Status of Caribbean coral reefs after bleaching and hurricanes in 2005

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Executive SummaryThe peak of HotSpot activity occurred in early October with a massive area of warm water coveringvirtually all the central and eastern Caribbean. A series of Hurricanes had helped cool the watersof the Northern Caribbean; but there were no hurricanes to pass through the Lesser Antilles wherethe waters were warmest. In mid to late October the HotSpot ‘followed the sun’ southward and thenbathed the Netherlands Antilles and the northern coast of South America. By early November, theHotSpot had virtually dissipated and conditions had returned to normal. However, this 4 monthperiod of unusually warm waters had wreaked havoc throughout the Wider Caribbean as is describedin the following chapters.By October, dangerously elevated sea temperatures had been bathing the Lesser Antilles foralmost 6 months; most of this time the temperatures exceeded the normal coral bleachingthresholds. This sustained thermal stress resulted in the most severe coral bleaching andmortality ever recorded in the Lesser Antilles with 25% to 52% coral mortality in the FrenchWest Indies, and the most severe bleaching event ever recorded around Barbados. Bleachingaffected all coral species at all depths. In the Netherlands Antilles there was 80% coral bleachingaround the islands to the north, near the British Virgin Islands, whereas around Bonaire andCuracao in the south there was only minor bleaching and virtually no mortality. Further to theeast there was 66 to 80% bleaching of the coral cover on Tobago. On average, the accumulatedCaribbean thermal stress during the August-November period was greater than had beenexperienced by these reefs during the previous 20 years combined.A second bout of bleaching started when the HotSpot ‘followed the sun’ with Colombia seriouslyaffected in October and the peak bleaching in Venezuela in November and December 2005.Bleaching was highly variable with sites reporting anything from zero to 100% bleaching, butthe mean was closer to 25%; fortunately mortality on reefs in tropical South America was farless than on reefs to the north.11
Status of Caribbean Coral Reefs after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005Wh y Cl i mat e Ch a n g e is a Th r e at to Co r a l ReefsCorals bleach when the coral animal host is stressed and expels the symbiotic zooxanthellae(algae) that provide much of the energy for coral growth, and coral reef growth. Althoughseveral different stresses cause bleaching, by far the most significant cause of coral bleachingin the past 25 years has been sea surface temperatures that exceed the normal summer maximaby 1 or 2 o C for at least 4 weeks. This results in excessive production of toxic compounds in thealgae that are transferred to the host coral. The host coral reacts by expelling their symbioticalgae, leaving the coral ghostly white and particularly susceptible to death from starvationor disease. If conditions become more favorable, corals often recover, although they oftenexperience reduced growth and may skip reproduction for a season. In 2005, many bleachedcorals did eventually die.Coral bleaching was first noticed as a significant problem in the wider Caribbean region in 1983.Concurrently there were increases in coral disease across the region, thus the assumption wasmade that these were both associated with higher temperatures. The bleaching and outbreaksof infectious diseases, such as white plague, have caused such major losses in the branchingstaghorn and elkhorn corals (Acropora cervicornis and A. palmata), that they were added tothe List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife under the Endangered Species Act of U.S.A. inApril 2007. The listing as Threatened Species requires that US government agencies maximizetheir efforts at conserving these species, which are the most characteristic of Caribbean reefsand were once major contributors to reef construction.The bleaching in 2005 ‘coincided’ with major outbreaks of coral diseases which saw extensiveshrinkage in the cover of live corals throughout the Caribbean. While many corals started torecover when seawater temperatures dropped with the onset of winter, coral diseases broke outand resulted in significant losses of coral cover, notably along the coast of Florida (Chapter 6),in Belize (Chapter 5), the Virgin Islands (Chapter 7), and the Lesser Antilles (Chapter 8). Theaccepted explanation is that bleached corals are stressed, lack reserve lipid supplies and areeffectively starving, making them more susceptible to disease.Ocean acidification is a parallel climate change threat to coral reefs that results from increasedconcentrations of CO 2dissolving in seawater, which reduces its pH. This process is called ‘oceanacidification’, and by the end of this century, acidification may be proceeding at a rate that is100 times faster and with a magnitude that is 3 times greater than anything experienced onthe planet in the last 21 million years. How this will affect marine ecosystems is unknown, butimpacts on marine calcifiers could be considerable. Using the pH levels expected by the end ofthis century, laboratory studies show a significant reduction in the ability of reef-building coralsto grown their carbonate skeletons, making them both slower to grow and more vulnerableto erosion. This would also affect the basal structure of coral reef itself. While the long termconsequences of ocean acidification on corals is not known, corals do not seem to be able toeasily adapt to such rapid changes. All predictions from climate change models point to oceanacidification having progressively more negative impacts on corals and coral reefs.Hurricanes and extreme weather events are also predicted to become more frequent and severeas the pace of climate change quickens. There is increasing evidence that the proportion ofmore destructive hurricanes has increased in recent decades, although the total incidence oftropical storms has not increased. Stronger hurricanes will result in more severe wave damage12
Page 1 and 2: Stat u s o fCa r i b b e a nCo r a
Page 3 and 4: Dedication: This book is dedicated
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Page 25 and 26: Status of Coral Reefs in the Caribb
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Coral Reefs of the U.S. Caribbean19
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10. Ma n ag i n g f o r Ma s s Co r
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Managing for Mass Coral Bleaching:
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Status of Caribbean coral reefs after bleaching and hurricanes in 2005

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