How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 078: Indo-Pacific Coral Decline Over Time, Extent, and Region
There is a bit of a controversy surrounding the amount of coral decline in the Indo-Pacific, which holds 75% of the coral species in the world. A research paper by John Bruno and Elizabeth Selig used quantitative methods to show that coral cover has declined 21% over the past 23 years.
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Welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session 78 today is Wednesday and we are actually going to switch Wednesday and Thursday this week because this week We're not gonna have a Thursday and Friday episode because of Christmas even Christmas But today is gonna be research Thursday on a Wednesday. Does that make sense? Anyway, today we're gonna talk about coral cover decline and what that means in the Indo-Pacific And what that means for management implications its research Thursdays on the speaker for blue podcasts stay tuned Welcome to the speak up for blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now Here's your host loves football so much. I mean, he really really likes it Andrew Lewin Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast your voice for the ocean I am your host Andrew Lewin founder speak up for blue calm marine ecologists and self-proclaimed Ocean Penner and today is research Thursday on Wednesday. We're gonna talk about a research paper that I thought was interesting I found it on PLOS one in the marine conservation section out of one of them out of the most popular tab And it was one of the tops. It was a paper written in 2009 and it was or sorry 2007 and it was it was authored by Bruno Selig and it's called regional decline of coral cover in the Indo-Pacific Timing extent and sub-regional comparisons and I love this paper But before we get into this paper, I want to tell you about a crowdfunding campaign that I started to support this podcast so essentially what I wanted to do when I started this podcast was provide ocean science and conservation information that wasn't out in podcasting and wasn't out in on the internet and I I was looking and searching for my own pot for a podcast that I could listen to myself Made by somebody else, but the ones that I found just weren't They weren't producing content anymore that were around before and then had been a number of years before they did that or it just wasn't there It was just too I guess fluffy for me. I want to get down to the science and conservation of it so I decided to start speak up the speak up for blue podcast and I Started to notice that a lot of people that came back to me who are either scientists or non-scientists that were looking for this information Loved it. They love this podcast and they said hey man. You got to continue to do this. You got to get more Let's get more in depth. Let's get more sciencey Let's get more conservationy and we're going for for my scientific terms sciencey and conservationy But so I decided hey, you know what I would love to and I you know I do this as a hobby right now But I want to do this more full-time to give me more time to research a lot of these Papers research a lot of the subject matter and the content and bring you the best that I can bring you Eventually, I want to build this podcast out into a full media company an ocean science and conservation Media company that brings you real ocean science and conservation from real people who are doing projects all over the world eventually traveling to those places and documenting them in on video and audio and Really just bringing into perspective of what's going on around the world of what people are seeing Not just, you know based on sharks marine mammals and stuff like that But everything and that's what I'm here to do So you can support this podcast further and help the growth of this company because I made this company for the people And I wanted to be supported by the people You can go to speak up for blue calm for its last patreon P A T R E O N And you can donate or support this podcast at different levels and there's different incentives on the levels the basic levels one dollar the highest levels 500 and there's a number in between and this is all per month by the way and Essentially, yeah, I want to build this out into a big company that can allow people to get the ocean science and conservation They want I want to increase my reach around the world not just in the US and Canada and the UK and Australia and the English-speaking countries I want to bring it to everywhere. So You can help by doing that go and speak up for blue calm for its last patreon P A T R E O N so thank you for that for those who Have supported them and it by the way, if you supported the $5 level I'll read your name out at the beginning of the episode just so that you know that you are supporting this podcast So and everybody else knows that you're supporting the podcast and I love it I love the fact that people are getting involved and we build a community a community that wants to change the world And live for a better ocean. So anyway, let's get into our Our paper today our science Thursday's paper or research Thursday paper And like I said before the title of this paper is regional decline of coral cover of coral cover in the Indo-Pacific timing extent and subregional comparisons Essentially what the authors have done here is they wanted to attribute they want to really get down to the nitty gritty of why and if Coral cover in the Indo-Pacific are declining and let's get down to it. Why are we worried about coral cover? Corals are a animal-structured habitat and they are one of the most diverse habitats in the world in the Indo-Pacific It accounts for 75% of the diversity of corals in the world a coral cover area of 50% or higher will allow more species to Inhabit those areas it will increase diversity increase stability of the of the actual coral reefs Which we've talked about this before coral reefs are very great are very good for shoreline Protection they're good for fishing and providing fish for local communities and international communities if they're done sustainably and You know, they're just a very important Structure they're very they're a very important habitat that we all need to worry about so they want to look there there were some controversy in terms of where the Indo-Pacific corals declining over the years so the and and a lot of the Controversy came from qualitative information so information that wasn't numbers hard factual numbers and mathematics So the authors said, you know what? We're gonna look at a large data set over time and we're gonna see when and where those corals are declining and by how much? so overall The data that they use actually they had they had a database with 6,000 in one quantitative surveys of 200 of 2,667 Indo-Pacific coral reefs and they were performed between 1968 and 2004, okay? So they they pick out 2003 because I thought this they I guess I thought it was interesting in their data set the surveys conducted during 2003 Dedicated that the coral cover average is only 22% over the entire