ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2011) — Many of the animal species at risk of extinction in the United States have not made it onto the country’s official Endangered Species Act (ESA) list, according to new research from the University of Adelaide.

National “red lists” are used by many countries to evaluate and protect locally threatened species. The ESA is one of the best known national lists and arguably the world’s most effective biodiversity protection law.

Read the full article

But researchers have shown that the tiny turtles can influence where they end up with just a few hours of paddling a day, using the Earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves.

By modelling the turtles’ behaviour in an ocean circulation model, the researchers found that as little as an hour of active swimming every day could nudge the hatchlings into warmer waters at lower latitudes. More time spent swimming had a greater effect, and after swimming for three hours a day some hatchlings were 520km further south.

Read the full article http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=1113

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature

Loggerhead turtles take almost half a century to reach maturity, say scientists.

A female turtle, the researchers report in the journal Functional Ecology, will not start to lay eggs until she is 45.This estimate, based on examination of several decades of data on the turtles’ growth, has implications for conservation efforts.It reveals how long it takes for turtles hatched at a protected nesting site to return to that site to breed.

Prof Graeme Hays from the University of Swansea, one of the authors of the study, explained how reaching maturity so slowly meant that the turtle population was “less resilient” than previously thought.

“The longer an animal takes to reach maturity, the more vulnerable the population is to [man-made] causes of mortality,” said Prof Hays.

This, he explained, was because there was a much higher chance of an individual animal being killed – for example, by being deliberately or accidentally caught in a fishing net – before it had been able to “replace itself” by breeding.  Read the full story

Jeremy Hance. mongabay.com . November 03, 2011

Researchers with the Smithsonian have catalogued almost as many crab species on tropical coral reef bits measuring just 20.6 square feet (6.3 square meters) as in all of Europe’s seas, finds a new paper in PLoS ONE. The team used DNA barcoding to quickly identify a total of 525 crustaceans (including 168 crab species) from dead coral chunks taken from seven sites in the tropics, including the Indian, Pacific and Caribbean oceans.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2011) —

This photo shows Hawaiian chubs (Kyphosus species) and other reef fish swimming near the healthy Acropora cytherea species coral reefs found at French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. (Credit: Jamison Gove, JIMAR/NOAA CRED)

Changing human activities coupled with a dynamic environment over the past few centuries have caused fluctuating periods of decline and recovery of corals reefs in the Hawaiian Islands, according to a study sponsored in part by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University. Using the reefs and island societies as a model social-ecological system, a team of scientists reconstructed 700 years of human-environment interactions in two different regions of the Hawaiian archipelago to identify the key factors that contributed to degradation or recovery of coral reefs. Read the full article

A recovering plate coral dominated reef in the central Indian Ocean, Credit: Nick Graham

Redorbit.com September 27, 2011

An international team of scientists has achieved a major breakthrough in fishing sustainability on coral reefs which could play a vital role in preventing their collapse.

“Fishermen and scientists have long wondered how many fish can be taken off a reef before it collapses, says Dr Nick Graham of the ARC Centre of Excellence (ARC CoE) for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

“The consequences of overfishing can be severe to the ecosystem and may take decades to recover, but hundreds of millions of people depend on reefs for food and livelihoods, so banning fishing altogether isn’t a reality in many nations.” Read the full story

By, Rudy Bonn, Reef Relief’s Director of Marine Projects

On Wednesday, August 31^st, I had the privilege to meet and dive with Dr. James Porter from the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.  Dr. Porter was accompanied by Meridith Meyers, a PhD student who is doing her work on the genetics of coral species in the genus, Agaricia.

Dr. Porter and a number of fellow researchers were the first to link a devastating disease in the threatened Elkhorn Coral, Acropora palmata, to a unique strain of a bacterium known as Serratia marcescens, strain PDR60, that is an opportunistic pathogen found in human waste.

The disease, known as acroporid serratiosis ( APS ), commonly referred to as white pox,  has devastated the elkhorn coral populations in the Florida Keys, and was the main reason why the coral was listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act ( ESA ) in 2006.

White Band Disease ( WBD ), another coral killer, is mainly responsible for the high mortality that the staghorn ( A. cervicornis ) coral populations have suffered in recent years and the etiology of WBD is still unknown.  Both corals are listed as threatened under the ESA.

What is also very important about the research that Dr. Porter and colleague, Dr. Kathryn P. Sutherland, of Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida, have discovered is the first example of a marine “reverse zoonosis” involving the transmission of a human pathogen to a marine invertebrate.  Their findings underscore the interaction between public health practices and environmental health indices such as coral reef survival

The effluent from the Fleming Key Wastewater treatment plant was tested by Dr. Porter and the bacterium was not found, so where is the source

Water quality is one of the biggest issues and concerns here in Monroe county.  E. coli outbreaks are a common occurrence, as we all know when we read the health advisories in the Citizen every week.  E. coli is another enteric bacterium found in the intestinal tracts of warm-blooded animals, not iguanas- a cold-blooded animal- as so many people here think, that is an impossibility and comes from disinformation being generated by misinformed people.

The sources of these pathogens are many:  Leaking septic systems, cesspits, storm water run-off, even waters that reach the keys from as far away as the Mississippi Delta via loop currents in the GOM can bring pathogens and nutrients to our near-shore waters, and there are many others, ocean outfall pipes still being used in Miami and Palm Beach for example, among others!

The challenges are many, and the work needs to be broad and comprehensive in scope if we are to save our coral reefs.

