Michael Kahn, PlanetArk 27 Aug 08;
LONDON - Conservation zones in the Indian Ocean set up to protect fish stocks are not preventing coral reefs from collapsing due to warmer temperatures or helping to speed their recovery, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The reason is many of these non-fishing areas are located in warmer waters where coral reefs have a harder time surviving when temperatures rise suddenly, said Newcastle University marine biologist Nick Graham, who led the study.
The survey of 66 sites in 7 countries is the largest study of its kind and underscores the need for urgent action to save the important marine ecosystem, the researchers said.
The findings also show fishing limits that keep boats out and people out of fragile areas do not protect coral the way many scientists had thought, the researchers said.
"The Indian Ocean hosts some of the most diverse reefs in the world," Graham said in a telephone interview. "Current marine protected areas don't show any potential for faster recovery than non-protected areas."
Coral reefs, delicate undersea structures resembling rocky gardens made by animals called coral polyps, are important nurseries and shelters for fish and other sea life.
They are also considered valuable protection for coastlines from high seas, a critical source of food, important for tourism and a potential storehouse of medicines for cancer and other diseases.
But overfishing, climate change and human development are threatening reefs worldwide, including in the Indian Ocean where warmer water temperatures due to the El Nino weather system in 1998 devastated the coral population, researchers said.
"The West Indian ocean lost about half of its coral and some areas lost up to 90 percent," Graham said.
The researchers, who reported their findings in the journal PLoS One, looked at the coral population over a 10-year period beginning in 1994 to compare the before and after effects of the 1998 destruction.
They found that nine protected areas varying in size from 1 square kilometre to 14 square kilometres in the Seychelles and off the coasts of Kenya and Northern Tanzania were boosting fish stocks but not doing much for the coral.
Instead, coral was rebounding much faster in areas with cooler waters in Southern Tanzania, Reunion Island and Mauritius -- all areas with very few of the protected zones set up in the 1960s and 1970s.
The findings do not suggest existing protected areas should be scrapped but rather point to a need to focus conservation efforts on faster-recovering areas and manage the system as a whole, Graham said.
"We need to focus on areas that are recovering faster or escaping the impacts of climate change," he said. "This is where your brood stocks of coral areas are that will help seed other areas." (Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Giles Elgood)
Protection Zones In The Wrong Place To Prevent Coral Reef Collapse
ScienceDaily 27 Aug 08;
Conservation zones are in the wrong place to protect vulnerable coral reefs from the effects of global warming, an international team of scientists warn.
Now the team – led jointly by Newcastle University and the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York – say that urgent action is needed to prevent the collapse of this important marine ecosystem.
The research, recently published in the journal PLoS ONE, is the largest study of its kind to have been carried out, covering 66 sites across seven countries and spanning over a decade in the Indian Ocean.
Current protection zones – or 'No-take areas' (NTAs) – were set up to protect fish in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before climate change was a major issue.
The team – which comprises of experts from the UK, Australia, the US, Sweden and France – found the small-scale zones were not working to protect coral reefs against the effects of climate change.
They conclude that while the existing zones should not be removed, new areas are needed in the right place to protect corals against the effects of rising temperatures.
And they say that managing the system as a whole is crucial if coral reef communities are to have any hope of surviving the effects of global warming.
Lead researcher Nick Graham, of Newcastle University's School of Marine Science and Technology, said: "We need a whole new approach – and we need to act now.
"Our research shows that many of the world's existing no-take areas are in the wrong place.
"New protected zones are needed that focus on areas identified as escaping or recovering well from climate change impacts. But a major focus needs to be shifted towards increasing the resilience of the system as a whole – that means reducing as many other locally derived threats as possible.
"Coral dies when it is put under stress so what we need to be doing is reducing the direct human impact – such as over-fishing, pollution and sedimentation – across the whole area.
"By removing all these other stresses we are giving the coral the best chance of surviving and recovering from any changes in temperature that may occur as a result of global warming."
Previous work by the team focused on the long-term impact of the 1998 event where global warming caused Indian Ocean surface temperatures to increase to unprecedented and sustained levels, killing off (or 'bleaching') more than 90 per cent of the inner Seychelles coral.
Although many areas are showing signs of long-term degradation, Mr Graham said it was positive to see that some locations either escaped the impact or have recovered.
"This provides the key to conserving coral reefs in the face of climate change," he says. "We are not suggesting that we scrap the existing NTAs – in terms of protecting fish stocks they have been quite successful.
"But they are not effective against global warming and in order to ensure the long-term survival of this rich marine community that is what we need to address."
The team comprised researchers from Newcastle University; the Wildlife Conservation Society; National Research Council, Florida; James Cook University, Australia; the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft; the University of East Anglia; the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement, New Caledonia; Laboratoire d'Ecologie marine, France; Natural England; The Nature Conservancy; the Universite de la Mediterranee, France; Universite de Perpignan, France; Stockholm University, Sweden; University of Warwick.
Logistical support was received from the Seychelles Centre of Marine Research and Technology-Marine Park Authority, Seychelles Fishing Authority, Nature Seychelles, Mauritius Institute of Oceanography, University of Dar es Salaam, and Kenya Wildlife Service.
This research was funded through grants from the Leverhulme Trust, Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association, World Bank Targeted Research Group on Coral Bleaching, the Fisheries Society of the British Isles, the Eppley and Tiffany Foundations, the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the British Overseas Development Administration (now DFID) and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
