Hurricane Impacts On Coral Reefs: Executioner, Savior, Or None Of The Above?

With Flossie bearing down on Hawaii, I've been asked by more than a few people today what impacts, if any, hurricanes can have on coral reefs. Since coral reefs are the bedrock of Hawaii's tourism, the fear that severe hurricanes can have a catastrophic effect on the state's economy is very real. So what do we know?

Much of what we know about hurricane impacts to reefs comes from studies in the Caribbean where severe storms have been slamming well monitored reef communities for decades. Studies show that the base coral frame is fairly resistant and immovable. But strong storm surge and wave energy can certainly damage or destroy branching corals or even smaller boulder coral colonies. Reef life such as soft corals, sponges, and any other encrusting organisms that live attached to the base coral frame can break away and be pulverized in the churning wave surge. Some of the fragmented life (sponges and corals) might survive, reattach, and continue growing in a new location if it is not buried or transported to a location where living conditions are inhospitable.

Another threat to reefs from hurricanes can be smothering from sediment suspended in wave surge or, more commonly, muddy runoff from land as a result of torrential storm downpour. Along Australia's Great Barrier Reef, sediment laden flood waters can completely block sunlight to some shallow reefs allowing only 1% of light to reach corals at depths of 10 m. Large scale flooding can carry land-based pollutants such as insecticides, fertilizers, and herbicides out to the reef. Fresh water can kill corals at shallow depths where mixing is low.

Despite these seemingly formidable assaults from hurricanes, coral reef ecosystems have recovered from severe storms for millions of years. Coral reefs are characterized as disturbance communities. While subject to frequent changes, disturbance communities tend to promote biodiversity by either selecting for species that can capitalize on rapid fluctuations or by promoting competition (and speciation) through specialization to exploit microhabitats and niches.

While hurricanes can be catastrophic for reefs, recent studies also show that hurricanes may actually have beneficial outcomes in some scenarios. Evidence is building that the cooling effect hurricanes have on sea temperatures may actually help corals recover from the bleaching caused by warming oceans. It is a controversial debate at the moment, but if the frequency of hurricanes increases with global warming, then the negative effects that are expected for coral bleaching [due to ocean warming] could be mitigated by the cooling that the hurricanes bring about.

But keep in mind that such a hypothesis only considers relief from reef threats caused by elevated sea surface temperatures. Hurricanes offer no quick fix to threats coming from unsustainable uses of coral reefs (coastal development, commercial or destructive fishing, coral mining, etc.) So while a storm-prone world might help mix (and cool) a warming sea, a slew of other stressors are waiting in the wings to further punish already over-stressed and sensitive coral reef systems.

Coincidence?

(With thanks to Tom for inspiration.)

Flossie Downgrades to Category 3

Demonstrating that we still have a long way to go in predicting and modeling hurricanes, Flossie continues to confound storm watchers and scientists as it nears the Hawaiian Islands. Now approximately 425 miles southeast of Hilo, Flossie (Honestly, who names these hurricanes? Shouldn't hurricanes have formidable names like Ester, Marge, or Stella? Not stripper names like Flossie. What's next? Hurricane Chablis?) has dropped from a Category 4 hurricane to a Category 3 with maximum sustained winds of about 125 mph.

Big Island Mayor Harry Kim has declared a state of emergency on the Big Island, which is expected to bear the brunt of Flossie's effects. All Big Island schools have cancelled classes for tomorrow and local Walgreens are staying open 24 hours to handle the last minute rush on storm supplies (candles, water, batteries, etc.)

I'm scheduled to fly into Honolulu early Friday morning on my way to American Samoa, so I'll be keeping my eye on Flossie all week. Even if it skirts the islands, I suspect storm surge to be high along the coast and wind gusts to wreak some havoc along the south shore.

You can learn more about how Hawaii is preparing from the The Honolulu Advertiser. And keep an eye on The Intersection where Chris Mooney has been posting periodic updates from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center.

That's A Moray Monday

Welcome to a new weekly addition to the blog. Each week, That's a Moray Monday will feature a different representative from the Muraenidae family of bony fish. Why morays? Why not? Moray eels are large cosmopolitan marine eels with approximately 200 species in 15 genera. They are found along tropical and subtropical coral reef systems worldwide. The loss of coral reefs isn't just a story of the decline of coral species. Loss of coral reef habitat also threatens spectacularly diverse species such as morays. I've selected these charismatic megafauna as poster children of the wonders of reef evolution and as a reminder of the complexity of life that depends upon healthy reefs.

