Did anyone see this in Science?

I seen a show on the discovery channel that stated the great barrier reef wouldnt be here in 50 years if we keep doing the stuff that we are doing, and a little help from global warming.
 
Re: Did anyone see this in Science?

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11382359#post11382359 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Roadtoad
Science editorial about reefs

The good: they are calling this the year of the reef and are spotlighting the need to protect natural reefs from damage.

The bad?: They are calling for a ban on coral imports

The answer: buy captive raised and frag like crazy.
Click to expand...

Heck, wild corals just dont grow as fast anyways. Tank-raised frags (like those from ORA) or even maricultured/farmed corals grow much much faster than wild specimens...

I would be fine never buying wild specimens just on that fact a lone, but then you realize it's more responsible, and it's a win/win.

Now we just need better fish breeding programs.
 
The ban of import of corals would be great IMO.

The only thing I can think of that it would eliminate are fungia, goniopora and elegance (which dont do well anyway), and some types of brains. And even those can be fragged, they just take longer to recover to natural growth forms. Some of the rarer anemones that dont split in captivity might be eliminated from the hobby, but from what I understand, these are actually under considerable pressure in the wild, so that needs to happen.

At this point, a ban on coral imports would not destroy the hobby, but a ban on fish might. Most of the "staple" hobby fish are not bred in captivity at all (tangs, angels, chromis, etc). Pretty much the only fish bred in captivity that I know of are clowns, some gobies, some pseudochromis, bangaii cardinals, and a few species of rare pygmy angelfish. Someone feel free to add to the list if there is anything I am forgetting.

I have another idea which somewhat relates so I'll mention it here. I have considered the effects something like a permit necessary to own saltwater fish and invertabrates. It wouldnt be hard or expensive to get for people that really want an aquarium, but would discourage the people who get a 30g tank and put a lionfish, 3 angelfish, an anemone and 3 clowns, 4 damsels, a flounder, eel, and stingray and 2 tangs in it the day its set up. Which unfortunately is the majority of the hobby (proof of this is that almost everyone on RC avoids damsels because of their aggression, but they are still the most popular fish in the hobby). I think a permit would be great and would simply cause people the take a second look and decide wether they want the responsibility of a tank, and persuade them to do the small amount of necessary research. Maybe you can pay $50 or so, and they give you a 10 page pamphlet that covers the basics (nitrogen cycle, stocking slowly, coral lighting needs, and size needs for different types of fish). Then come back after a week and they can give you the permit - just a little card you can keep in your wallet and lasts for life.
 
I like this line...

SeaWeb, a long-lived and effective conservation group, has a strategy of teaming with fashion editors and journals to remind everyone that coral is "too precious to wear" as jewelry.



My involvement in this hobby has kind of taken me by surprise. On one hand it has many of the elements of what I love about nature and observing it. On the other hand I am very interested in keep our environments in a "natural" state.

To some extent I believe that we can have both, yet this hobby is certainly not there yet.

As has already been suggested aquaculture is the key to conservation of both this hobby and our natural reefs. [Obviously, advocating aquaculturing requires at least some degree of extraction from natural reefs - unless already in-the-system corals are employed for propagation.]

I really hope that this continues as a beneficial hobby yet certainly not at the expense of the reefs. Investing in aquaculture is likely something we can do to help preserve the hobby.

As for the reefs, I believe that it would be wise (and this is being done) to "jump-start" natural reefs by giving the limestone builders a head start. By building reef like base structures in waters which are currently and are predicted to become optimal reef depths and temperatures will certainly help future conservation.


Sorry for the long post. I hope someone reads it. We shouldn't shy away from these discussions.
 
