‘Rainforests of the sea’ ravaged: overfishing and pollution kill 80% of coral on Caribbean reefs

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Independent News
18 July 2003

It might look like a tropical paradise, but underneath the sparkling blue waves something truly grim is happening in the Caribbean. Four-fifths of the coral on Caribbean reefs has disappeared in the past 25 years in a phenomenal saga of destruction, British-based researchers reveal today.

Human actions are almost certainly responsible for most of it. And the size of the loss, the first to be accurately quantified over a very wide area anywhere, has astonished even scientists who have been studying the global decline of coral.

Coral reefs are thought of as “the rainforests of the sea” because of their richness in wildlife, and the figure is equivalent in marine terms to saying that 80 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has disappeared.

The rate of coral loss is higher than that of rainforest destruction, which, as The Independent reported two weeks ago, is accelerating rapidly in Brazil. There has been nothing like it in the past few thousand years according to the study, which is published in the journal Science.

The work was carried out by researchers at the University of East Anglia and its associated Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, using data from 263 Caribbean sites, from Mexico to Barbados, from Cuba to Panama, from the Florida Keys to Venezuela.

“We report a massive region-wide decline of corals across the entire Caribbean basin,” the five-strong team says in the introduction to the paper, in language remarkably strong for a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Although the report is mainly focused on the extent of the decline rather than its causes, the reasons behind it are principally human ones, said the team leader, Dr Isabelle Ct, a French-Canadian specialist in tropical marine ecology. They include industrial, agricultural and other human pollution, and in particular, over-fishing, she said. But they can be aggravated by natural causes, such as disease, and the stronger storms and higher sea temperatures which are associated with global climate change.

One of the most serious consequences of the decline is that the reefs of the Caribbean may now be unable to withstand the effects of global warming. “The ability of Caribbean coral reefs to cope with future local and global environmental change may be irretrievably compromised,” the team reports.

The study concerns hard corals, the tiny animals which slowly build coral reefs from the calcium carbonate that they excrete. It found that in 1977, the start of the survey period, a typical Caribbean reef was 50 per cent covered in live corals, which is regarded as healthy. By 2002 a typical reef was 10 per cent covered, which is regarded as potentially fatal.

The real importance of the study is that it has put hard figures on a process of destruction that was widely thought to be happening but the true extent of which was unknown. Coral reefs were known to represent an ecosystem under stress in the Caribbean and all around the world but until the high-level number-crunching of the University of East Anglia study, the perception was anecdotal rather than backed up statistics.

“The feeling among scientists and tourists has long been that Caribbean corals are doing badly, since many people have seen reefs degrade over the years,” Dr Ct said. “We are the first to pull all of this information together and put a hard figure on coral decline.’’

Recent assessments have suggested that 11 per cent of the historical world-wide extent of coral reefs has been lost, with a further 16 per cent severely damaged, but until now there has not been an exercise in quantifying the loss in fine detail across an area as vast as the Caribbean. The final figures were a shock to all concerned.

“The end result surprised us, as well as all the people who gave us data,” said Dr Ct. “The rate of decline we found exceeds by far the well-publicised rates of loss for tropical forests.”

Some of the decline was prompted in the early 1980s by the mass die-off of a West Indies sea urchin that grazed on algae on the coral reefs, the report says. Its disappearance allowed the algae to flourish and out-compete the coral animals.

This phenomenon is also caused today by over-fishing, Dr Ct said. When a “layer” of algae-eating fish is taken out, the algae gains the upper hand over the coral animals.

Other causes of the coral die-off were “pollution in all its forms,” she said. This included domestic, agricultural and industrial pollution, and sedimentation, which happens when steep hillsides near the coast are deforested and mud slides down into the sea and accumulates on top of reefs.

The study says some areas of degraded coral in the Caribbean appear to be recovering. “The bad news, however, is that the new coral communities seem to be different from the old ones,” said Dr Ct. “At this point, we do not know how well these new assemblages will be able to face new challenges, such as rising sea levels and temperatures as a result of global warming.” The study’s conclusion is pessimistic. “Given current predictions of increased human activity in the Caribbean, the growing threat of climate change on coral mortality and reef framework-building, and the potential synergy between these threats, the situation for Caribbean coral reefs does not look likely to improve in either the short or the long term.’’

