Salt Marshes, Fried Clams, LL Bean, and Unsustainable Development: Dispatches From Southern Maine

Who knew finding an internet connection in Maine would be such a pain in the ass! First the "free" hotel connection goes down. Then the "free" conference connection crashes. So while I hoped to do my blogging in as real time as possible, I'm resorting to writing a flurry and then uploading when I find the random free connections.

So I'm in between sessions on Day 2 of the National Marine Educators Association conference and uploading yesterday's escapades. Monday was all about registration in the morning. After that, I was free until 4PM when the Conservation Committee met. With my relatively free day, I decided to visit some of my favorite haunts in Southern Maine.

I cruised down Highway 1 through South Portland, Scarborough, and through Ocean Beach to Ferry Beach and Camp Ellis. These two points are directly north of the Saco River, one of the major freshwater sources draining into this part of the Gulf of Maine. I formerly taught environmental ed. here and wanted to see the shore and marshlands that were such a big part of my early environmental career. Camp Ellis (in the image looking north at top of post) is a textbook example of uninformed coastal development. Early homeowners and builders in the 1970's decided that the sea view was so lovely that they just had to have their backyards on the primary dune. Having thus killed most of the beach grass--destabilized the shoreline--by the late 80's homeowners had more than just a sea view... they were part of the view.

The story is more complex and also involved the badly-planned construction of a breakwater for the Saco harbor that had the unintended effect of pulling sand away from the up-current beaches but that's just the juicy details. In all, Camp Ellis and parts of Ferry Beach just to the north are lessons in how not to develop sustainably.

Heading back north, I stopped at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Ocean Park. This is a spectacular saltmarsh fed by a small tributary off the mighty Saco River. It's one of my favorite protected natural areas named after one of my favorite environmental defenders. Getting close for a few pics reminded my, however, of the many bouts of poison ivy I endured here. Poison ivy, the east coast treat!

I continued through Ocean Park along Route 1 through the horror that is Old Orchard Beach. No need to go into detail here about OOB other than saying that it deserves skipping on any tour of Maine. My mind was focused on the real reason for this little daytrip: LUNCH! And I had my tastebuds set for the joy of fried Maine clams from The Clambake Restaurant. Oh baby, no trip to Southern Maine is complete without a visit to this mecca of grease. The formula for success is simple.

Pull into here:


Select something from here:


Wait anxiously for your number to be called out:


Then tuck into this heart attack on a plate:


I'll need to double-dose my fish oil following this week (or schedule bypass surgery when I get home). As I was leaving The Clambake, I caught sight of the most bizarre coin game I've ever seen. It was a classic crane game. But instead of the plush toys, the prize was a living Maine lobster. The game appears to be designed to dip into the water, grab a moving target, and (if successful) drop your crustacean down a chute that delivers it to you dripping wet (and presumably angry). I was simultaneously fascinated and appalled. I wondered what someone was supposed to do if and when they grabbed one of the sad lobsters in the tank. Do you rush home to boil water or tuck it into the glove compartment?

After waddling back to the car, I made my way back to the conference to attend a meeting of the NMEA Conservation Committee. This committee reports to the larger Board of Director's on matters related to broader conservation issues relevant to the marine education community. At least this is what the mission statement says. Unfortunately, we spent a whole lot of meeting time discussing how to make meetings more environmentally conscious. There was talk of recycling, sustainable food sourcing, and other meeting specific needs. Certainly important stuff, but I was under the impression that the Conservation Committee was also charged with providing the organization with expertise on conservation issue or positions. Instead, I seemed to hear that the committee's charge was to help NMEA members feel good about attending "green" conferences. I'm hoping that perception will change.

With jet lag quickly catching-up with me, I decided to end my day with one last road trip up the coast to Freeport... home of blue-blood Mainers and the flagship store of LL Bean. While I wouldn't say I've got that New England, rumpled elegance look made popular by LL Bean (I'm more rumpled than elegant), I do appreciate a company that has made it easier and more comfortable for people to enjoy the outdoors. As a young, poor environmental educator in Maine, I also appreciated their gear recycling program. Every few months at the distribution factory, LL Bean gave away camping gear and outerwear either free or at significant savings to employees of non profits or local schools. What a great program!

Well, that's all I wrote last night (Monday). With the final session of today (Tuesday) about to start, I need to grab some coffee and run. I'll try to post about today's proceedings later at the hotel (internet willing). And hopefully by then I'll hear a squeak from Oregon. Otherwise, this is turning into all Maine all the time!

