It has been established by many articles that coral bleaching is not stopping but increasing. Which means that coral reef mortality is increasing also. Why the survival of coral reefs and bleaching are related is because coral reef bleaching means the loss of symbiotic algae. At a specific temperature the algae helping coral survive die. As a result, the coral reef stops tissue growth, skeletal growth, and reproduction because the algae are the reefs source of nutrition. The reefs can survive a brief bleaching because their larvae would not have died off. The increase of coral reef mortality is an important issue because these reefs are home and the food source to schools of big and little fish. Once a reef dies and starts to break down, the fish move to different coral reefs or die off also. The fishing moving or dying affects humans greatly. Without fish,  these issues will continue to become worse until the reef recovers but that could happen in a century or two. Climate change is huge reason why the coral reefs are dying but is not the only reason, El Niño or La Niña, marine protection, fisheries, and the rising baseline of water temperatures. Also, the increase of CO₂ emissions because it affects the skeletal growth of coral. In this article, “Coral Bleaching and Global Climate Change: Scientific Finding and Policy Recommendation,” the researchers implore for more research because the reefs would be able to survive climate change if they are able to acclimate to the rising heat. If there is more research than they will have better ideas on how to make conservation management policy better. Interestingly, the researchers suggest a better policy to reduce CO₂ emission. These policies will benefit coastal communities because bleaching affects the livelihood of those communities that rely on fish for subsistence or income either as food or tourism because fish rely on coral reefs to survive.

Reaser, J. K., Pomerance, R., and Thomas, P. O. (2000) Coral Bleaching and Global Climate Change: Scientific Finding and Policy Recommendations. Conservation Biology, 14(5):1500-1511.

It is predicted that in 30 years we will have lost 70% of our coral reefs. The loss of our coral reefs affects our fisheries, tourism, medicine, and many other aspects of our lives. Coral reefs are the ecosystem of the ocean, without it the ocean slowly dies. Thus, we need to protect our reefs. There has been a lot of debate on paper about what is the best way to protect our marine life from dying, but there has not been much applying those theories discussed to real coral reefs. In this article, “Designing marine protected area networks to address the impacts of climate change,” discusses the pros of the already established marine protected area (MPA) networks to help future designers figure out what aspects of the established MPA’s would be best for theirs. This article is interesting because the researchers focus of these designs is how these areas will make the reefs more adaptable or resilient to climate change. A designer can do everything else perfectly but if their main goal isn’t resiliency, those reefs will die with the quickly rising water temperatures. Resilience equals “reefs ecosystem’s ability to recover from a disturbance, to maintain the dominance of hard corals, and/or to maintain morphological diversity as opposed to shifting to an algal-dominated state or a single coral morphology (McLeod, Salm, Green, and Almany, 2009, pg. 363).” The requirements for a well established MPA network are size (10-20 km), shape (square or rectangle), risk spreading, critical areas, connectivity, ecosystem function, and ecosystem management. The size of the area should be at least 10 to 20 km, and the shape should be a basic one like a square or rectangle. Risk spreading means at least three coral species need to be protected and their larvae can spread out easily. The critical areas that need to be protected are nurseries and spawning areas because those corals will have a better chance of surviving and they are the future. While the other three categories focus on protecting the ecosystems that can connect well with others and will be able to maintain ecosystem function under duress. The reefs that are going to be protected need to be resilient or MPA are not worth the effort because climate change will kill off all the reefs.

McLeod, E., Salm, R., Green, A, and Almany, J. (2009). Designing marine protected area networks to address the impacts of climate change. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7(7): 362-370.

Did you know the ocean absorbs 25% of CO₂ emissions? That means the emissions are absorbed by coral reefs. This absorption causes the ocean pH to change and become a hostile environment for coral and algae, also known as ocean acidification. As a result, coral reefs calcify at a slower rate and will not be able to survive. One of the leading causes of this acidification is human CO₂ emissions. This article is about conservation management of coral reefs regarding ocean acidification: (1) set up a C chemistry baseline for the ocean, (2) set up ecological baselines, (3) determine species and habitat sensitivity to ocean acidification, (4) projecting changes in seawater carbonate chemistry, and (5) find potential synergistic effects of multiple stressors (Mcleod, et al., 2012). There hasn’t been much research on how to manage the ever-increasing CO₂ emissions so most of this is theoretical and is based on the conservation trends regarding coral bleaching. This an interesting article regarding my research question on how location affects coral reef survival because I never thought to look at CO₂ emissions. From these articles I have been browsing, it seems that human activity and natural disasters are what greatly impact the survival of coral reefs in different locations. Also, that possibly changing the habits of humans around the coast can positively affect coral reefs and make them more resilient.