Coral reefs are important not only for the thousands of species of fish and other animals that they host; they also play an important economic role in the communities that have grown up around them.

“Caribbean reefs host extraordinary biodiversity, provide a livelihood to millions of people and provide essential physical protection from tropical storms,” said Professor Andrew Watkinson, leader of the Tyndall Centre’s research into climate change and the coastal zone. “Now that the plight of Caribbean corals has been measured, there is renewed urgency for conservation action to restore this unique and important ecosystem.”

ENDANGERED PARADISES

PHILIPPINES, SOUTH-EAST ASIA

More than 80 per cent of the reefs clustered around the Philippines are thought to be in jeopardy, a situation exacerbated by activities such as illegal fishing techniques. Of major concern is a remote archipelago in the Molucca Sea, where the waters of the Philippines meet Papua New Guinea. The area contains more than 1,100 species of fish and 450 types of coral.

GREAT BARRIER REEF, AUSTRALIA

Spanning an epic 1,250 miles along the East coast, this is the undisputed queen of the world’s reefs. Home to more than 1,123 types of sea creatures, it was formed from the skeletons of 300 species of coral over five million years. But it has been plagued in recent decades by coral bleaching, the legacy of algae dying as a result of overfishing, pollution and coastal development.

KENYA AND TANZANIA

A rich coral reef teeming with sea creatures fringes the coastline of Kenya and Tanzania for more than 125 miles. While the reef was once made up of 50 per cent live coral, it has in recent years been reduced to a tenth of that amount. The situation has not been helped by a thriving tourist trade selling pieces of coral broken off the reef.

NORTH-WEST ATLANTIC

Cold water reefs located in deep seas off the coast of Britain have long been under threat from the nets of trawlers. Scientists have issued warnings to the European Commission against the use of trawlers that damagevast swathes of the reefs, which are up to 8,500 years old. The reefs, which were recognised only recently and have not yet been accurately mapped, are similar to those found in the tropics. But they do not need sunlight, which enables them to survive in the Atlantic at depths of 200 to 1,000 metres.

2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Microbe found that eats toxic waste

By Chris Kahn
Associated Press

July 2, 2003 | Scientists have identified a microbe that gobbles up toxic waste deep underground, a potential remedy for hundreds of contaminated aquifers across the country near industrial and military sites.

The bacterium, known as BAV1, was found in soil samples 20 feet deep at a contaminated site in Oscoda, Mich.

Microbiologist Frank Loeffler said it flourishes in the packed earth where there is no oxygen, feeding off toxic compounds commonly known for making plastic pipe and food wrap.

Most importantly, it thrives underground on vinyl chloride, one of the most common and hazardous industrial chemicals that can linger in the soil for hundreds of years.

Vinyl chloride is present at about a third of toxic “Superfund” sites listed by the Environmental Protection Agency. It usually accumulates as a deteriorated form of more complex organic compounds found in dry cleaning fluid and metal cleansers.

Brief contact with vinyl chloride has been known to cause dizziness, drowsiness, and headaches. Long-term exposure will increase the risk of a rare form of liver cancer, according to the EPA.

Loeffler has already tested the bacterium on vinyl chloride at the contaminated site in Michigan. Its ability to eat the toxic compound _ rendering it harmless _ was hastened in one test by adding plant fertilizer and other nutrients to the soil. In another trial, vinyl chloride was destroyed by injecting the soil with concentrated amounts of BAV1 developed in the lab.

His work is presented in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

“It’s pretty exciting stuff,” said David L. Freedman, an environmental engineering professor at Clemson University who wasn’t involved in the work.

The way most cleanup crews now deal with vinyl chloride is to pump the contaminated water out of the ground and spray it into the atmosphere as a fine mist, letting sunlight break down the chemical naturally.

“But through a very long and painful experience, we’ve learned that it’s not the best way to deal with the problem,” Freedman said.

Hazardous chemicals have a way of sticking to the soil underground, so pumping out the aquifer never quite gets rid of all the contaminants, he explained.

