YOUR WEEKLY BRIEFING FROM PARLEY
CORALS
Ocean warming, acidification and pollution – coral reefs face a growing list of threats, but this week brought hope. First, a survey conducted by the Living Oceans Foundation shows that on French Polynesia’s atolls, corals cover 70% of reefs and host vibrant populations of grouper, a fish that is virtually extinct elsewhere.“It’s nice to see that places like that still exist,” one expert said. It’s possible that a native seaweed species –coralline algae – is helping reefs recover from temperature increases and predation. Researchers hope to understand what makes these reefs so resilient and implement new management strategies around the world.
Next, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced a plan to raise $100 million to restore coral reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. NOAA will use these funds to introduce living corals across seventy acres of reef with the goal of recovering 25% coral coverage. If “Mission: Iconic Reefs” proves successful, this undertaking would boost marine wildlife and ecotourism. “There’s a lot of economic value on our coral reefs, and I understand it’s scary to admit how bad it is,” said the project’s manager. “But glossing over it doesn’t do anyone any favors. It’s only going to get worse if we don’t admit that there’s a reason restoration is needed.”
MARINE LIFE
New research shows that rising ocean temperatures are helping the invasive lionfish expand its range in the Caribbean and beyond. Scientists from the Cape Eleuthera Institute in the Bahamas found that lionfish are “more built for digestion than for swimming” and that warm waters make them even more efficient predators. During peak summer temperatures, lionfish eat more often and exhibit highly aggressive behavior. Over the past ten years, lionfish have also spread to the eastern Mediterranean, one of the fastest-warming bodies of water in the world. “Despite their beautiful appearance, I understand how much of a problem are,” one researcher said. “And how urgently they need to be taken off the reefs.”
CLIMATE CHANGE
Examples of international climate cooperation are hard to come by, but this week Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan agreed to lead a special working group to restore the Aral Sea. Over the past forty years, poor policy decisions, environmental disasters, and rising air temperatures have reduced the Aral Sea to just 12% of its original size, once spanning 26,300 square miles. This collective, which also includes Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, will address “existing water issues on an ongoing, daily basis” by constructing dams, dykes and by planting salt tolerant plants. One scientist noted, “For Central Asia, such an amount of water would be significant in terms of solving problems.”
INNOVATION
For the first time, scientists have used telecommunications cables to detect seismic waves on the seafloor. Transmitting the majority of all texts, phone calls and emails, these cables run for nearly 750,000 miles beneath the seabed. That’s three-times the distance between Earth and the moon. By injecting light into a cable off the coast of France and analyzing the backscatter signal, researchers created 6,000 new seismic sensors. Building equipment for use on the seafloor is a logistical and financial nightmare, but with this new method telecommunications cables present a pre-installed way to track storms, earthquakes, ships, and even whales.
AND FINALLY
Sorry in advance for this one. After a recent storm, thousands of Urechis caupo or “penis worms” have washed up on Drakes Beach just north of San Francisco, California. While this marine worm’s phallic appearance has warranted an unfortunate common name, its shape allows it to live (out of sight!) in u-shaped burrows beneath the seafloor. During high tide, U. caupo rises from its sandy home and expels a mucous net to catch plankton and bacteria. Mass strandings of these worms have happened before, but the long-term effects of storms remain unclear. Over 300 million years old, the species is a long-standing food source for otters, sharks, and – yup – humans, too.
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