Yearly Archives: 2010

Although Bonaire’s coral reefs remain among the healthiest and most resilient in the Caribbean, a new  IUCN report based on the IUCN Resilience Assessment of Coral Reefs highlights some of the threats that exist to Bonaire’s coral reefs, and which could have serious implications for resilience to future climate change and other threats. The report identified recommendations for addressing the current threats, as well as high and low resilience sites. Carmabi helped with the study which can be found by clicking here.

The threats and recommendations identified include:

Coastal development and artificial beaches.Recommendation: All coastal construction on Bonaire should be strictly regulated and follow the construction guidelines. The guidelines should become law in order to be enforced appropriately.

Leaching from septic tanks. Recommendation: It is strongly recommended that Bonaire invest in appropriate sewage treatment facilities to improve water quality and increase the resilience of its valuable coral reefs. It is also recommended that a water quality monitoring program be set up and sustained.

Increasing damselfish populations. Recommendation: It is recommended that the fishing of predatory fish species on Bonaire’s coral reefs be controlled and managed to a sustainable level to prevent population explosions of prey fish capable of modifying the reef habitat.

Trididemnum and Lobophora. Recommendation: It is recommended that the populations of Trididemnum and Lobophora are closely monitored and the factors contributing to the unnatural abundance of these coral-overgrowing organisms should be studied and then eliminated.

There have also been some updates on the coral ID pages. Carmabi compiled a series of pictures that show combinations of corals that are often mistaken  for one another. Because terminology to describe each species is often  subjective (i.e. has larger polyps or smaller ridges) having both  species in one picture might help to get a better idea of how such  closely related/ similar looking “species” can be distinguished from one  another. Corals are now divided in four main groups (Montastraea, Agaricidae, Brain-looking corals and the Rest). All  identifications are based on commonly used species names here on  Curacao. This overview is a work in progress (and I welcome suggestions on how to shape this picture collection into a more user-friendly format), but I thought it would be useful to throw it out as it is.

The following links take you directly to each  group:

For Montastraea:  click here
For Agaricidae:  click here
For  “Brain”corals:  click here
For  “The Rest”:  click here

Temperatures continue to look bad for the Caribbean in 2010. At this point, our Degree Heating Week product is as bad as, or worse than, this time in 2005. Our Seasonal Bleaching  Outlook indicates there continues to be a risk of thermal stress in 2010 at levels similar to 2005. The good news is that areas north of the Greater Antilles and in the Gulf of Mexico do  not seem to be at as high a risk. Temperatures in the Caribbean have been above normal since January. Bleaching reports have now come in from Texas in the north to Panama in the west, to Tobago in the southeast.

My biggest concern right now is in the Lesser Antilles and especially in the Aruba-Curacao-Bonaire-Los Roques region where we are seeing the highest temperatures ever and this is likely to continue for another month. The ABCs were spared major thermal stress in 2005 but don’t look so lucky this year.

A webinar on this topic was recorded and can be accessed in the “events” tab at http://www.reefresilience.org/
The full outlook can be found at http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/bleachingoutlook/index.html and will be updated to October shortly.

An article on this also made the cover of the New York Times on Sept. 21:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/science/earth/21coral.html?_r=1&hp

Please make sure this information gets distributed widely.  We need people to be aware that they should continue to be alert for bleaching in the Caribbean for another month. Please let us know what you are seeing out there.

Source: NOAA (Dr. Mark Eakin)

Some impressions from Curacao’s reefs near the eastern tip of the island (Oostpunt). The “whitish” colonies are the ones that are “bleached”

We invite you to join us in exploring coral reefs – some of the most productive and biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. Follow us as we travel to untouched parts of the globe to conduct scientific research aimed at protecting these special places. Read our blog to hear about our adventures in the field.  Browse photos and video from our expeditions and take a step into an underwater world.  Check out our lively book, Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas for the big picture of how coral reefs work, including the decisive role of microbes in reef health and decline.

For more information, click here to visit the website of coralreef systems.

On the evening of May 30th a fish was caught by local fishermen at a depth of approximately 100 meters. At present no one has any idea what species this fish might be. A picture is shown below and all who know what species this fish is are invited to send an email to m.vermeij@carmabi.org with the supposed species name so the information can be shared with the local fishing community.

Thanks in advance.

Update June 3rd 2010: After sending the picture to the Coral-List server (an international internet based information network for coral reef research), it seems that most people seem to agree that this fish is Verilus sordidus. More information on this rare fish species can be found by clicking this link.

Baby corals find their way home in their first days as free-swimming larvae by listening to the noise of animals on the reef and actively swimming towards it, an international team of researchers working in the Caribbean has discovered.

These findings raise new concerns for the future of coral reefs as increasing human noise pollution in the world’s oceans is masking reef sounds.

Dr Steve Simpson, Senior Researcher in the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, discovered several years ago that baby reef fish use sound as a cue to find coral reefs, but was amazed when his Dutch collaborators in Curaçao working at Carmabi started finding that coral larvae – which must quickly find a safe place to land and establish a colony or they will die – can do the same thing.

The team designed a ‘choice chamber’ (a device that offers small invertebrates two or more contrasting conditions and allows them to move freely towards the one they prefer), put coral larvae into it and played them recordings of a coral reef. The results clearly showed that the flea-sized larvae were strongly attracted to the noise as they seek a suitable habitat.

Coral larvae look like tiny eggs covered in hairs, and come from the same group of animals (Cnidaria) that also includes sea anemones. How these simple creatures detect sound is unknown, but Dr Simpson said, “At close range sound stirs up water molecules, and this could waggle tiny hair cells on the surface of the larvae, providing vital directional information for baby corals.”

Corals aggregate to form vast reefs, which are now one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world. Due to global warming and ocean acidification, some experts have suggested coral reefs are now on death row. Understanding how these vulnerable animals complete their life-cycle is essential to ensure appropriate management.

Since corals, like fish, respond to reef sounds then the masking effects of human noise pollution in coral environments is of extra concern.

“Anthropogenic noise has increased dramatically in recent years, with small boats, shipping, drilling, pile driving and seismic testing now sometimes drowning out the natural sounds of fish and snapping shrimps,” Dr Simpson said.

This study was carried out by a team at the Camabi Foundation in Curaçao in the Dutch Antilles led by Dr Mark Vermeij, using larvae of the dominant Caribbean reef building coral Montastraea faveolata collected during the 2008 mass-spawning event.

The research is published in PLoS ONE and was funded through a fellowship to Dr Simpson by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, UK) and by the National Science Foundation and Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA).

Download the paper by clicking this link.

Source: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2010/20-coral.asp