region. Now. That's down 20% It was 42% back in 1980. So that's not you know, it's 23 years of a decline and so They found it interesting how the 22% Coverage was pretty much uniform throughout the entire region now their region Was let me just open up the end of Pacific. So I think on the west coast It was it was like the island of Sumatra, which is like West Indonesia and then it goes all the way to the South Pacific areas Hawaii and Hawaii Hawaiian Islands and and And the French Polynesian Islands are the are the eastern barrier and then it went all the way up to Japan and then down the Great Barrier Reef Now before you know the Great Barrier Reef one of the things that they they actually said on in this study is they compared a lot of The coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific with the Great Barrier Reef because the Great Barrier Reef is considered one of the best managed areas Of for coral reefs in the world. They've got the Great Barrier Reef marine park It's a highly managed. They've got a lot. It's a basically a network of marine protected areas that have different management zones And so the idea is to protect the environment as well as protect the rights and usages of different stakeholders. So recreational Oiling if there's oil and gas reminding is a big one as well But the protection of the Great Barrier Reef itself because it is a world heritage site that it is a huge income for tourism and and just just in general stability of that of that part of the of the Australia and So they compared the coverage there because it's supposed to be a quote-unquote the best managed area for coral reefs And they compared it to other places and there wasn't that much difference in coral cover now Of course coral cover is a great indication of how fish are doing now fish abundance fish biomass So the more coral cover you have the better your reef is in this study. That's essentially how they were considering it So the heart numbers really just showed a uniform coverage of 22 percent. So that's a 22 percent a 20 percent drop in coral cover from 1980 to 2003. That's a huge drop. So essentially what they wanted to do and I'm going to link to this into the Into the blog post the show notes, which is dubbed www.speakupforblue.com forward slash session 78 You know they use I'm not going to talk about the statistics or anything like that But what they found interesting is is You know that was that big number that the 22 percent number And it's just you know they look at how coral like they you know Some people had said the going back to the controversy of the decline some people said well some of the Indo-Pacific reefs Have greater than 60% coverage and what they found interesting is only 2% in that area had a you know coral cover of above 60% So just goes to show that these qualitative studies and they might be localized Are not as good as a regional wide Assessment because now you can really tell how the region has declined And I think that's You know the very important. They also said the study also highlights the urgent need for conservation policies to restore coral reefs and the ecosystems and the ecosystems services they provide estimated between worth between 23,000 and 27 and $270,000 per square kilometer per year. So that's a lot Right, we talked about a big regional area and you're looking at between 23,000 and 270,000 per kilometer per year So halting and reversing coral loss will require actions across range of scales including local restoration and conservation of herbivores that facilitate local recruitment and the reduction of fishing practices that directly kill corals and implementation of regional land use practices that reduce sedimentation and nutrient pollution and the institution of global policies to reduce anthropogenic ocean warming and acidification now They basically just covered every ocean issue that you're talking about and why are they doing this because coral reefs are sensitive animals Right, they are very sensitive to different range They have their specific range of temperature specific range of pH Specific range of nutrients and specific range of metals that they can handle Once that range is put out of whack whether it be up or down that can cause a lot of problems for reefs because they are so sensitive So you can see drastic changes. They're almost like the canary of habitats right the canary and the coal mine of habitats where they will be the first ones to change and just so happens they're the probably the most attractive habitats that are around and So protection of these habitats are important from essentially fishing nutrients sedimentation You know anthropogenic ocean warming and acidification basically climate change consequences So protection like we really need to focus protection on different scales And of course these ocean issues affect You know different coral reefs on different scales But what we what this study essentially saying is look let's look at the quantitate Let's look at the numbers. Let's look at the math and let's let's really see what's happening instead of looking at You know local areas and trying to extrapolate for across an entire region right, so It's important to do that Now we know that only 2% of the coral reefs in that area Are greater than 60% coral cover whereas most of them are 22% coral cover. That's a big difference So if someone said oh, yeah, well our research 60% coral cover or greater and that should be the same around the entire region Well, that's obviously not true and that depends on and that's going to affect how you manage the coral reefs You don't want them to disappear a lot of these islands a lot of these countries depend on the on the ecosystem services on the resources That they provide that these coral reefs provide so we have to be careful of doing that So what I like about this study is that it has a management implication has a conservation implication It's uses the science to say hey, there is a change in in coral the in coral cover It's declining quite a bit by 20% in the last 23 years and now we need to fix it and We need to really get into the management really we can't we can't stop we can't halt we can't delay We just need to go forward and manage these areas So that is the episode for today. I hope you enjoyed research Thursdays on a Wednesday Like I said before we won't have an episode on Thursday or Friday of this week Just because it's Christmas even Christmas and I celebrate that that holiday and I just want to spend it with my family So I just want to and and I believe the the speaker for blue team celebrates Christmas as well Nathan Johnson and The virtue my virtual assistant Kate so she really you know, they really put everything together for me and it really helped me out so You know feel free to wish them a merry Christmas And I wish you if you celebrate Christmas a merry Christmas and happy holidays for the rest of you And a happy new year of course, but we'll see you on Monday And I hope you have a great weekend. You've been listening to speak of the podcast. I am your host Angelouin happy conservation You You You You You You You (upbeat music) (upbeat music)