For those of you who couldn't read the editorial because you don't have access... (I hope I'm not infringing on Science's copywright)

Science 14 December 2007:
Vol. 318. no. 5857, p. 1695
DOI: 10.1126/science.1153230
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Editorial
Year of the Reef
Donald Kennedy*

The coral reefs of the world, on which the news focus section of this issue of Science concentrates, are important for all sorts of reasons. For many, exploration by diving provides a unique connection with a fascinating natural ecosystem. For scientists, including climate scientists, the health of reefs provides insight into the physical and biological welfare of the oceans as a whole. And for conservation biologists, shallow-water reefs are remarkable hot spots of biodiversity; those that surround oceanic islands often include a level of specialized endemic species that rivals that on the islands themselves. But the corals of the world are in trouble, and that's why we need the International Year of the Reef (IYOR) in 2008.
There are two problems, both of them serious. The addition of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has altered both the ocean's temperature and its acidity. Because most shallow-water corals exist near their temperature optimum, some are becoming heat-bleached. The more problematic concomitant of climate change is that when carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans, as 30% of global industrial production is, it forms bicarbonate and hydrogen ions, which lower ocean pH and threaten the carbonate structure of the reef with dissolution. Since the industrial revolution, average ocean pH has been reduced by about 0.1 unit, and models predict further loss of 0.3 or 0.4 unit by the end of the century. Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, calls it "the single most profound environmental change I've learned about in my entire career." In Australia, which has the best-managed reefs in the world, the Institute of Marine Science conducts continuous monitoring to document these changes.



CREDIT: ANDY ARRISON If only those were the only problems. In many areas, coral reefs that are unprotected or inadequately protected are being harvested. In Indonesia 10 years ago, the minister of the environment showed me a video taken of poachers applying cyanide to a reef to harvest stunned but living Napoleon wrasse and other delicacies bound for upscale restaurants in Hong Kong and Singapore. Other harvesters are after species of Corallium, the beautiful living red or pink corals that are traded globally. Because the United States imports 60% of that commodity, mainly for use as aquarium decorations, we ought to be pushing to have them listed for sanctions.
Given the reasons for caring about coral and the threats to its survival, it's not surprising that a large number of people and organizations are interested in reef protection. The IYOR has gathered interest and support from many of these. SeaWeb, a long-lived and effective conservation group, has a strategy of teaming with fashion editors and journals to remind everyone that coral is "too precious to wear" as jewelry. Although shallow reefs are the central concern, a symposium at next year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will address the role of deep-sea corals, species that are under threat from disruption by bottom trawling or other harvesting.

Some good things are happening already. The U.S. House of Representatives passed, on 22 October, the Coral Reef Conservation Act (H.R. 1205). A Senate bill is out of committee. Final legislation should include strict provisions regulating coral trade, and scientists should continue to make recommendations, including supporting a listing of corals under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), denied last year by secret ballot in The Hague. Alas, the next Conference of the Parties to CITES won't happen till 2010.

Scientists meanwhile have some good work to do. Data on monitoring and changes in status, along with modeling predictions of temperature and pH effects, should be brought to governments and the public. The failure to gain a CITES listing through political efforts should be rectified. Finally, the United States could grab the front end of the problem by taking serious steps to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions: the root cause of global warming and the reef problem. Experience suggests that for this, we might have to await an election.

10.1126/science.1153230



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donald Kennedy is the Editor-in-Chief of Science.
 
I don't like the idea o buying a permit... this hobby is expensive enough, and who ever is in charge of the "permit dept." is sure to get greedy at our expence. But the notion is an excellent idea.
The "fly by nighters" are a HUGE drain on everything.

Example: I live in central Ohio, and whenever I need live rock or livestalk the lfs are sold out. They say we will get a shipment in two days.... I have discoverd you better get there first thing in the morning or they will be sold out again...
This being the case you would think our lfs would be doing great, but they are not. Most of them that deal with marine only last a year or two. Some not even that long. Most of the "pet stores" that delt w/ marine got out of it even sold off thier marine equip.

So in short. It is clear to see that this HUGE number of people that keep marine supply sold out around here don't stay with it long enough to become "regular customers", keeping the lks in business.

This is a very sad subject! Just so wasteful... Just people being people I guess?....

Lucky is now sad!

Lucky
 
I think that the ban on imports of "exotic" birds to the EU is quite pertinent to this discussion.