Maine: The Way Life Should Be

Note to self... Next time I need to be in Maine, fly into Portland airport not Logan International. After a 3AM airport shuttle pick-up in Oakland, 2 hours of hurry-up and wait at SFO, close to 6 hours of no sleep on the plane, I arrived in Boston only to load into a rental car for the 2 hour drive to Portland, Maine. All that to save some money. Lesson learned.

I was excited to finally cross state lines into Maine. I do love this state and it's incredible coastline. You want miles of sandy beach? They've got it! Rocky tidepools? Check! Expansive salt marsh habitat? Yup! Working fishing communities? Shrinking, but still here. And how happy was I to rediscover one of my favorite pieces of Portland public art: The Maine Lobsterman. Check out those hands! You know the old saying... Big hands, big lobsters!

Aside from some cosmetic changes to the downtown, Portland looks the same. A few more boarded-up store fronts than I remember. And way to many Starbucks now! I strolled from my hotel down to The Old Port where I used to live. Still a commercial and retail mecca, though I noticed with sadness that my beloved Java Joes on Exchange Street is gone. I popped my head into Gritty McDuffs to see if I recognized any of the regulars. It was a pretty quiet Sunday night. Jebus, the memories I was recalling of good times in Gritty's, or 3 Dollar Deweys, and then midnight hot slices at Bill's Pizza or sobering breakfasts of corned beef hash and eggs at Becky's Diner on Commercial Street.

Business starts fresh tomorrow morning for the National Marine Educators Association conference with registration, board meeting, and then committee meetings. Concurrent sessions start-up on Tuesday morning. I'll be sure to pass along the highlights. No word from Bryan in Oregon yet, but the poor boy is probably still recovering from the brutal hour and a half flight from SF to Portland, OR.

A Tale Of Two Ports

Well, it's conference season so I'm hitting the road again this week and heading for Portland, Maine to attend the National Marine Educators Association annual conference. It's been 10 years since I've set foot in Portland town, so I'm looking forward to seeing how things have changed. The conference is always fun since the marine ed crowd is a fairly close-knit group who have no qualms about mixing beer with business. My kind of meeting. I hope to stir up some excitement around International Year of the Reef 2008 while catching-up with colleagues.

Meanwhile, one of my Program Managers, Bryan Dias, will be in the other Portland of Oregon attending the Coastal Zone 2007 conference, the largest international gathering of ocean and coastal management professionals in the world. Bryan will be representing CORAL and sharing our work in supporting marine protected areas around the world. I suspect he will also be sampling some of Oregon's best coffee and microbrews as well.

So, game on! Bryan and I will be tag team blogging over the next week and engage in a little dueling Portland's. We hope to bring you news from the world of marine education, coastal zone management, and some of the best that Maine and Oregon have to offer. Enjoy!

When Rights Are Wrong

Anyone who has spent time in Hawaii's waters over the past few decades will recognize a change is occurring. First there are the statistics. For example from 1955 to 2002, the Hawaii commercial mullet catch dropped 91 percent from 104,000 pounds to 9,210 pounds. Papio and ulua catches dropped by two-thirds during the same period, from 286,488 pounds to 98,734 pounds. 'O'io, prized for fishcakes, dropped from 36,171 to 4,416 pounds, an 88 percent drop.

Then there are the everyday, anecdotal perceptions. Liz Foote, our Hawaii Field Manager, recently forwarded me this email from a disappointed Maui visitor,

We have a concern, a disappointment and a question all concerning the "Fish Preserve" called Molokini. We noted the obvious disappearance of fish in the Molokini bowl. We just returned from a trip to Maui while celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary and made the snorkeling trip out to Molokini which we had always enjoyed but NOT THIS TIME. We were very disappointed in how few fish there really were out there in comparison to the last few times we were out there (about 9 years ago was our last previous). That is our disappointment. Our concern and question is "WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE FISH?" It is very disturbing to put it mildly!

Is it the use of gillnets, the night divers, the killing of too many sexually mature fish, the lack of adequate no-fishing seasons, the lack of no-fishing sanctuaries, the muddy sediment flowing off the land or the physical damage to reefs from indiscriminate anchoring? Likely, it's all of them. Death by a thousand cuts.

