New year, same story
Local scientist champions attention to nature loss
IT MAY be a new year but the call to engage in best efforts to halt climate change and nature loss prevails.
The call has got a little bit louder as the reality of the impacts of last year’s coral bleaching event – which reportedly devastated corals in the Caribbean Sea, and affected others in the Golf of Mexico and northern Atlantic Ocean – sinks in.
“The CMS (Centre for Marine Sciences) and PRML (Port Royal Marine Lab) teams have been doing bleaching checks since August and have indicated that the scale of bleaching was indeed bad – up to 90 per cent in some cases,” noted Professor Mona Webber, director of the Centre for Marine Sciences and herself a marine biologist and ecologist.
“They are still doing checks and the indication is that recovery from bleaching is mixed. Some corals are not recovering, some are recovering or recovered but the teams will have to see if the trends are related to species or locations or features of the site, for example, depth,” she noted.
Last year’s bleaching event was triggered as the world recorded the hottest summer on record and sea surface temperatures soared along with it. As a result, stress levels for coral reefs ‘broke the surface’, leaving scientists concerned.
“Corals can recover fr om bleaching if the heat stress subsides, but the corals that are able to recover frequently have impaired growth and reproduction and are susceptible to disease for two to four years after recover y,” said Derek Manzello, coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coral Reef Watch Programme, in a September 14, 2023 article published by the Royal Meteorological Society and titled ‘Coral bleaching in the Caribbean’.
He noted that it was especially concerning given that not only was the heat stress was “not only higher than ever before, but also earlier than ever before, and for longer in duration than ever before”.
Back home in Jamaica, the White River Fish Sanctuary has noted their own worry over coral reefs. In a January 16, 2024 news release from the sanctuary, it was noted that “Sea surface temperatures around the island consistently lingered above 29 degrees Celsius, which is the bleaching threshold, over the course of September, October and November”.
“While coral bleaching is a stress response from which the corals can still recover, by the first week of October it was too late and almost all of Jamaica’s iconic, golden ‘ elkhorn’ and ‘staghorn’ branching corals, which are critical to ecosystem function – providing habitat for countless fish and crustacea, as well as shoreline protection and recreational diving and snorkeling – were dead,” the release said.
“The latter has serious erosion and property loss and damage implications for beaches, coastal infrastructure including hotels, and entire communities and their livelihoods,” it added.
For Webber, the time is now to act in the interest of the natural environment.
“We may have passed the tipping point for these delicate ecosystems ... We have to fix the problem of environmental degradation and climate change,” she said.
According to the Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2020 report, “the value of goods and services provided by coral reefs is estimated at US$2.7 trillion per year, including US$36 billion in coral reef tourism”.
Unfortunately, the report noted, “coral reefs are among the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet to anthropogenic pressures, including global threats from climate change and ocean acidification, and local impacts from land-based pollution such as input of nutrients and sediments from agriculture , marine pollution, and overfishing and destructive fishing practices”.
The report also reminded readers that “maintaining the integrity and resilience of coral reef ecosystems is essential for the well-being of tropical coastal communities worldwide, and a critical part of the solution for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”.