“It’s a waste of money,” Loeffler said.

Scientists have long suspected that deep in the ground some type of microbe found vinyl chloride palatable. Loeffler spent four years searching for it, isolating BAV1 from a bustling community of microscopic organisms that included thousands of kinds of bacteria.

James Gossett, a Cornell University researcher who identified a bacterium in 1997 that could eat organic chlorides but had problems with vinyl chloride, called BAV1 “another in a long list of discoveries or isolations” that will illuminate research into cleaning toxic waste with bacteria.

Gossett said the discovery will help scientists determine which enzyme breaks down vinyl chloride.

If the enzyme is found, Gossett said more robust bacteria that can survive in the presence of oxygen or eat faster than BAV1 could be genetically engineered to digest vinyl chloride.

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Few Habitats, Many Species and a Debate on Preservation

By Jon Christensen
New York Times

Conservationists call them hot spots habitats that cover just 1.4 percent of the earth’s land surface but are so rich in biological diversity that preserving them could keep an astonishing number of plant and animal species off the endangered list.

Since 1988, when Dr. Norman Myers and his colleagues began describing these hot spots in a series of scientific papers and arguing for their protection, they have become a focus of worldwide conservation efforts. Private organizations and government agencies, including the World Bank, have made preserving 25 such ecological arks from the Atlantic rain forest of Brazil to the semiarid Karoo region of South Africa a top priority for financing and protective legislation.

But a growing chorus of scientists is warning that directing conservation funds to hot spots may be a recipe for major losses in the future. Just as an investor should maintain a balanced portfolio, the scientists argue, conservationists should avoid putting all of their eggs in one basket.

Hot spots are top performers in one dimension, these scientists say: the number of unique species that live in them. Of species that live on land, nearly half of all plants and more than a third of all animals are found only in the hot spots. But they do not include many rare species and major animal groups that live in less biologically rich regions (“cold spots”).

And the hot-spot concept does not factor in the importance of some ecosystems to human beings, the scientists argue. Wetlands, for example, contain just a few species of plants, but they perform valuable service by filtering water, regulating floods and serving as nurseries for fish.

This debate has been simmering quietly among biologists for years. But it is coming to a boil now with the publication of an article in the current issue of American Scientist arguing that “calls to direct conservation funding to the world’s biodiversity hot spots may be bad investment advice.”

“The hot-spot concept has grown so popular in recent years within the larger conservation community that it now risks eclipsing all other approaches,” write the authors of the paper, Dr. Michelle Marvier, a professor of biology at Santa Clara University, and Dr. Peter Kareiva, an associate at the university and a scientist with the Nature Conservancy, a group that has increasingly focused on hot spots.

“The officers and directors of all too many foundations, nongovernmental organizations and international agencies have been seduced by the simplicity of the hot spot idea,” they go on. “We worry that the initially appealing idea of getting the most species per unit area is, in fact, a thoroughly misleading strategy.”

Other prominent ecologists have grown critical of hot spots. “Focusing all of our attention on hot spots is just nuts,” said Dr. Paul Ehrlich, president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.

“The hot-spot approach was a good one when it was proposed by Myers way back when,” Dr. Ehrlich said. “It attracted important attention to the distribution of species diversity. Now it’s clear that saving a few percent of the earth’s surface to preserve species will not accomplish what needs to be accomplished.”

Even if people succeeded in preserving a single viable population of every species on earth, he said, the human race would die out unless it managed to protect the ecosystems that support broader populations of plants, animals and people too.

“One has to balance the necessary attempts to preserve species diversity with what may be much more important,” he said of “the preserving of population diversity and in the process the preserving of ecosystem services.”

But hot spots have their ardent defenders, notably Dr. Myers, a fellow at Oxford University, and Dr. Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, a nonprofit organization that has made hot spots the centerpiece of its global strategy.

Dr. Mittermeier says hot spots have been successful at attracting attention and financing for conservation in tropical countries. “And that has been good,” he said. “No one is suggesting that one invest solely in hot spots, but if you want to avoid extinctions, you have to invest in them.”

