rises, more acidic oceans, high levels of man-made radiation and so on and so on. Just restrict destructive fishing practices and corals will be here long after we are all gone.
“Coral reefs give rise to many more new species than other tropical marine habitats, according to a new study.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8446002.stm
“Britain’s wildlife is being pushed to “the brink of a crisis” as sub-zero temperatures continue to grip the nation, according to conservationists.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8449089.stm
Hey, but I thought warm was bad and cold is good.
crosspatch “Omega Protein produces fish meal. The main use for fish meal is for fish food (and cat food but fish food is the primary use).”
More accurately….the oils from the fish are used in cosmetics, linoleum, health food supplements, lubricants, margarine, soap, insecticide, and paints. The meal is in pulverized and shipped out as cat and dog food, farmed fish food, and most of all, food for large commercial farms of poultry and pigs.
“The US was in 2004 the fifth largest producer. OP operates mostly in the Gulf of Mexico.”
No, not just the Gulf. Omega Protein also controls the second-largest grossing fishing port in the US (in tonnage). It is located in tiny Reedville Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay.
The Chesapeake Bay is the spawning grounds for the Atlantic species of Menhaden. Virginia is the only state still which still allows purse seining of the animal within its waters. (Maryland has not allowed such since the 1950s).
Omega Protein regularly stripmines the Virginia waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the offshore Atlantic Ocean of this important staple food for so many other important species such as the striped bass, and this has caused cascades through the oceanic foodweb, in some cases the collapse of once plentiful fisheries altogether.
http://www.chesbay.org/
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/229/net-losses.html
Also, a fascinating read: “The Most Important Fish in the Sea”, by Rutgers prof. Bruce Franklin.
Moreover, the Chesapeake Bay is also one of the most stressed large bodies of water in the world, menhaden, like oysters, are filter feeders. Need i say more there?
“If the US passes a law, they just move to Mexico (or Peru or Chile and get the same fish someplace else).”
Reduction fishing industries worldwide are contributing to the world-wide depletions of other fish stock.
It just so happens that the menhaden spawns in United States waters.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
What would you suggest as an alternative for fish meal to make into fish food for such things as farmed trout, salmon, and catfish? Why not develop an alternative feed?
Soybeans
how can reefs recover from global warming when there has been no global warming where is logic ?
In other news, ‘Climategate’ boosts University of East Anglia applications – http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/01/climategate-boosts-uea-applications.html
This video from the University of East Anglia shows a class of third year climate Research Unit students, who are clearly energized by the lecture, proof of the success of the University’s advanced teaching methods – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qcnzwQt9vI
“I have a problem with people whose answer to something is a negative.”
Yeah. i have a problem with that too, like the way you are are being rather negative with the logic of my posts…
“I have a problem with people whose answer to something is a negative. “Stop them from doing this!”, yet offer no alternative path. How do you keep fish farmers in business if you can’t get fish feed?”
That is quite the strawman, crosspatch. I usually respect your intense logic, but you are off base here.
Never in my posts was I talking about putting fish farmers out of business. (Heh heh….but you know the poopy dangers of eating farmed fish…so I prefer that caught in the wild).
Regardless,that has absolutely nothing to do with the main talk here of the industrial OVERfishing disaster…which is causing ripples through the food web.
You wanna know why Omega Protein has a virtual monopoly on harvesting this tiny oceanic staple (and not soybeans) for all these products???
Because its free! They don’t have to pay a dime for the supply.
But It costs money to grow soybeans…and Omega is too cheap for that kind of venture.
“If the fish farmers are out of business then you must harvest more of the fish farther up the chain.”
So you propose solving a problem, with another problem? I don’t get your logic here and i think you are just trying to be argumentative.
The MAIN problem here….the MAIN causation DIRECTLY attributed to HOMO SAPIENS: Overfishing the natural supply which has caused depletion, and in some cases, collapse. This cascades through the food web and may be stressing the coral reefs as well.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
@Alexander
please could you leave good ppl ot of the debate.
If we didnt have rubish collectors or snow plow drivers, we would be in more Sh*t and wouldnt be able to go anywhere.
Thanks.
Z.
crosspatch (00:27:46) : “It is like squeezing a water balloon. Sure, it sounds emotionally appealing until you start to think it through.”
I have a non-emotional assignment for you:
Watch: The End of the Line
Watch: Sharkwater
Watch: Check out the Maryland PBS documentary A Fish Tale
Talk with Maryland lifelong fisherman and fisheries scientist Jim Price a little bit. http://www.chesbay.org
You want a technical conversation on Chesapeake Bay fisheries and their stresses?? Give him a call.
Read Bruce Franklin’s book.
And after you have done all that, offer your opinion again and see if it has changed.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
crosspatch (00:27:46) : “Once you begin to look at the larger picture, the overall “system” involved, things get a little more difficult then they appear on the surface.”
Really?? You think?? (LOL)
Uh huh and if you take the time to read the contents of my posts….that is EXACTLY what is being said throughout!
Thanks for reinforcing my point and I could not agree more.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks (05:32:32) :
“What would you suggest as an alternative for fish meal to make into fish food for such things as farmed trout, salmon, and catfish? Why not develop an alternative feed?”
Soybeans
Opening line from Melville’s epic novel of those intrepid New England soybean whalers:
“Call me Fishmeal.”
“””Richard Tyndall (21:10:14) :
“Coral reefs have been on the planet for over 400 million years.”
A rather misleading statement which should be shot down by any reasonable geologist.
Rugose and Tabulate corals may have been around 400 million years ago but they all died out at the End Permian extinction. All modern corals are Scleractinia which only appeared in the Triassic about 220 million years ago.”””
Not misleading Richard.
The point is, they still used calcium carbonate.
When CO2 levels were many times higher.