11th ICRS Abstract book - Nova Southeastern University

23-73
Caribbean Coral Reefs: Reversing The Slippery Slope To Slime
John OGDEN* 1
1 Florida Institute of Oceanography, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL
Coral reef monitoring and research programs, such as the Caribbean Coastal Marine
Productivity (CARICOMP) network of marine laboratories and many others, have
provided rich documentation of the continuing decline of Caribbean coral reefs and
linked coastal ecosystems of the past 50 years. While science and management have
achieved some local successes, particularly at the political level, in implementation of
management plans largely based on small marine protected areas, there is little evidence
that this effort has increased reef resistance and resilience to human disturbances. In
spite of considerable depth of scientific understanding that the Caribbean Sea functions as
a large marine ecosystem with coherent, region-wide ecological responses, there has been
only one attempt to implement a regional management, scientific and governance scheme
across a large coral reef region. Drawing on this experience, I suggest that a familiar
land-use planning approach be implemented in a demonstration project within the
contiguous Exclusive Economic Zones of several island countries. Within this large
coral reef ecoregion, existing environmental and scientific information as well as
traditional knowledge and human use patterns will be organized in a geographic
information system format. This will allow stakeholders to apply management tools,
particularly zoning, to separate conflicting human activities and plan for protection of
critical conservation areas. Unlike land-use planning, ocean-use planning can be
implemented on a trial basis with the plan adjusted over time with new knowledge. It
will also provide new scientific information at more appropriate, large geographic scales
on the resilience of coral reefs. It is past time to act. Coral reefs require comprehensive
planning within ocean ecoregions if they are to sustain future human use and the beauty,
wonder and lifting of the spirit that they so uniquely provide.
23-74
Shifting Baselines, Local Impacts, And Global Change On Coral Reefs
Jeremy JACKSON* 1,2 , Nancy KNOWLTON 3
1 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA,
2 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama, 3 Invertebrate Zoology,
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
The lush coral reefs of the remote, uninhabited and protected atolls of the Central Pacific
raise basic questions about the importance of local impacts versus global change for the
health of coral reef communities worldwide. Despite increased warming and high
numbers of degree heating weeks that cause coral bleaching, these reefs still support
extraordinarily abundant fish populations dominated by apex predators and living coral
ranging from 44 to 56% live coral cover. This is as true of atolls in areas of intense
upwelling and high productivity like Jarvis, Howland, and Baker, where nutrient
concentrations greatly exceed those supposed to cause coral disease and mortality, as for
atolls like Kingman and Palmyra in areas of much lower productivity. Detailed, longterm
studies are lacking to determine whether these reefs somehow resisted bleaching or,
as we believe more likely, have recovered from bleaching due to high recruitment and
rapid growth of corals coupled with lower levels of macroalgal overgrowth, coral disease,
and outbreaks of coral predators. Regardless, the simple persistence and obvious
resilience of these reefs contradicts the widespread belief that the effects of global change
are so overwhelming that local human impacts such as fishing and pollution can be safely
ignored. More importantly, the quasi-pristine reefs of the Central Pacific are invaluable as
monitoring stations for consequences of global change under ecologically optimal
conditions of minimum local human impact, and as sites for observations of ecological
processes and experiments on reefs that have not experienced the extreme degradation
typical of other reefs worldwide. Experimental confirmation that local protection
increases coral resilience to global change would provide the concrete evidence necessary
to promote costly changes in management to more stringently regulate exploitation and
pollution of reef ecosystems elsewhere.
Oral Mini-Symposium 23: Reef Management
23-75
Plan B For The Anthropocene
Roger BRADBURY* 1 , Robert SEYMOUR 2,3
1 Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program, Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia, 2 Department of Mathematics, University College London, London, United Kingdom,
3 CoMPLEX, University College London, London, United Kingdom
The Earth system is in transit from its current state, the Holocene, to a new one, the
Anthropocene. The transition is being forced by the relentless process now called globalisation
– really just the most recent half-century of the last few millennia of the transformation of the
planet by human beings. The change is now locked in and is irreversible. Global warming is not
the cause, but merely one of the more obvious symptoms of an inexorable process.
We don’t know the details of the Anthropocene but we can now see its shape emerging clearly.
The land, where people live, is becoming a new single, tightly interconnected, and greatly
simplified agro-ecosystem whose contradictions – in terms of energy and mass fluxes and
balances – will be resolved in the sea, where people don’t live. The sea, already a single system,
will host a vastly simplified ecosystem whose closest historical analogue will be the pre-
Cambrian seas dominated by life forms such as jelly animals and algae.
Both the land and the sea will be inherently unstable and so need to be tightly managed. The
management implications are profound. We may need to manage coral reef ecosystems through
the transition into a reduced future shape, preserving what we can of their ecosystem function,
perhaps at the expense of their current biodiversity and structure. Because most policy settings
and management strategies are focussed on preserving reefs in something like their present
Holocene state, they are, to that extent, unrealistic and unworkable. We will sketch the elements
of an alternative policy and management framework – a Plan B – for the reefs of the
Anthropocene.
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