Mcleod, E., Anthony, K. RN., Andersson, A., Beeden, R., Golbuu, Y., Kleypas, J., Kroeker, K., Manzello, D., Salm, R. V., Schuttenburg, H., and Smith, J. E. (2013) Preparing to manage coral reefs for acidification: lessons from coral bleaching. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11(1): 20-27

As I am doing more research on coral reefs and how the location of the reefs affects their survival, I am learning that humans are the most pressing problem to their survival. Humans are directly, or indirectly causing death of coral reefs around the world. One of the ways humans are killing reefs is by overfishing. Overfishing changes the food web of that particular reef. As a result, the structure of the reef changes as well. The structure changes because fish, especially parrotfish, have specific duties that keep the reef healthy and resilient. Parrotfish and other fish eat the macroalgal that are trying to grow on the coral, munch on dead and live coral which will make it easier for new coral to grow and flourish, and transport sediments and nutrients to different parts of the reef and elsewhere. These duties are important for coral to have quick recovery time when facing a disaster. This journal article is about how strongly does human population and their fishing of parrotfish affects coral reefs. These researchers did a natural experiment using detach observation and reports of acts and behaviours to see the impact humans have on 18 coral reefs from the Indian Ocean to Tahiti. Human population differs from zero and reefs protected from fishing to overpopulated cities that overfish. Surprisingly, they found no correlation between the overfishing of parrotfish and human population. Also, that there is a strong relationship between human population and the population structure of reef fish because humans want the big parrotfish so then the smaller parrotfish populate the reefs. Which means coral reefs are sensitive to human activity regarding bioerosion and coral predation but not sensitive with eating dead and live coral, and transporting sediments. Overall, human activity indirectly affects coral reefs.

Bellwood, D. R., Hoey, A. S., and Hughes, T. P. (2012) Human activity selectively impacts the ecosystem roles of parrotfish on coral reefs. Proceedings: Biological Sciences 279(1733): 1621-1629.

After scouring the periodical section of the library looking for any journal article about coral reefs, I came across “Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs.” This article is about the 39 researcher who came up with new approach of finding the best coral reef conservation methods that involve studying the unusually prosperous and the much-degraded coral reef sites, and the relationship socioeconomic drivers have with those sites. This is a correlational study. The researchers obtained data from over 2,500 sites and discovered 15 bright spot sites that are two standard deviations above the expected, and 35 dark spot sites that are two standard deviations below the expected. The Bayesian hierarchical model was used to compile all the data together. Interestingly, not all the bright spots were where the researcher expected. I believed that the flourishing coral reefs would be in isolated with strict fishing laws and little human interactions, but I am wrong because the places where bright spots and humans interact have solid sociocultural institutions which involves cultural taboos and marine tenure, above average local engagement in the maintenance and management of the coast and depend on coastal resources. Also, those areas have good environmental conditions, like deep water refuges. All that was discovered using statistics and surveying local experts at many different locations and surveying data providers. Out of the 18 socioeconomic drivers, the most influential are high compliance reserve, local population growth and human development index. The places with higher human development index have better maintained reefs because those locations are wealthier. All of this is shown on stacked bar graphs for different categories involving bright, average and dark spots using p-values. What can be taken away from this research is using the data found about the relationship between socioeconomic drivers and these outlier spots can inform governments, NGOs and investors the best ways to conserve coral reefs in the most populated by humans and the least. Also, which socioeconomic drivers need to be decreased to positively influence the shape of coral reefs.