Blue Ribbon Eel
Rhinomuraena quaesita

The Blue Ribbon Eel can be found throughout the Indo-Pacific: From East Africa to the Tuamoto Islands, north to southern Japan, south to New Caledonia and French Polynesia; including the Marianas and Marshalls.

It occurs along lagoon and seaward reefs. In the wild, the ribbon eel buries itself in sand or hides in rocks or reefs, dashing out to feed on small fishes. Juveniles and sub-adults are jet black with a yellow dorsal fin, while females are yellow with a black anal fin with white margins on the fins. The adult male can be black, fluorescent blue with yellow highlights, blue-green, or brilliant yellow. It's most noticeable features include three fleshy tentacles on the tip of its lower jaw, a single fleshy pointed projection at the tip of its snout, and tubular anterior nostrils ending in gaudy, fan-like expansions that undoubtedly assist in capturing chemical signals in the water.

This beautiful eel is the only species of moray to be a protandrous hermaphrodite, beginning life as males but able to change into females if the need arises. The ribbon eel also changes its color from blue to yellow when it becomes fully mature (& female). The ribbon eel grows to an overall length of approximately 100 cm (36 in).

Scale Model Hurricane

As we enter the peak months (August through October) of the Atlantic hurricane season, Category 4 Hurricane Flossie is already stirring things-up in the Northeast Pacific just south of Hawaii. If the images and memory of Katrina seem somewhat distant, it might be worth giving yourself a quick refresher and reality check on hurricane severity. This fascinating, though somewhat depressing, animation walks you through the Saffir-Simpson Scale and provides a great link to trajectory maps for the past 150 years of hurricanes in North America and the Caribbean.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center today released its update to the 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook, maintaining its expectations for an above-normal season. NOAA scientists are predicting an 85 percent chance of an above-normal season, with the likelihood of 13 to 16 named storms, with seven to nine becoming hurricanes, of which three to five could become major hurricanes (Category 3 strength or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale).

Occupational Hazards: #1 In A Series

My work involves travel. A lot. Which in and of itself is nothing special. Lots of people travel a lot for work in modern, well-serviced jet aircraft. The crucial difference in my travel is that I willingly fly over vast stretches of ocean in decrepit or dubiously serviced aircraft run by equally questionable airlines. It's what many people call "local color." I call it an occupational hazard and necessary risk to do my job.

I'm dwelling on this subject today in light of the recent tragedy this week near the South Pacific coral atoll of Moorea. Moorea is pronounced Mo-RAY-uh, not MOOR-ree-ya as in Lord of the Rings. French Polynesia's President Gaston Tong Sang has confirmed that there are no survivors among the 19 passengers and pilot aboard the Twin Otter Air Moorea aircraft which crashed between the islands of Tahiti and Moorea this week. The plane crashed shortly after take-off, around mid-day local time, from the small Moorea airstrip. It was bound for neighboring Tahiti island, but was seen suddenly descending and exploding as it hit the ocean's surface, in the nearby lagoon.

I've written here about some of the scary, white knuckle flights I've had to endure to get to some of our program sites. I'm a pretty fearless flier and it really takes something substantial to get me to break out into cold sweats while airborne. Statistically, flying is still the safest form of travel. But that statistic is skewed towards developed countries. And in every single one of our project site in a developing coral reef nation, I travel on one of those airlines where I often need to steel my nerves with a local beer before strapping in for what could very well be my last plane ride.

Some of my least favorite carriers include:

Air Niugini
This is the national airline of Papua New Guinea--and the carrier mentioned in my linked story above. They fly everything from small Twin Otter's to jet aircraft. As the nation's official airline, they sort of have a stranglehold on competition. Every so often a new airline will try to make a go, then fold since the government creates no real incentive for competition. And it's that very competition that could very well drive Air Niugini to consider such things as regular servicing of aging aircraft, or better yet replacing their entire fleet.

A recent trip on Air Niugini is sort of representative of what to expect: We boarded for a night flight from PNG to Singapore and begin the taxi down the runway when suddenly all the power fails--lights, air, engine, brakes... everything. In complete silence and darkness, we roll to a stop and sit there for perhaps 30 seconds. Then the lights blink back on, the engines begin the slow whir to power-up, and we once again taxi forward to the runway. Not a word of explanation. I begin the process of imagining this happening at 30,000 feet.