And fisheries management news from this week isn't offering a band aid for these cuts. Quite the opposite, it seems as though salt is being sprinkled into the wounds. A news piece in this weeks journal Science describes the nasty confrontation looming in Hawaii between conservationists and fishers. Alan Friedlander of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sums things up succinctly: The main Hawaiian Islands' reserves, which protect only 0.3% of the coastline, are too small. If you want to rebuild fish stocks, you need to stop fishing in at least 20% of Hawaii's waters and regulate fishing in the rest, Friedlander says. Increasing the protected areas, therefore, would result in a larger fish catch.

But there is one pesky problem. Hawaii residents and visitors love to fish. Certainly this is closely linked to indigenous Hawaiian culture and traditional fishing rights. But those rights are extended to anyone. As a result, and with just a few exceptions, you can pretty much fish where you like. No permit required. To fully grasp the sometimes ridiculous nature of this, you really have to experience it in person. Take Kahalu'u Beach for example (picture to the left from Kahalu'u) along the Kailua-Kona coast of the Big Island. I was snorkeling along the near-shore reef area with Liz last year. Though overcrowded, it was lovely. Right up until someone almost tossed their gillnet right on my head. I'm not quite sure what this fellow was trying to catch since all I was seeing were yellow tangs and moorish idols. It really didn't matter to me what he was targeting. I was pissed that this alleged fishery management area was someone's private fishing pond. But there you have it: multiple resource users interpreting for themselves how the resource should be used.

Clearly, some restrictions or more no-take marine protected areas would be a good thing at this point, right? Not to special interest groups such as the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (Wespac). Wespac is the policy-making organization for the management of fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ, generally 3 to 200 miles offshore) around the Territory of American Samoa, Territory of Guam, State of Hawaii, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and US Pacific island possessions--an area of nearly 1.5 million square miles. The main task of the Council is to protect fishery resources while maintaining opportunities for domestic fishing at sustainable levels of effort and yield. But Wespac has garnered more of a reputation for ensuring fisheries profits than ensuring sustainability.

And Wespac is not afraid to stir-up indigenous Hawaiian communities when those voices serve their fisheries objectives. Case in point, last March Hawaii's House of Representatives approved a "right-to-fish" bill that would require the state to provide unattainable data, such as stock assessments throughout species' entire ranges, before any new protected area is created. The whole idea is to keep scientists busy (and quiet) chasing the chimera of "complete data" while fishers continue to empty the oceans.

Let's be honest, shoreline recreational or subsistence fishing is not what is causing the collapse of fisheries. I love to fish as well and I understand the importance of subsistence fishing in Hawaii and elsewhere. But it is those local unregulated fishing rights that are being leveraged to seemingly unscrupulous ends to satisfy greed. Should traditional rights trump the future health of our oceans and ultimately the future lives and experiences of our children? Apparently, Wespac is willing to gamble on that future for all of Hawaii.

Coral And The Goldilocks Effect

For as much as I love coral reefs, I've gotta admit that coral polyps are the prima donnas of the ocean. Most coral reefs are located between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn--not much more than 30 degrees north and south of the equator. Not too far north nor too far south, but just right. Corals are also found farther from the equator in places where warm currents flow out of the tropics, such as Florida and southern Japan. Reef building corals grow best in waters with a temperature of between 21 and 29 degrees Celsius (70 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit). It is possible for soft corals to grow in hotter and colder places, but growth rates under these conditions are very slow. Again, they like it just right.

Tropical coral species are particularly fussy about temperature. As I've described before, when sea surface temperatures start to climb more than 2-4 degrees Celsius for an extended period of time, coral polyps get stressed and can expel their algal symbionts. Once the algae (zooxanthellae) are evicted, the translucent coral polyp appears white (or bleached). If temperatures remain elevated and the coral cannot reacquire new heat-tolerant algae, the coral may die.

But bleaching can result not just when conditions are too warm, but also when conditions are too cold. Some recent news from Heron Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef describes how unusually cold weather has resulted in a winter bleaching event. Just the other day I described how the relatively rare phenomenon of sun-dried tides can cause mass coral bleaching and mortality. In a twist on that theme, if unusually low tides are coupled with chilly, windy (conditions that are just wrong for coral) a similar mass mortality can result. These images of bleaching are courtesy of Ove Hoegh-Guldberg's fantastic website Climate Shifts.

Let's See... Go Surfing Or Swim With Dolphins? How About Both?

This is an amazing image. It's a pod of about 20 bottlenose dolphins photographed surfing about 300 miles north of Perth in Western Australia. Check out the full story for more info. Makes me want to head to the beach!