Cinner, Joshua E, Cindy Huchery, M. Aaron MacNeil, Nicholas A.J. Graham, Tim R. McClanahan, Joseph Maina, Eva Maire, John N. Kittinger, Christina C. Hicks, Camilo Mora, Edward H. Allison, Stephanie D’Agata, Andrew Hoey, David A. Feary, Larry Crowder, Ivor D. Williams, Michel Kulbicki, Laurent Vigliola, Laurent Wantiez, Graham Edgar, Rick D. Stuart-Smith, Stuart A. Sandin, Alison L. Green, Marah J. Hardt, Maria Beger, Alan Friedlander, Stuart J. Campbell, Katharine E. Holmes, Shaun K. Wilson, Eran Brokovich, Andrew J. Brooks, Juan J. Cruz-Motta, David J. Booth, Pascale Chabanet, Charlie Gough, Mark Tupper, Sebastian C. A. Ferse, U. Rashid Sumaila & David Mouillot. “Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs.” Nature 534, no. 3 (July 2016): 416-419.

My research topic is about coral reef survival and the different methods used to by scientists to help the coral survive. It was difficult trying to find a journal article in print about coral reefs. Luckily, in March 2017, Volume 543 of Nature I found an article about coral bleaching and the effects 20 years of it has had on the Great Barrier Reef. Terry P. Hughes and 45 other scientists and professors wrote, “Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals.” This article uses expert knowledge from 46 scientists, while using statistics, aerial and underwater photos and surveys, and heat maps to figure out if their hypothesis that good water quality have a relationship to coral being resistance to bleaching. Unfortunately, the hypothesis had no statistical support. The data on degree heating weeks (DHW) agrees with the statistics. Degree heating weeks are the hottest weeks of the year where in certain locations the heat stress is too much of coral and it starts to bleach. This article focuses on three years; 1998, 2002, and 2016 to show the readers that coral bleaching does not affect individual coral and the bleaching is not a single event. Also, no matter if a community bans fishing, boating, or underwater activities, bleaching will still happen due to increasing temperatures. Bleaching can happen to coral twice in decade and it a world wide catastrophe. The Great Barrier Reef was the location these scientists focused on. Interesting part of this article is section on certain species of coral are better at surviving and recovering from bleaching than other species. The coral species that are able to bounce back quicker are ones that colonize quickly and grow within 10-15 years. This article did a good job at showing its readers how much climate change is affecting coral reefs and the urgency of helping recovering coral through marine parks and better water quality. However, this study was limited to one location, The Great Barrier Reef, and this specific location has been hit hard by climate change. Also, only tells the readers that coral bleaching is caused by climate change, and not solutions on how to slow bleaching down. All the hypothesized solutions that were written about in the article were denounced. Overall, this article was interesting because I couldn’t wrap my head around how to use statistics when discussing coral bleaching. When finding the relationship between degree heating weeks and the percent of coral bleached, a fitted line was found, y=48.6ln(x)-21.6. This article used the data type, reports of acts, behavior and events. The was found via aerial and underwater photos and surveys, and heat maps provided by Geoscience Australia.  

Terry P. Hughes, James T. Kerry, Mariana Alvarez-Noriega, Jorge G. Alvarez-Romero, Kristen D. Anderson, Andrew H. Baird, Russell C. Babcock, Maria Beger, David R. Bellwood, Ray Berkelmans, Tom C. Bridge, Ian R. Butler, Maria Byrne, Neal E. Cantin, Steeve Comeau, Sean R. Connolly, Greame S. Cumming, Steven J. Dalton, Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, C. Mark Eakin, Will F. Figueira, James P. Gilmour, Hugo B. Harrison, Scott F. Heron, Andrew S. Hoey, Jean-Paul A. Hobbs, Mia O. Hoogenboom, Emma V. Kennedy, Chao-yang Kuo, Janice M. Lough, Ryan J. Lowe, Gang Liu, Malcolm T. McCulloch, Hamish A. Malcolm, Michael J. McWilliam, John M. Pandolfi, Rachel J. Pears, Morgan S. Pratchett, Verena Schoepf, Tristan Simpson, William J. Skirving, Brigitte Sommer, Gergely Torda, David R. Wachenfeld, Bette L. Willis & Shaun K. Wilson. 2017. “Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of coral.” Nature 543(7645): 373-377.