Air Fiji
It's hard to feel dread boarding an Air Fiji flight considering that they spend so much time decorating their aircraft with the most beautiful murals and designs. Yet on some of the inter-island jumps between Vanua Levu, Viti Levu, and Taveuni I've found myself dwelling on how these pretty planes might look strewn across verdant rainforest or cerulean ocean surface.

Truth be told, it's not the Air Fiji planes that scare me. They're mostly new and appear well maintained. What is frightening are the air strips used for takeoff and landings. They are often unimproved fields or loosely packed gravel runways that always appear too short. It's not uncommon to spot pigs or other "wildlife" scurrying near the airfield. Couple this with the often steep and erratic approaches needed for landings (particularly in Savusavu) and you begin to understand why a lot of people prefer the rusty, leaky inter-island ferry over flying.

Merpati Nusantara
This is one of the regular (if you can justifiably use the word "regular" in Indonesia) carriers to Sorong, gateway city to Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Geographically, Sorong is part of the island of Papua New Guinea. This area is politically part of Indonesia (formerly called Irian Jaya and now referred to as Papua). Merpati Nusantara, part of Garuda Indonesia Airlines, allegedly has flights from Bali, Jakarta, and Manado on preset days of the week, though I've found that "scheduled" flights are routinely cancelled. Often the ticket in your hand is not worth the paper it's handwritten on.

Despite other carriers to Sorong, they are sometimes the only option if your schedule requires being in or out of Sorong in a hurry. Somewhat scary Twin Otter's or Dash 8 aircraft comprise their fleet. AirDisaster.com records 10 crashes in their database between 1971 and 2001 for Merpati Nusantara. The real question is why did I need to know about a website called AirDisaster.com?

And just so it doesn't seem like I'm ragging on the Pacific, I give you my least favorite Caribbean carrier:

Tropic Air
I first experienced Belize' Tropic Air last year when I flew from Belize City to Placencia. The fleet consists mostly of Dash 8 aircraft. With my many previous Pacific experiences, I certainly had no surprise in the rather spartan aspects of the Dash. After boarding, I selected the school-bus style bench seat in the rear of the plane. The seat belts, as far as I could tell, were re-purposed car seatbelts. As the entry door closed, I noticed I could see outside through the gaps in the seal. Local color.

The Dash 8 is a loud and bouncy beast of a single prop plane. Since it was clear skies, the direct flight in to Placencia was amazing and uneventful. The flight out? Not so much. A cluster of tropical thunderstorm cells was brewing the day of departure, and I really thought we would be grounded for a few hours. Nope, Tropic Air laughs in the face of thunderstorms. With drizzles already touching my face on the walk to board the plane, I noticed the looming bruised sky to the north. The direction of Belize City.

In the air, the captain chose to fly low since visibility was poor and these aircraft have no radar. We were pelted by wind and rain but before long I noticed we were doing a fly-by to check out the runway. We descend, land on the bumpy strip, but wait... this isn't Belize City. Sadly, I was on the milk-run that had several stops before reaching Belize City. So twice more before reaching my final destination we endured bumpy takeoffs, nasty thunderstorms, crazy approaches over rainforests, and finally the calm of being on solid ground.

Does any of this make me regret my occupation or assignments. Hell no. I've survived scary flights in PNG only to land and dance with Huli Wigmen. I've been welcomed with smiles, food and traditional blessings from friendly coral reef communities like Waitabu, Fiji, after white knuckle puddle jumper flights. And the occasional bumpy, storm-ridden flights in Belize, Mexico, and Honduras means I can build greater capacity for reef stewardship along the second largest barrier reef on the planet. And I always remind myself how fortunate I am to be living out what I dreamed to be doing as a child. Life's a daring adventure or nothing at all. Now if someone could just delete the AirDisaster.com bookmark on my computer all would be perfect.

Ocean Conservation And Grilled Sausages: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

What do ocean conservation geeks do on a foggy summer day in San Franciso? We head to Berkeley, drink beer, and grill sausages. Our Hawaii Program Manager, Liz Foote, is visiting the mothership this week, so we decided to have a staff get together at the ED's home. I just wanted to share a few pics to show that a great conservation team has to not only work well together, but play well too.

Here's Liz and I on the ferry ride over to the East Bay. Can an after work commute get any better than this?


Most of the CORAL crew (minus staff on assignment in Fiji and on holiday) with Brian (our ED) holding the pre-grilled peppers and sausages. Thank you SF Farmers Market for the amazing selection of organic sweet and hot peppers!


And the bounty about to be savaged by hungry hordes. We had organic chicken, pork, tofu, and buffalo (yes, sustainable) sausages and even some bockwurst just for the purists. Oh baby, color me stuffed.