Climate change, especially rising water temperatures, and its evil twin, ocean acidification, along with over fishing, and pollution are the three biggest threats to coral reef ecosystems world wide and are working in synergy against the corals.  The coral reefs of the world are being attacked by a multitude of stressors simultaneously, and cannot keep ahead of the onslaught in terms of evolutionary adaptability—the pace of the present onslaught is unprecedented in the history of the natural world.

On our dives we were fortunate not to encounter any white pox, but we did witness bleaching in almost every colony.  Bleaching occurs when corals reach their thermal thresholds, hot or cold, and leads to the coral expelling its symbiotic algae partner known as zooxanthelle

The algae are an endosymbiont of the corals and reside in the cells of the coral’s tissues.  It produces food for the coral in the form of a carbohydrate produced through photosynthesis, and is why reef-building corals are found in clear, nutrient-free tropical waters.  The alga cells also contain pigment and are what gives corals their bright color

Bleaching is a stress response, the photosynthetic process is interrupted at the molecular level and the alga cells actually begin producing radical oxides which are poisonous to the corals.  The corals expel their colorful partners and turn a ghostly white, thus the term, bleaching.

Corals can survive for a limited time but will succumb if the alga cells are not replaced within a couple of weeks or so depending upon species- some being more resilient than others.  Science has found more resistant strains of the algae, but successfully inoculating other corals is still in the research stages as these alga cells seem to be species specific in terms of their coral hosts

What can we do?  What are our choices in terms of mitigating these challenges.  There are lots of things we can do:  the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions would be an enormous first step in the battle against climate change.  Commercial and recreational fishing can be managed in such a way that all parties involved derive benefit, and pollution, we have to stop treating our oceans, rivers, and lakes, as garbage dumps.

Reef Relief runs Coral Camp for kids every summer and one of the things I have to tell them is that there is the possibility that their children might not get the opportunity to see a living, vibrant, coral reef right here in the Keys.  That we are leaving their generations with all these challenges, but you know what, from what I gather from these small kids, is that there up to the challenge and want to save the coral reefs.

Dr. Porter and colleagues also want to thank members of the media for the sharing of this important information.  It is vital that people realize the urgency that is needed if we are going to save our reefs– the cascading effects throughout marine ecosystems that would occur if this were to happen is not a pleasant thing to contemplate as there would be a mass extinction throughout the marine environment involving most metazoan phyla–  an event never witnessed by modern humans and to think that we might be the first is very unsettling.

Dr. Porter’s and Dr. Sutherland’s important work was funded through grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

DiscoveryNews.  Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi . Tue Sep 13, 2011 02:26 PM ET

The dusky grouper, one of the major predators in the Mediterranean sea, used to be so large in antiquity that it was portrayed as a “sea monster,” a new study into ancient depictions of the endangered fish has revealed.

This ancient Roman mosaic from the Bardo National Museum in Tunis shows a giant grouper swollowing a fisherman. Courtesy of Giorces/Creative Commons.

“Amazingly, ancient mosaic art has provided important information to reconstruct this fish’s historical baseline,” Paolo Guidetti of the University of Salento in Italy, told Discovery News.

Considered one of the most flavorful species among the Mediterranean fish, the dusky grouper (Epinephelus marginatus) is a large, long-lived, slow-growing, protogynous hermaphrodite fish (with sex reversal from female to male). It can be found mainly in the Mediterranean, the African west coast and the coast of Brazil.

Read more: http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-mosaics-marine-conservation-110913.html

• Sep 08, 2011 Global Campaign to End Illegal Fishing, Protecting the Deep Sea Contact: Shannon Pao, 202.540.6568

The deep sea, home to some of the world’s most unusual creatures, is teeming with biological diversity, most of which has yet to be scientifically-documented. But in spite of the wonders that exist far below the surface, the deep sea is being destroyed.

While threats to this fragile marine habitat are not new, the blatant failure of high-seas fishing countries to safeguard deep-sea ecosystems can no longer be ignored.

A new report, Unfinished Business: A Review of the Implementation of the Provisions of UNGA Resolutions 61/105 and 64/72 (PDF), reveals that many high-seas fishing countries and regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) have failed to implement measures to protect the deep sea. This comes five years after the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) passed the first of several resolutions outlining how vulnerable deep-sea biodiversity should be safeguarded. The study by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition also highlights how bottom fishing in the deep sea continues with few or no constraints.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2011) — A research team from Rollins College in Florida and the University of Georgia has identified human sewage as the source of the coral-killing pathogen that causes white pox disease of Caribbean elkhorn coral. Once the most common coral in the Caribbean, elkhorn coral was listed for protection under the United States Endangered Species Act in 2006, largely due to white pox disease.

The team’s findings have just been published in the peer-reviewed open access journal PLoS ONE.

The human disease serratiosis is caused by the fecal coliform bacterium Serratia marcescens. When it infects coral, as in this case from Key West, Fl., it destroys the overlying coral tissue, revealing the dead, white limestone skeleton underneath. (Credit: James W. Porter, University of Georgia)

Kathryn P. Sutherland, associate professor of biology at Rollins College, and her research collaborators, Associate Professor of Environmental Health Science Erin K. Lipp and Professor of Ecology James W. Porter of the University of Georgia, have known since 2002 that the bacterium that killed coral was the same species as found in humans. “When we identified Serratia marcescens as the cause of white pox, we could only speculate that human waste was the source of the pathogen because the bacterium is also found in the waste of other animals,” Sutherland said. Read the full article