By definition, hot spots contain many species that exist nowhere else on earth and that are under threat because more than 70 percent of their habitat has been destroyed. Conservation International is still working on expanding the hot spots list, Dr. Mittermeier said, with 10 new ones to be announced later this year.

And the organization puts a high priority on protecting five vast wilderness areas that have many unique species and are still relatively intact. They include the world’s largest tropical rain forests, the Amazon, the Congo forests of central Africa and the island of New Guinea, as well as the Miombo-Mopane grasslands and woodlands of southern Africa, and the deserts of northern Mexico and the American Southwest. These areas still have more than 75 percent of their natural habitat and fewer than 13 people per square mile, said Dr. Mittermeier, but they will become hot spots if they are not protected,

Dr. Myers said that since he wrote his first paper on hot spots, $750 million had been committed to protecting them, including a $261 million donation to Conservation International from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the largest single gift ever to an environmental organization. Still, he said, the hot spots need more attention and more money “a lot more,” he said.

Dr. Agnes Kiss, an environment specialist with the World Bank, acknowledges that when it comes to spending money on conservation, hot spots loom large. “Put it this way,” she said. “When we’re trying to justify a project, if it’s a hot spot, basically it’s a shoo-in.”

The World Bank and its Global Environment Facility, which makes grants in addition to the bank’s traditional loans, is halfway through a five-year $125 million Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund to invest in protecting hot spots, along with the MacArthur Foundation, the Japanese government and Conservation International.

Still, Dr. Kiss said, the bank also takes other factors into account, including the commitment of governments and local communities to preserve biodiversity and their track records with previous projects.

In a world where funds are limited, that is just the kind of approach that is needed, Dr. Marvier and Dr. Kareiva assert in their American Scientist article. In a coming paper in Ecology Letters, written with their student at Santa Clara University, Casey O’Connor, they propose a “return on investment” model to determine which countries provide the best opportunities for preserving biodiversity. Their analysis compares the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of conservation efforts in different countries, alongside biological diversity and the threat of habitat destruction.

When factors like the costs of doing business, the reliability of governments and pressure from population growth are taken into account, they write, some countries on Conservation International’s list of the 17 most “megadiverse” countries Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Venezuela, for example drop off the priority list. And some other countries not found on the list emerge as priorities, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Mozambique and Vietnam.

Still others appear on every list, no matter which priority-setting model is used: China, India, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea and South Africa.

Dr. Marvier and Dr. Kareiva say the largest conservation organizations the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International have many offices concentrated in countries with hot spots, but are understaffed in countries with vast biological resources, like Argentina and Russia.

Since no one strategy is enough, they argue, conservationists need a way to make explicit trade-offs. Preserving 1,000 species in a “cold spot” like Montana, they argue, would be more important than preserving 1,000 species in a hot spot like Ecuador because in Montana 1,000 species represents a third of the total, while in Ecuador it represents just 5 percent.

“Conservationists widely accept the need for some sort of triage,” they argue, “whereby limited funds go to places where the greatest good can be done.”

Dr. Kareiva acknowledged that there would never be one magic equation everyone would accept. “But we can all get more sophisticated by focusing on different variables,” he said. Biological diversity, he said, “should be one variable in the equation; it shouldn’t be the end-all or be-all.”

Dr. Kiss, the World Bank environmental specialist, agreed. “The basic principle that biology isn’t everything is quite sound,” she said. But Dr. Mittermeier of Conservation International worries that focusing on “return on investment” could lead to bad decisions in the long run. Colombia, for example, demands conservationists’ attention despite the uncertainties raised by its guerrilla war, he said, adding, “If a country is rich in diversity it’s very dangerous to write it off because of temporary difficulties.”

Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, called the debate “useful, but somewhat academic.”

“The real issue here is not the sort of fine-tuning of what is the best way to set priorities from organization to organization. It’s about changing the scale of the funding,” he said. “In the real world, there is a real need for a diversity of approaches in the field of conservation.”

Hot-spots research “highlighted that there are certain places where the fire engines ought to go right away,” Dr. Lovejoy said, “whereas other places under less pressure can wait a few years, if you have to do them in sequence.”

“But you’d better not wait too long,” he added.

Copyright 2003The New York Times Company

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