Breaking News: Figures Represented In These Cartoons Not To Scale... And Not Accurate

A report in the journal Nature sheds some new light on the early evolution of hominids. The new research by famed paleontologist Meave Leakey in Kenya shows our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, calling into question the evolutionary relationship between Homo habilis and Homo erectus. Were they or were they not contemporaneous? Check out the article for the findings.

But that's not the news that interested me the most in the piece I read from the Associated Press. What really stunned me was the asinine lede,

Surprising fossils dug up in Africa are creating messy kinks in the iconic straight line of human evolution with its knuckle-dragging ape and briefcase-carrying man.

And the equally ridiculous conclusions,

Overall what it paints for human evolution is a chaotic kind of looking evolutionary tree rather than this heroic march that you see with the cartoons of an early ancestor evolving into some intermediate and eventually unto us.

Ya think?

How long was Steve Gould saying this with every other breath and in writing since at least 1980? These march of progress, or MOP diagrams as he called them, were wholly misleading oversimplifications. The evolutionary development of our species was not a linear march to our current form, but rather a process of diversification of hominid species and subsequent pruning of lineages through extinction, with the present point in time, where we are the only extant hominid, being historically atypical.

That MOP diagrams persist is a long story that involves text book sales and simplification, human misconceptions of evolutionary progress, and of course overall scientific illiteracy. Despite this sudden epiphany from the news media, I wouldn't hold my breath that MOP cartoons will disappear. We're exquisitely visual primates, and these pictures convey not only information but also humor, hopes, (and fears).
















And this one is for Bora (the only MOP cartoon I can find that's arranged from right to left.)

Unprecedented Levels Of Coral Reef Loss

While not breaking news to me, PLoS One has a sobering paper that documents the regional decline of coral cover in the Indo-Pacific. Coral cover is a measure of the ocean floor area covered by living corals--regarded as a key indicator of reef habitat quality and quantity. Authored by John Bruno and Elizabeth Selig from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the study indicates that the rate and extent of coral loss in the Indo-Pacific are greater than previously expected. What I find particularly chilling is that while coral cover is surprisingly uniform among subregions studied, overall coral cover has declined decades earlier than previously assumed, even on some of the Pacific's most intensely managed reefs. The histograms above illustrate percent coral cover in the Indo-Pacific and selected subregions during different periods.

I've commented before on the challenges that limit marine protected area (MPA) effectiveness. Most MPAs are understaffed, under funded, or their protected status is on paper only. Still, according to the science that supports marine resource management, they are the best defense we have against loss of marine biodiversity. Recognizing this, a growing alliance of Pacific nations are teaming together to meet the challenges facing their marine resources. But is it too little, too late? Certainly this study provides the first regional-scale and long-term analysis of coral loss in the region where relatively little was known about patterns of reef loss.

Even in Pacific regions labeled "best managed," not surprisingly Hawaii and Australia's Great Barrier Reef, where coral cover loss has been less severe, the authors are quick to point out that coral cover represents only one measure of overall reef health. A complete picture must factor in the reduction in the overall quality of reef habitat. This includes the presence of the foundation species that generate the physical reef framework as well the composition of species that live in and around that framework.

As the authors summarize, these results have significant implications for policy makers and resource managers as they search for successful models to reverse coral loss. While coral reef stressors are legion, management approaches need to be more adaptive to the individual needs of a region. Building reef resilience might be a moving target. But if we can measurably reduce the stressors within our capacity to address, perhaps we provide breathing room for sensitive marine ecosystems to better weather the long term challenges.

Source: PLoS One

So Good You May Need To Buy Two

In just a few short days, I'll be celebrating the release of a book that I've had the pleasure of collaborating on over the past year. Reef, by DK Publishing, is a large format book (okay, it's a coffee table book) that uses incredible photography to showcase the beauty and fragility of the worlds coral reefs. This collection of photographs, from underwater photography collective Scubazoo, reveals reefs as they’ve never been seen before.

Scubazoo is a dedicated team of divers, photographers, marine biologists, and conservationists, who have devoted their lives to the filming and preservation of reefs worldwide. The group is based in Sabah, on the island of Borneo. I was excited when they invited CORAL to join the production and editorial team on this book, and I'm even more excited that a percentage of every sale will help fund our coral conservation projects worldwide. Now that's collaboration!

The book also comes with a DVD of underwater video segments that provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the Scubazoo team captured these amazing images.

You can pre-order your copy at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.