We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us

A letter in the current issue of Science caught my attention today. Norman Karin with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory writes to vent his spleen over a comment in the journal's May 4 News Focus that implicates diver damage as a contributing factor in coral reef decline.

I must take exception to a comment and its implications in Richard Stone's otherwise excellent article "A world without corals?" Stone introduces the human toll on reefs by citing damage inflicted by "divers clumsily breaking off chunks of coral." It is undeniable that recreational divers will, on occasion, inadvertently injure corals. However, I have been a certified SCUBA diver since 1992 and have logged over 150 ocean dives all over the world, and in that time I have seen only sporadic instances of divers impacting corals. Formal dive training by all major certification agencies includes instruction on reef protection, and the vast majority of dive tour operators repeatedly lecture divers about avoiding contact with coral and other marine life. It is undeniable that our coral reefs are threatened by human activities, but it is unfair to imply that sport divers at all popular reefs contribute significantly to this plight. Rather than a threat, I would argue that the growth of recreational diving is a major benefit to the future of our reefs: Divers are among the most environmentally conscious individuals I have met.

As a diver since 1985 with over 500 dive hours logged on tropical reefs and now a coral reef conservationist working directly with the marine tourism sector, I have to ask: Mr. Karin, are you talking about the same dive community I know?

I'm not about to pretend that recreational use and overuse ranks up there with climate change, coastal development, or unsustainable and destructive fishing practices as the most significant global threats to coral reef health. And certainly I've had the honor to dive with stellar dive businesses around the world who are ambassadors for sustainability. But to suggest that the dive community as a whole has had some sort of collective come to jesus moment around sustainable behavior and best practices just because divers are certified by PADI, NAUI or any other agency is just uninformed.

Consider Hawaii as one example. According to The 2002 State of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States, marine tourism is a major factor contributing to reef decline at no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Hawaii. A seminal 2003 study found that between 28,000 and 100,000 people visited just four sites per year, with diving and snorkeling being the most popular marine recreation activity. Tourism numbers have increased steadily over the years. For example, a 1999 survey showed that tiny Honolua Bay on Maui averaged 250 tourists per day and up to 700 per day during peak season. This volume has certainly increased. Due to the shallow nature of the reefs, physical damage from trampling has become a persistent problem. Moreover, research shows that 45% of certified SCUBA divers who visit dive sites break coral colonies. Most of this damage appears to be from fin kicks.

Certainly, education is highly effective in modifying environmentally destructive tourist behavior (i.e. finning, fish-feeding, collecting, etc.) and reducing coral damage. Pre-dive/snorkel environmental briefings are the best and most effective form of interpretation and education in a boat diving environment. Another key study similarly recommends one mandatory pre-dive/snorkel briefing given by marine recreation providers to all their clients. They recommend that marine recreation providers also deliver shore-based briefings to tourists and that this could greatly reduce impact on corals at MPA sites. Despite these recommendations, my personal experience world-wide is that environmental briefings are sporadically delivered. In many instances they are delivered seconds before dropping into the water as last minute reminders which studies also show is as effective as saying nothing.

Conventional educational outreach to the marine recreation community has limitations based on simple arithmetic. Back to my original Hawaiian example, within Hawaii’s recreational dive industry alone, there are hundreds of coral reef dive destinations, over 100 dive operations, and close to 1,000 full and part-time dive employees. These totals grow significantly when factoring in all other marine recreation operations (snorkel, SNUBA, kayak, boating, nature tours, etc.) The situation becomes even more complex when one considers the disproportionately high personnel turnover rate within the marine tourism industry. As most marine recreation operations lack an infrastructure for maintaining an institutional memory of collective wisdom and lessons learned, motivation and knowledge gained from conventional outreach opportunities is lost as staff departs.

A final important consideration that Mr. Karin also forgets is the mistaken notion that education alone will result in behavioral change. Decades of social marketing have proven that there is a significant gap between what people know and what people do. Why do smokers informed of the risks of lung cancer still smoke and dieters aware of heart disease still binge eat? Successful educational outreach programs that target behavioral change must move beyond the “silver bullet” mentality and create sustained and layered opportunities for learning, reflection, evaluation, and implementation.

It should be stressed that not all recreational impacts to reef ecosystems involves coral breakage. Take a recent example I found in the blogosphere. A rather interesting exchange is playing out on the island of Saipan between a seasoned diver and a local conservationist. Seems the diver decided he fancied a couple of shells being carried on the back of two hermit crabs he discovered. The trouble was that the crabs weren't finished with the shells yet. No worries, the diver just "coaxed" the crabs out.

