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Chapter 5 - The Case of the Florida Reef Tract: Bureaucracies, Participation and Managing Novel Ecosystems
- Kelly Dunning, Auburn University, Alabama
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- Book:
- Democratic Management of an Ecosystem Under Threat
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 28 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2023, pp 47-84
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Summary
The concept of a pristine coral reef, untouched and unspoiled, feels like a thing of the past. While we know they must exist and hear stories about their majestic beauty, they feel far away. Depending upon how you define a healthy coral reef, it is debatable if the word “pristine” accurately describes coral reefs at all. While beautiful and intact reef ecosystems certainly exist, are these reefs truly unspoiled? They may encounter the odd abandoned piece of fishing gear, the curious lack of a once abundant fish species or unseasonably warm ocean temperatures. Thus, are these places still pristine, or have they shifted to become something new?
Many people might not know that until fairly recently, they could find a healthy tropical coral reef at the southern tip of Florida in the United States. Until the 1980s, this 360 linear mile barrier reef—the Florida Reef Tract—was world-renowned as a premier dive site, showcasing rich collections of species (known as assemblages) and dense coral cover. In fact, the Florida Reef Tract is the third-largest barrier reef in the world.
Growing up in South Florida in the 1990s, stands of elkhorn coral on the reefs of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) were expected to be seen on dives, with their yellow, branching arms stretching through the clear water upward toward the light. In summer of 2022, while on a research dive, I recall crying out and pointing to a stand of elkhorn to a student simply because it has become such a rare sight in this short time, that it warrants a celebration.
Over the last 40–50 years, close to 90 percent of the living coral cover that comprised the Florida Reef Tract has been lost (Figure 5.1), and new species assemblages have begun to take their place (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2022; Toth et al., 2019). Due to these significant changes, new forms of management have emerged to try and conserve what coral remains.
In this chapter, we explore two of the most visible and important case studies of coral reef management institutions from southern Florida: the case of the FKNMS and the case of the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative (SEFCRI).
Chapter 1 - Introduction
- Kelly Dunning, Auburn University, Alabama
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- Book:
- Democratic Management of an Ecosystem Under Threat
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 28 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2023, pp 3-12
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Summary
In 2019 I was working for a small non-profit on the northern coast of Haiti, near the port city of Cap-Haïtien. Historically, Cap-Haïtien was nicknamed The Paris of the Antilles for its great wealth and beauty as a former French Colony (see figure 1.1) (Liss & Knight, 1991). Today, Cap-Haïtien remains quite beautiful, retaining much of its colonial-era architecture, which is now steeped in vibrant Haitian culture and nestled between lush mountains and a sprawling turquoise bay. My work there involved coral reef restoration, or replanting coral to help bring the reef back to its former glory, and thus the brilliant blue waters are where I spent most of my time. Despite Haiti's rugged beauty, environmental degradation is abundant, and its coral reefs are heavily impacted. Much of the loss of coral reefs is due to there being a lack of ways to manage waste, pollution, overfishing, coastal development and a lack of cohesive environmental governance, which we define as political management combining government, non-profits, public participation and private-sector interests (Creary et al., 2008). Governance and government are not the same things, and this distinction is necessary for our book's central arguments to unfold. Government intervention includes actions like a fish and wildlife agency instituting catch-limit regulations on a fishery, whereas governance includes the activities of other actors such as communities, businesses and non-governmental organizations or NGOs (Lemos & Agrawal, 2006).
On an otherwise tranquil morning dive, I began to witness these impacts firsthand. A large shadow passed slowly over me, which turned out to not be a floating patch of Sargassum, a genus of seaweed commonly found in the Caribbean. Instead, it was an enormous floating mass of single-use plastics, such as the small yellow plastic vinegar bottles typical of Haiti (see figure 1.2). This marine debris had washed down from the mountains during a storm the night before, and was symbolic of the immense challenges facing Haitian coral reefs. Beachgoers as far as Corpus Christi, Texas, in the United States commonly find these same yellow vinegar bottles washed up on Gulf of Mexico beaches nearly 3,000 kilometers away, with missing diamond shapes, from bites taken from the bottles by sea turtles. The interconnectedness between coastal communities can often be traced in such a way.