If you didn't hear about it, earlier this year the EU banned exotic bird imports in an attempt to lessen the stressors on sensitive species and ecosystems.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6253543.stm

Sure, this may spawn some black market trade, however in the end result is likely positive. I doubt much of a black market coral trade would really develop. I think coral is a little less mobile in many ways.
 
We as hobbyists need to develop an ethic to decrease our impact on the reefs. That being said, a couple of years ago I was in the infamous 6th ave aquarium in San Francisco when the film crew for National geographic was getting ready for a shoot. They were going to discuss the problems associated with people releasing exotic animals into new environments (caulerpa). I overheard the owner of the shop actually tell the host that they only carry species that are hardy and easy to keep. that shop routinely carries chambered nautilus and a bunch of fish that I wouldnt try (even though I have had marine tanks since the early 80s). All of the fish from that store were infected with some kind of parasite and I bet 90% died within a month of purchase. Yet the store is constantly picked over for fish and corals. People line up to get in for their sales. Seeing stores like this make me think that many hobbyists have no souls.

I thought that the comment about the pH of the ocean dissolving coral was pretty funny. Even if the pH drops by 1, corals seem to do ok. Look at the variability of pH in our tanks. A frag from someone dosing calk might have a bit of a pH shock when it goes into a system with a calcium reactor but they seem to survive.
 
Between OVERPOPULATION, commercial overfishing, runoff, pollution air fallout directly over the ocean's via rain, global warming, mangrove removal, swamp removal, desalination from ice melt to name a few. And although a source, IE it doesn't help the hobby does not have even close to the impact of any one of these. And it's no doubt they will ban wild caught specimen. And why not, it's the smallest and easiest step of supposedly doing something?

Chances are really good that a majority of the things that we see in the ocean are already done. Stick a fork in them. The run away freight train is rolling down the track and the realist in me sees that it's not going to change before it's too late.

Hence why I decided to get certified in diving. I wanted to have the opportunity to see the things that I love in the wild before they are gone.

I propagate corals, I don't knowingly buy rare or delicate fish, recycle, buy smallest packaging, buy as much as I can at once to save in frieght/transportation pollution impact. I grow my own veggies and use as little weed killer/pesticide as I can. But I still do not believe that any of this will matter in the long run.

I hope and wish that my assumption is incorrect. But I do not wear rose colored glasses and the inevitable reality is all around us.
 
Last edited:
CleveYank,

Interesting post for sure. I absolutely agree that this hobby (put aside the energy required to keep our tanks running) has a minimal impact on reefs as compared to other stressors.

Will banning or regulating the trade of corals single handedly save the reefs? No, I don't think it will.

Though, will regulating the hobby, making wise purchases, recycling, growing our own veggies and using less pesticide help? Yeah, I think it will.

If anything, hopefully it will raise awareness and contribute to a necessary wide-speard change in general ideologies. Ah, maybe I'm just too young to have taken off my rose coloured glasses.
 
Rosseau,
raising awareness is not the issue.
Really.

It's not so obtuse. And the signs have been around all of us if you think about it.

Tree's die in cities where they used to live.
Trees that flourished in forests even some distant from cities are dying.
Parasitic infestations of various types are getting out of hand in both water and on land that have climatory changes as direct influences.
Animals that numbered in the thousands are down to low 10's or 100's.
Every other time you land on an animal program they hit on one impact or another or one animal that is in trouble.
Cites that never had "moderate" air warnings have them.

The fish are dwindling at alarming rates.
Our feed the children projects for example are artificially pushing population in areas of the world that cannot support them.
If something happens to the 1st worlds food production the famine that would result in the 3rd world would be nothing short of mass genocide.
You go on vacation somewhere next to a reef and the hotel nearby is pumping more nitrogen and pesticide on their grounds for that "scotts true green" look than on a huge field of corn. Then you dive nearby and wonder why the reef is half dead.

The far left rose glasses wearing dreamers and the far right hard core capitalist need to meet in the middle and just get it done. Governments and politicians throughout the world playing little power games meanwhile another 100 metric tons of some other lethal compound adds to the soup that has become the air/water bitter pill we're all going to have to swallow. Unless of course the dreamers and the blind errogants get it together and fast. But hey let's go after Joe and all of Joe's bad coral keeping buddies around the world...why they are destroying the reefs!!! That will do it.