I actually thought about it for a couple minutes before deciding to try evicting this guy too. I don't find Tritan (sic) Trumpet shells very often, so these were very good finds for me, and they were both dead already, just inhabited by crabs who could find another home if I took this one. He put up quite a fight, but I was persistant (sic) and wasn't about to be pushed around by a crab, no matter how pretty it looked.

These are the actions of a diver who admits over 30 years of experience and considers himself to be informed?

With all this alleged awareness and enlightenment in the dive community, I must admit some confusion as to the incorporation of a focus on Recreational Use and Misuse to the Local Action Strategies to the States of Hawaii, Florida, and all US territories. If divers and other reef recreationists are informed and we conservationists are just preaching to the choir, I would imagine that MPA managers can think of more effective use of limited federal conservation funding.

Finally, Mr. Karin points to a shining example of how divers have demonstrated stewardship of a resource so valuable to them,

As proof of this view, one need only visit Bonaire, a popular dive destination and the site of some of the world's healthiest coral reefs. Bonaire instituted strong legislation, including laws enacted in 1975 that made it illegal to break or sell coral. Subsequent efforts in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund established a vast marine park that completely encompasses the island.

Here I agree with Karin. Bonaire is spectacular and a model that should be emulated and exported world-wide. But to hold up the well-funded, relatively affluent, politically stable and uncorrupt Netherlands Antilles as somehow representative of most coral reef destinations and MPA systems is just disingenuous. MPA's are our best defense against coral reef destruction. Yet most MPAs are not reaching their conservation goals due to a variety of causes. Bridging management gaps takes time, money, and local community buy-in as well as local political will. Crushing poverty and competing resource use can often derail the best conservation efforts.

Denial or special pleading to displace tourism's contribution and responsibility certainly doesn't help either.

ScienceBloggers Eat Their Young

It sort of starts here. Then goes to here. Later comes this. Then this. And now this.

And around and around it goes. After about the first seven comments for any of these "arguments" you just don't see anything original or value-additive to the dialogue. Throw in the whole "science framing" thingie and you can get a migraine. Though I must remind myself that if and when I get a hankerin' for some traffic trolling, all I need do is blatantly (or cryptically) announce my belief in a sky fairy.

But I also have to say there's a certain delicious spectator quality to the whole kerfuffle. A ScienceBlog author drops the F-bomb (faith in this case), either for or against, then sits back and lets their hounds rip it to shreds. Brilliant. But I'm hoping that we can get past blog posts where personal positions on the science-religion continuum are staked-out so that some real dialogue can happen.

Maybe it's coming from my vantage point as a queer scientist (throw that into the mix, right?) that I don't see a lot of value to people simply posting their belief either way. I mean, what would be the value to a dialogue on queer rights where the only contributions were "I'm gay." or "I'm straight, leaning towards bisexual." Other than the curiousity factor that's appeased, how does it further the process of moving rights forward?

Which sort of has me wondering if this is what's behind the brouhaha unfolding in ScienceBlogs? I dunno. It's hard to tell, but don't you imagine there has got to be a natural curiosity among the SciBlings over who believes what? Given that PZ and others have drawn their lines in the sand, there's the unspoken challenge to put up or shut up. Again, I dunno. I just hope we can get back to cephalopod commentary again soon.

Scientists Confirm Most Of Global Warming Due To Chris Mooney Being Such A Hottie

Another payday, another trip to the bookstore. And today I made a beeline for Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, Chris Mooney's latest analysis of the intersection of science and politics and his journey to understand the relationship between climate change and hurricanes. After Hurricane Katrina devastated his hometown of New Orleans, Mooney pursued leading scientists on either side of the climate argument through the 2006 hurricane season to try to explore the question of whether global warming will strengthen or otherwise change hurricanes.

I'm already half-way through the first section and it's a ripping good read thus far. But I suspected as much given what I've read on The Intersection, Mooney's blog that he co-writes with Sheril Kirshenbaum over on ScienceBlogs. And of course his bestselling The Republican War on Science was just amazing. That is, I think he's an excellent writer. I wouldn't actually know for sure since it's kind of difficult to stay focused on the narrative when I keep skipping to the back cover flap to stare at his photo. Wired magazine named Mooney one of 2005's ten "sexiest geeks." We all know smart is sexy, but damn you Mooney! Did you have to fall out of the sexy tree and hit every branch on the way down?