Chapter 11 - Call to Action: Participation and Managing Reefs Under Global Change
- Kelly Dunning, Auburn University, Alabama
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- Book:
- Democratic Management of an Ecosystem Under Threat
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 28 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2023, pp 187-194
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Summary
This final chapter will offer three key policy recommendations. The first is a more rapid international timeline for emissions reduction to prevent the extinction of coral that make up reefs due to climate change. This will require bipartisan relationships that mirror those being formed in Congress around coral reef legislative topics. The second is increased cooperation between authorities within federal and state governments to ensure that existing conservation laws and policies are followed, in contrast to the Miami and Cayman Islands cases. The third is that private multinational companies should not be allowed to subvert the conservation laws and policies of sovereign countries, as seen in the case of the Cayman Islands.
In 2022, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Sixth Assessment Report, an extensive document examining the ongoing effects of global climate change. Among the key findings of the report lies an ominous warning:
The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action […] will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all
(Pörtner et al., 2022).The effects of climate change are the most significant threat facing coral reefs, driving their decline, and endangering the communities that depend upon them (International Union for Conservation of Nature, 2021). How can policy-makers rise to the broader challenge of managing coral reefs under the threat of climate change? This question is complicated and, as such, has become the focus of hundreds, if not thousands, of research projects aimed at understanding coral reef management in the Anthropocene. Some studies have found that returning to historical baselines for coral reefs may be impossible and that local management systems are insufficient to rescue them (Bellwood et al., 2019; Hughes et al., 2017). In response, researchers have suggested implementing multilevel, international initiatives such as the Coral Triangle Initiative in Southeast Asia or polycentric governance (or governance systems with many power centers) of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia to promote large-scale ecosystem recovery (Fidelman et al., 2014; Morrison, 2017). Other policy responses include government assistance for livelihoods and building capacity for local communities to adapt to change (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018).
Chapter 2 - Climate Change, Coral Bleaching and Other Threats
- Kelly Dunning, Auburn University, Alabama
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- Book:
- Democratic Management of an Ecosystem Under Threat
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 28 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2023, pp 13-16
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Summary
In recent decades, climate change has taken center stage as the single greatest threat facing modern coral reefs (Hughes et al., 2017a, 2017b). Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have been increasing since the Industrial Revolution. The concentration of one commonly recognized contributor, carbon dioxide (CO2), has risen at 250 times its natural rate following the last Ice Age (NASA, 2020). Currently, the measurement of atmospheric CO2 stands at 415 ppm, the highest concentration in 650,000 years (NASA, 2020). As a result, the Earth's atmosphere and oceans are warming at an unprecedented rate (Hopkin, 2005). Over 90 percent of the warming that the planet has experienced in the last 50 years has occurred in the oceans themselves. From 1971 to 2010, 63 percent of the total increase in stored heat on our planet was captured by the oceans’ upper, sun-lit layers. Therefore, the oceans’ usefulness as a reservoir for storing thermal energy (heat) and CO2 may spell disaster for coral reefs. Because coral reef ecosystems are among the most climate-sensitive on Earth, requiring narrow temperature ranges to survive, they are extremely vulnerable to unprecedented warming events.
One catastrophic effect of climate change, a phenomenon known as coral bleaching, has become a well-documented and highly publicized process (Dispensa et al., 2003; Hughes et al., 2017a, 2018a, 2018b, Manzello, 2015). Because corals are sessile organisms (i.e., they are immobile), they rely on two sources of energy. First, they capture microscopic organisms in the water column using small tentacles armed with stinging cells called nematocysts. Second, corals depend on a symbiotic relationship with several specific groups of dinoflagellate microalgae (i.e., single-celled algae) called zooxanthellae—these microorganisms produce oxygen and energy for the corals via photosynthesis, exactly like plants on dry land, in exchange for shelter and shared nutrients.
Zooxanthellae also give corals their often-vibrant coloration ranging from orange to yellow to royal blue. Because physically capturing microorganisms as food only provides corals with about 10 percent of their energy, the zooxanthellae are essential for their survival (Forsman, 2005; Weis, 2008). However, when coral organisms are exposed to adverse environmental conditions for prolonged periods of time (e.g., warming ocean temperatures), corals exhibit a natural stress response known as “bleaching.” During this process, coral colonies expel the symbiotic zooxanthellae, revealing their underlying white calcium carbonate skeletons and losing these vital energy sources.