Awareness if anyone has really been paying attention has not been the issue since the 70's. I live in Cleveland Ohio. When I was a kid 3 rivers around my city were posted for no swimming warnings and one even caught on fire! Now you're allowed to eat 2 walleye a month due to mercury and PCB and polynucleotides out of Lake Erie, so it's just a less silted polluted body of water.

The dreamers want to push us into some green stone age which is economic devastation which were under but this would make it even more interesting. And the hardcore laz affair want to keep cutting and draining and building and dumping and wasting it like nothing is happening or needs to be done. Or are only doing something not because it's the thing to do, but because it will keep their side in office.

But hey some loser like Al Gore gets to share the ranks with Mother Theresa and Albert Einstein over a film about environmental awareness. This is the same guy who was educated and lived on his families money that was derived from the highly destructive nickel mining industry...You kidding me? Why not give one to Michael Moore one while we're at it?

Unless the population that shares our world is either blind? Dumb? or both? awareness should not be an issue. With the aforementioned posting of what is really being done to put our world's environment into a devastating kill off? I am vehimently opposed to any banning of collection for the hobby given that when and if the oceans do expire? And we manage to survive the global O2 crash, that the public and private aquariums may be the only sources of stock for any attempt to recover the species that do not weather the impending melt down. It's a very flawed direction to ban the very means that may allow reseeding/recovery. In particular when it's not even close to a major cog in what's wholesale killing off the oceans.

Coral and Fish wild caught Regulation maybe...banning no.....fix the real problems yes.
 
One of the problems is that the coutries where many of our corals are coming from are so poor that there is no other option. If these people are not allowed to export live coral, they will export dead coral as decorations or crushed coral as substrate, media, or for landscaping. So the collectors have to be kept in mind as well.
 
I'm definitely in favor of preservation of reef environments and all similar efforts, but I can't imagine a complete ban on coral imports for the aquarium hobby will do much to help. For example...

There are about 174,000 members on this message board. Let's assume the average tank size is 75 gallons-- typically about 8 sq. ft. Let's assume every one of us has our tanks PACKED with corals collected from reefs. That means there is a combined total of about 2,784,000 sq ft of tanks filled SOLEY with imported corals. Considering there are almost 28,000,000 sq. ft. in one square mile, I'm left scratching my head.

I know this math hardly scientific, but if the combined totals of all our tanks equal less than 1/10 of one square mile, it would seem to me that we as hobbyists are probably not contributing to the problem in a very significant way relative to the damage we have no part of.

I think it's also worth mentioning that the areas where corals are collected are renewable sources of income for local people, so smart management and preservation of the resource is an absolute necessity. When the reef doesn't provide anything valuable to people, why would they care if the whole thing got dynamited to put in a harbor for a resort hotel's sailboat rentals?

Think about the damage one large ship running aground on a reef could inflict..... or a dragging anchor... a WWII Naval Battle in the South Pacific....millions of tons of industrial runoff...I could go on and on thinking of things that happen every day that are vastly more devastating to natural reefs than the aquarium hobby.

Just my 2 cents.
 
CleveYank,

Firstly I think I should say that in my haste and the general disarray of exam time I have probably misrepresented myself. I certainly don’t literally wear “rose colour glasses” and complain that corporations are too “corporationey” as this guy might…
mt1160763927.jpg

I interpreted wearing rose coloured glasses as a metaphor for someone who views the world through a lens which overly highlights optimism. For example, I like to think that though most natural systems are in severe decline, we shouldn’t call them in as dead just yet. I then joked that maybe some of my views are naïve as a function of my younger age. I however believe I am somewhere in the middle ground of the out of touch hippies and right wing exploiters you so eloquently described.
I think that the most informed and practical solutions don’t come from the extremes.



Yes the signs of degradation are all around us, if you want to see it. However with growing urban populations and less and less people exploring nature outside of cities I think that the general population is quickly losing touch. It can be very easy today for people, especially the coming generation, to be oblivious as to where the final products we buy and use come from.

