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35 - The future for coral reef fishes
- from PART V - DEBATES AND PARADIGM SHIFTS
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- By Peter F. Sale, University of Windsor
- Edited by Camilo Mora, University of Hawaii, Manoa
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- Book:
- Ecology of Fishes on Coral Reefs
- Published online:
- 05 May 2015
- Print publication:
- 23 April 2015, pp 283-288
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Summary
Complex, high diversity fish communities have assembled around coral reefs for 50 Ma, contributing to the complexity of this most elaborate of all marine ecosystems. These fish play important ecological roles in the reef ecosystem, serve as vital food resources for coastal populations, and provide one of the chief attractions offered by reefs to tourism. However, reef fish assemblages are now at some risk because of widespread overfishing and other human impacts on their environment. Our knowledge of the degree to which reef fish species are tied to reefs is limited, but studies of the aftermath of losses of coral due to mass bleaching reveal that many fish species are affected in diverse ways. Those that decline tend to be corallivores, or species which use live coral as shelter sites. Species using stimuli provided by corals to guide settlement following larval life may also be affected. Reef fish species may also be affected directly by warming and acidification caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. While the good news is that many reef fish species should be able to survive in a world with fewer coral reefs, the bad news is that the communities they will form seem certain to be diminished compared to those on reefs today. The irony, of course, is that we already understand the causes, and how to avoid or to remedy the consequences. We should be able to retain much of the abundance and diversity of fishes now occupying coral reefs. Yet our chronic past failure to address simple stressors like overfishing raises the wider question of what it will take to get us to redress the profound stresses we are now imposing on the biosphere which sustains our own lives.
The first attempts to review our ecological knowledge of coral reef fishes were papers by Ehrlich [744], Goldman and Talbot [947], and Sale [2226].
Foreword
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- By Peter F. Sale, The Australian National University
- Edited by Camilo Mora, University of Hawaii, Manoa
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- Book:
- Ecology of Fishes on Coral Reefs
- Published online:
- 05 May 2015
- Print publication:
- 23 April 2015, pp xi-xii
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Summary
Late in the summer of 2012, Camilo Mora emailed me out of the blue. He pointed out that I had published a substantive review of reef fish ecology in 1980, the edited book, The Ecology of Fishes on Coral Reefs, in 1991, and a second book, Coral Reef Fishes, in 2002. He therefore deduced that 2013 would be the year for the next effort, and offered to co-edit. I've known Camilo Mora for a few years now, was not swayed by his impeccable logic, and replied that I was done editing books on reef fish ecology. I suggested he do it himself. About a month later, he sent another arm-twisting email and convinced me I had better compose a Foreword. Now, I see what he has assembled, and I am very pleased he asked me.
The field study of fish behavior and ecology has had its greatest successes on coral reefs. It began earlier, but flowered with the advent of SCUBA, as scientists discovered the many advantages of working in reef habitats. Coral reefs provide a rich diversity of fish species living in an environment with clear water and comfortable working conditions. Bathing yourself in warm, relatively shallow water, while idly watching fishes cavort is a great way to earn a living. Further, the fishes, for the most part are small, and either quite site-attached or remarkably pedestrian, repeatedly following predictable paths through the reef as they go about their daily lives. This makes it easy to get to know individual fishes, to make repeated observations, and above all to carry out simple field manipulations of the type enjoyed by every intertidal ecologist who ever lived. Calling this approach to science underwater bird-watching is quite accurate, and the early research contributed fully as substantive a body of research results as did terrestrial bird-watching from which it stole the occasional ecological concept, sometimes to discard it later.
Coral reef conservation and political will
- PETER F. SALE
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- Journal:
- Environmental Conservation / Volume 42 / Issue 2 / June 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 04 November 2014, pp. 97-101
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Coral reefs and their societal benefits are in decline, chiefly due to overfishing, pollution and inappropriate coastal development. Strengthened management is possible, but collective failure to build the needed political will to act diminishes lives of millions of people along tropical coasts. Political will can be built, but it requires committed leadership and sustained investment of time and resources. Accepting failure as inevitable is inappropriate.