Mooney is currently on a reading tour to promote Storm World, and I was hoping I would get the chance to hear him in the Bay Area on this book tour. But his schedule so far seems to only bring him as close as Pasadena. So Chris if you're reading this, please note that I will personally guarantee a standing room only crowd in San Francisco for a reading. Plus we're a foodie town so I can line-up some good eats and fine local brews. Don't make me cough-up the $5001 to get you in town! And what's up with the $5001? Does that mean $5000 is a nonstarter?

Some Like It Hot

There's been a bit of a buzz in the news the past few days over a recent report from Australia. A study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville used DNA analysis to show that many coral species along the Great Barrier Reef stored several types of algae in their tissue that kicked-in in times of thermal stress to continue providing important nutrients for the coral. The study indicates that some coral species are suited to climate change and that these species have survived temperature changes in the past.

While this seems to be front page news for the mass media, coral scientists have realized for some time now that not all coral symbiosis is the same. Reef-building, or hermatypic, corals owe their success to the fact that most have symbiotic, photosynthetic dinoflagellate algae living inside their tissues (the image to the right shows round algal cells inside the coral tentacle). Dinoflagellates are generally free-swimming microscopic protists, but some have evolved this symbiotic lifestyles and make their living within the tissue of a variety of animal hosts such as corals, giant clams, and jellyfish jellies (strikethrough to appease invertephile Kevin at The Other 95%). Think of the coral as a landlord and the algae as tenants. This endosymbiotic habit isn't that difficult to fathom considering that dinoflagellates are a sister group to the Apicomplexa, a group of parasitic and disease-causing protists of which the malaria Plasmodium is most familiar.

The presence of photosynthetic symbionts within the tissues of the coral host results in high levels of primary productivity as well as rapid deposition of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) that builds up to form the rock substrate of the coral reef. Recalling the landlord-tenant metaphor, the coral provides a living space, carbon dioxide, and some fertilizer. In return, the algae pays "rent" in the form of sugars, other nutrients, and oxygen. This symbiosis allows some coral species to be up to 17% more productive in their metabolism and reef building than would be possible without the algal contribution.

These single-celled algae all belong to the single genus Symbiodinium (seen in the photomicrograph image at the top of this post). Coral polyps also use their tentacles and nematocysts (stinging cells) to feed, but Symbiodinium may actually produce most of a coral's food. The phenomenon of coral bleaching, caused by the loss of the endosymbiotic dinoflagellate, results in dramatic declines in coral cover and health of the reef. Up till about the mid 1980's, the assumption was that all symbiotic dinoflagellates belonged to a single pandemic species Symbiodinium microadriaticum.

Thanks to the growing field of coral genomics, we now know that the genus Symbiodinium is exceptionally diverse. Research over the past three decades demonstrates that different symbionts show considerable behavioral, morphological, biochemical, physiological, and genetic variation. The genus Symbiodinium is currently recognized from molecular evidence as consisting of at least seven principle clades (imaginatively referred to as Clades A-G), all of which contain multiple taxa (the phylogeny shown here depicts just some of the diversity present in Clades A-D). What is perhaps most exciting (well, exciting to us coral ecologists) is that this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the diversity in Symbiodinium has yet to be discovered. The rate of discovery of novel molecular types continues to increase and researchers such as Professor Mónica Medina of the UC Merced School of Natural Sciences is part of the new wave of coral scientists driving these new discoveries.

A byproduct of such diversity within Symbiodinium zooxanthellae is the remarkable variation in thermal tolerance across clades. While some clades cannot photosynthesize effectively in warmer sea surface temteratures, other clades thrive. The implication is that coral can "evict" poorly performing algal symbionts and selectively uptake more thermally adapted strains. How they do this and the specific cues and triggers are not clear yet, but the upshot is that coral are not beholden to a single algal species for all climatic conditions.

What makes the recent Australian researchers news to intriguing is their study shows that most common corals on the Great Barrier Reef actually harbor more than one type of algae, and that conventional genetic methods have failed to detect some types which occur in low abundance. The potential for this hidden back-up type (algae) to step in and provide nutrition to coral during heat stress is far greater than currently thought,reports research team member Jos Mieog and principal investigator Dr. Madeleine van Oppen. This flexibility discovered in our research is important in understanding the past evolutionary success of these coral species and their future survival capacity in the face of a changing climate.