by Coral reefs, like the sprawling cities of the sea, support an estimated 25% of the ocean’s plants and animals. Worldwide, 1 billion people depend on these ecosystems for food, income and coastal protection.
Unfortunately, coral reefs are fraught with endless sources of stress, from climate change and pollution to overfishing and unsustainable coastal development. The outlook for corals and the reefs they build is not good: without massive action on greenhouse gas emissions scientists predict that conditions in tropical coastal waters will become poor for corals by the year 2100. If we want coral reefs in our future, we must. be proactive.
Scientists, conservationists and local communities are working to recover unhealthy reefs. There are many options for doing this: sex-stimulating corals in the laboratory to produce huge batches of coral larvae that can be released into the wild, for example, or selectively breeding genetically engineered specimens to produce “super corals”. a stress-resistant creation.
Although coral restoration is a multi-million dollar business, many restoration projects fail to change the ecosystem’s long-term prospects, wasting time and resources and raising questions about the ethics of putting corals “back to death”, according to by Ian Enochs, a US marine biologist who leads a reef monitoring program in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea recently described it at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In our new paper, we propose a new way of thinking about coral restoration: making environmental conditions, such as temperature and nutrient levels, the determining factor of whether reef restoration should take place. This may seem obvious, but our survey of academic research on coral restoration from 1984 to 2022 suggests that these questions have been neglected.
Reefs tomorrow
Coral restoration has been very reactive so far. Efforts have been focused on recovering reefs in areas where they previously existed, despite the fact that these reefs have recently died. When the cause of a dead reef is specific and known, such as a one-off pollution event, this may be an appropriate response (as long as the cause of death is removed).
But coral reefs are more often degraded as a result of stress that is not easy to deal with, such as marine heat waves caused by climate change or major coastal developments. It is not surprising that efforts to restore reefs in areas affected by these problems fail – the underlying issue remains.
We think there are two ways to give coral reef restoration projects the best chance. First, when restoring corals to reefs that have died, do so with a deep knowledge of the environmental conditions of the area – as they are today and as they are expected to be in the future. This information can show which coral species make the most sense to use, how to grow them, when to plant them in the wild and how to attach them to the seabed.
Option two is to foster new coral reefs in areas where they were not present historically, but where environmental conditions may be favorable in years and years to come. These areas may be found on the edges of where coral reefs are currently found. Other areas may emerge as the resolution of environmental monitoring improves.
Go with the flow
There is a clear need for innovation in coral restoration; many ethical, political, economic and ecological issues need to be addressed. It is time to ensure that these decisions are based on a solid foundation of environmental knowledge – to break the cycle of failed restoration that we are locked into.
We need to recognize that although a coral reef is used to being in a particular place, it may be more effective now (or in the near future) to “restore” that reef elsewhere. Coral restoration could become more targeted and forward-looking.
There are technical limitations to measuring and predicting future environmental conditions. However, this fresh perspective allows us to work with environmental change rather than fight against it. If successful, it could help coral reef ecosystems survive for future generations to enjoy.
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This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Heidi Burdett receives funding from the Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) and Formas (Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development).
Gavin Foster receives funding from the European Research Council (Top Grant #884650 Microns2Reefs).
Tessa M Page receives funding from the European Research Council (Advanced Grant 332 #884650 Microns2Reefs).