Contributors
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- By Tod C. Aeby, Melanie D. Altizer, Ronan A. Bakker, Meghann E. Batten, Anita K. Blanchard, Brian Bond, Megan A. Brady, Saweda A. Bright, Ellen L. Brock, Amy Brown, Ashley Carroll, Jori S. Carter, Frances Casey, Weldon Chafe, David Chelmow, Jessica M. Ciaburri, Stephen A. Cohen, Adrianne M. Colton, PonJola Coney, Jennifer A. Cross, Julie Zemaitis DeCesare, Layson L. Denney, Megan L. Evans, Nicole S. Fanning, Tanaz R. Ferzandi, Katie P. Friday, Nancy D. Gaba, Rajiv B. Gala, Andrew Galffy, Adrienne L. Gentry, Edward J. Gill, Philippe Girerd, Meredith Gray, Amy Hempel, Audra Jolyn Hill, Chris J. Hong, Kathryn A. Houston, Patricia S. Huguelet, Warner K. Huh, Jordan Hylton, Christine R. Isaacs, Alison F. Jacoby, Isaiah M. Johnson, Nicole W. Karjane, Emily E. Landers, Susan M. Lanni, Eduardo Lara-Torre, Lee A. Learman, Nikola Alexander Letham, Rachel K. Love, Richard Scott Lucidi, Elisabeth McGaw, Kimberly Woods McMorrow, Christopher A. Manipula, Kirk J. Matthews, Michelle Meglin, Megan Metcalf, Sarah H. Milton, Gaby Moawad, Christopher Morosky, Lindsay H. Morrell, Elizabeth L. Munter, Erin L. Murata, Amanda B. Murchison, Nguyet A. Nguyen, Nan G. O’Connell, Tony Ogburn, K. Nathan Parthasarathy, Thomas C. Peng, Ashley Peterson, Sarah Peterson, John G. Pierce, Amber Price, Heidi J. Purcell, Ronald M. Ramus, Nicole Calloway Rankins, Fidelma B. Rigby, Amanda H. Ritter, Barbara L. Robinson, Danielle Roncari, Lisa Rubinsak, Jennifer Salcedo, Mary T. Sale, Peter F. Schnatz, John W. Seeds, Kathryn Shaia, Karen Shelton, Megan M. Shine, Haller J. Smith, Roger P. Smith, Nancy A. Sokkary, Reni A. Soon, Aparna Sridhar, Lilja Stefansson, Laurie S. Swaim, Chemen M. Tate, Hong-Thao Thieu, Meredith S. Thomas, L. Chesney Thompson, Tiffany Tonismae, Angela M. Tran, Breanna Walker, Alan G. Waxman, C. Nathan Webb, Valerie L. Williams, Sarah B. Wilson, Elizabeth M. Yoselevsky, Amy E. Young
- Edited by David Chelmow, Virginia Commonwealth University, Christine R. Isaacs, Virginia Commonwealth University, Ashley Carroll, Virginia Commonwealth University
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- Book:
- Acute Care and Emergency Gynecology
- Published online:
- 05 November 2014
- Print publication:
- 30 October 2014, pp ix-xiv
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22 - The futures of coral reefs
- from Part V - Effects Due to Invading Species, Habitat Loss and Climate Change
- Edited by Klaus Rohde, University of New England, Australia
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- Book:
- The Balance of Nature and Human Impact
- Published online:
- 05 March 2013
- Print publication:
- 14 February 2013, pp 325-334
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Summary
Coral reefs are severely threatened and their future looks dire
Coral reefs, as we knew them in the 1970s, are likely to have disappeared entirely from the planet by 2050, if current trends in human environmental impacts continue. This claim is predicated principally on continued growth in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and continued ocean acidification (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007; Veron et al., 2009; Sale, 2011). Indeed, late in 2011, it is difficult to see how we will mobilize quickly enough to alter our behavior sufficiently, in time to save them, although several authors now point to the spatial heterogeneity with which reefs are degrading, and suggest that in some regions reefs may survive through 2100 (Hughes et al., 2010; Anthony et al., 2011; Edwards et al., 2011; Hoeke et al., 2011). I believe the chance of such survival is vanishingly small. What will be left is eroding limestone benches, dominated by macroalgae, and with small, isolated coral colonies. In this chapter, I discuss the various possible futures for coral reefs, and the reasons for my dire prediction. Reef ecosystems suffer because their keystone species are proving particularly susceptible to certain of our environmental impacts. The fact that they could disappear within 40 years is testament to the limited capacity for homeostasis among natural ecosystems and to the capacity of humanity to alter fundamental properties of the planetary environment.
Coral reefs: fragile, transitory ecosystems of the ocean-atmosphere boundary zone
Humans have been damaging coral reef ecosystems around the world almost since humans and reefs first came into contact. There are several reasons for this (Sale, 2008). They all concern the particular dependence of the reef ecosystem on the survival and health of one group of ecologically delicate species, the corals themselves. Coral reefs are one of the few ecosystems in which major components of the physical structure of the system are produced by the organisms themselves (rainforests are approximate analogs). On reefs, the rocky structure with its complex topography is the result of calcification by a broad range of organisms but including in particular the corals themselves.