Also, many of the men in power don’t care to push the idea that our planet is an integrated system which is not “perfect”. (http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070612/27915_Poll:_Most_Republicans_Doubt_Evolution.htm ) Yes… I just linked to that website…

I’m currently at a very well respected school living with 3 smart guys. As such they would generally be considered in the ‘most aware’ bracket of our society. Yet, as an environmental science student I’ve been amazed at the things they don’t know about how the earth works and the current state of our planet. In my experience this is common. The people my age will be running the world soon and if this is the prevailing level of awareness, where is it all going?


Since you’ve mentioned Mr. Gore…
Like you, I personally would not have given him that award. Yet I’m assuming that the folks who give out these sorts of things do their research. Obviously, in many people’s opinion awareness is part of the problem. If his film was not informative to the general public nobody would have been so into it.

Oil spills are a great example of where our awareness fails. Nearly everybody is outraged when a tanked destroys miles of pristine Alaskan coast. Though these spills provide a serious local shock their impact on the health of the ocean is infinitesimally small. The larger sources of pollution are less visually striking yet dominate in environmental significance. We are much more directly responsible for this larger portion of the pollution on a daily basis yet we don’t realize it.

People who fertilize their crops don’t realize that those chemicals make their way to the Arctic where PCB concentrations are higher in humans than anywhere else in the world. These contaminants travel thousands of kilometres and I bet even the farmer in Alabama spraying his crops isn’t aware of this.

“Unless the population that shares our world is either blind? Dumb? or both? awareness should not be an issue.” You may be on to something here.
 
One of the problems is that the coutries where many of our corals are coming from are so poor that there is no other option. If these people are not allowed to export live coral, they will export dead coral as decorations or crushed coral as substrate, media, or for landscaping. So the collectors have to be kept in mind as well.
Click to expand...
I think it's also worth mentioning that the areas where corals are collected are renewable sources of income for local people, so smart management and preservation of the resource is an absolute necessity. When the reef doesn't provide anything valuable to people, why would they care if the whole thing got dynamited to put in a harbor for a resort hotel's sailboat rentals?
Click to expand...
:thumbsup:
The knee-jerk reaction to problems of overexploitation is almost always," just stop collecting dummy!" Anyone with a background in conservation realizes why that isn't a viable solution. It doesn't address the economics of the problem. The people collecting aren't doing it because they like to destroy the reef. They're doing it because using the reef is a source of value. To come up with a useful management plan you have weigh the economic value vs. the damage done for each use. When done responsibly in situ mariculture and ecotourism are high value/low damage industries, but they're poorly developed in most areas where collection occurs. In most cases collecting for the hobby is high value/moderate damage. On the other hand things like muro ami fishing and rock mining are low value/ high damage. If you eliminate collecting without encouraging growth of more responsible uses, the plan backfires and most people revert to more harmful, but more accessible uses.
 
I thought that the comment about the pH of the ocean dissolving coral was pretty funny. Even if the pH drops by 1, corals seem to do ok. Look at the variability of pH in our tanks. A frag from someone dosing calk might have a bit of a pH shock when it goes into a system with a calcium reactor but they seem to survive.
Click to expand...
They aren't talking about acidic water literally dissolving corals away or even killing them directly. They're talking about how lower pH makes calcification less energetically favorable as well as slightly increasing the still slow rate of dissolution of aragonite. In a reef tank that's not such a huge problem since we take care to keep conditions otherwise favorable for the corals. In the wild though the reefs are being constantly eroded by bioeroders like sponges as well as mechanical factors like storm waves. As a result the net growth of the reef is slower than the growth of the corals. As pH drops though the rate of erosion increases while growth decreases. At some point it outpaces growth and the reef is doomed.

Another factor that comes into play is that a huge number of species are dependent on zooplankton such as weird swimming snails and foraminiferans that make their shells out of thin aragonite. It's been shown that the predicted pH changes stop their growth and in some cases even start to dissolve the shells. That could result in the collapse of entire food webs since these little guys are such important as food for so many species.
 
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