climateoceanacidification
How the 1% are preparing for the apocalypse.
The threat of global annihilation may feel as present as it did during the Cold War, but today's high-security shelters could not be more different from their 20th-century counterparts.
Say "doomsday bunker" and most people would imagine a concrete room filled with cots and canned goods.
The threat of global annihilation may feel as present as it did during the Cold War, but today's high-security shelters could not be more different from their 20th-century counterparts.
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A number of companies around the world are meeting a growing demand for structures that protect from any risk, whether it's a global pandemic, an asteroid, or World War III -- while also delivering luxurious amenities.
"Your father or grandfather's bunker was not very comfortable," says Robert Vicino, a real estate entrepreneur and CEO of Vivos, a company he founded that builds and manages high-end shelters around the world.
"They were gray. They were metal, like a ship or something military. And the truth is mankind cannot survive long-term in such a Spartan, bleak environment."
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The Oppidum, Czech Republic
The Oppidum, Czech Republic
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1/22 – The Oppidum, Czech Republic
The demand for designer bunkers has grown rapidly in recent years. Credit: the oppidum
Doomsday demand
Many of the world's elite, including hedge fund managers, sports stars and tech executives (Bill Gates is rumored to have bunkers at all his properties) have chosen to design their own secret shelters to house their families and staff.
Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Company, says 2016 sales for their custom high-end underground bunkers grew 700% compared to 2015, while overall sales have grown 300% since the November US presidential election alone.
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Apocalypse now: Our incessant desire to picture the end of the world
The company's plate steel bunkers, which are designed to last for generations, can hold a minimum of one year's worth of food per resident and withstand earthquakes.
But while some want to bunker down alone, others prefer to ride out the apocalypse in a community setting that offers an experience a bit closer to the real world.
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A secret bunker in South-East London, built to protect key government employees during a nuclear winter, has been transformed into a $4 million luxury residence. Credit: JDM estate agents
Developers of community shelters like these often acquire decommissioned military bunkers and missile silos built by the United States or Soviet governments -- sites that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build today.
The fortified structures are designed to withstand a nuclear strike and come equipped with power systems, water purification systems, blast valves, and Nuclear-Biological-Chemical (NBC) air filtration.
Most include food supplies for a year or more, and many have hydroponic gardens to supplement the rations. The developers also work to create well-rounded communities with a range of skills necessary for long-term survival, from doctors to teachers.
Vicino says Vivos received a flurry of interest in its shelters around the 2016 election from both liberals and conservatives, and completely sold out of spaces in its community shelters in the past few weeks.
Designer ark
One of those shelters, Vivos xPoint, is near the Black Hills of South Dakota, and consists of 575 military bunkers that served as an Army Munitions Depot until 1967.
Presently being converted into a facility that will accommodate about 5,000 people, the interiors of each bunker are outfitted by the owners at a cost of between $25,000 to $200,000 each. The price depends on whether they want a minimalist space or a home with high-end finishes.
The compound itself will be equipped with all the comforts of a small town, including a community theater, classrooms, hydroponic gardens, a medical clinic, a spa and a gym.
Vivos Europa One in Germany
Vivos Europa One in Germany Credit: © Copyright Terravivos.com
For clients looking for something further afield and more luxurious, the company also offers Vivos Europa One, billed as a "modern day Noah's Ark" in a former Cold War-era munitions storage facility in Germany.
The structure, which was carved out of solid bedrock, offers 34 private residences, each starting at 2,500 square feet, with the option to add a second story for a total of 5,000 square feet.
Stunning mural appears in secret forest
The units will be delivered empty and each owner will have the space renovated to suit their own tastes and needs, choosing from options that include screening rooms, private pools and gyms.
Vicino compares the individual spaces to underground yachts, and even recommends that owners commission the same builders and designers that worked on their actual vessels.
"Most of these people have high-end yachts, so they already have the relationship and they know the taste, fit, and finish that they want," he explains.
The vast complex includes a tram system to transport residents throughout the shelter, where they can visit its restaurants, theater, coffee shops, pool and game areas.
"We have all the comforts of home, but also the comforts that you expect when you leave your home," Vicino adds.
Survival Condo in Kansas
Survival Condo in Kansas Credit: Courtesy of Survival Condo
Nuclear hardened homes
Developer Larry Hall's Survival Condo in Kansas utilizes two abandoned Atlas missile silos built by the US Army Corps of Engineers to house warheads during the early 1960s.
Super-rich building luxury doomsday bunkers
"Our clients are sold on the unique advantage of having a luxury second home that also happens to be a nuclear hardened bunker," says Hall, who is already starting work on a second Survival Condo in another silo on site.
"This aspect allows our clients to invest in an appreciating asset as opposed to an expense."
The Survival Condo has several different layouts, from a 900-square-foot half-floor residence to a two-level, 3,600-square-foot penthouse that starts at $4.5 million.
Owners have access to their homes and the facilities at anytime, whether a disaster is imminent or they just want to get away from it all, and the complex features a pool, general store, theater, bar and library.
The condo association sets the rules for the community, and during an emergency, owners would be required to work four hours a day.
Long-term luxury
If you prefer to spend the end of days solo, or at least with hand-selected family and friends, you may prefer to consider The Oppidum in the Czech Republic, which is being billed as "the largest billionaire bunker in the world."
The top-secret facility, once a joint project between the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), was built over 10 years beginning in 1984.
An interior shot of the Oppidum in Czech Republic
An interior shot of the Oppidum in Czech Republic Credit: Courtesy of the Oppidum
The site now includes both an above-ground estate and a 77,000-square-foot underground component. While the final product will be built out to the owner's specifications, the initial renderings include an underground garden, swimming pool, spa, cinema and wine vault.
While many might see the luxury amenities at these facilities as unnecessary, the developers argue that these features are critical to survival.
"These shelters are long-term, a year or more," Vicino says. "It had better be comfortable."
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Alaska’s oyster farmers are filling an acidification-driven void.
The state’s oyster farming industry is gaining ground as growers elsewhere struggle.
By Gloria Dickie
Published October 12, 2017
On a float house in Ketchikan’s George Inlet, dozens of cylindrical tanks teem with oyster larvae that range from tiny specks to small pebbles. These larvae number around 15 million, and once they’re done growing in the cold Alaskan waters, they’ll be sent to market across the state.
As the Pacific Ocean acidifies—a consequence of carbon emissions—oyster farms off California, Washington State, and British Columbia have struggled to get larvae to grow into seed, the stage when young oysters’ shells have formed. Though scientists are not quite sure why, the water off Southeast Alaska hasn’t seen the same deleterious effects. Now, entrepreneurs and investors are eyeing the state, looking to turn a profit off the short-lived gains of climate change.
Until recently, the major choke point for the Alaskan oyster industry was the limited availability of oyster seed. While adult oysters grow well in the cool Alaskan water, the temperature is too brisk for them to reproduce naturally. Any oyster farmer trying to get into the game had to import larvae or seed from hatcheries farther down the coast.
But over the past five years, scientists and entrepreneurs have been working on developing Alaska’s home-grown oyster seed operations.
OceansAlaska, the state’s first commercial shellfish hatchery, imports oyster larvae and rears them into seed in cylinders circulating with seawater. Nearby, a monitoring system called a Burk-o-Lator, one of only three in the state, constantly measures the acidity of the water. It took a few years for OceansAlaska to work out the kinks, but in 2012 the company began shipping seed to oyster farmers around the state. In the long-term, the organization, which runs as a nonprofit, hopes their efforts will lead others to build larger hatcheries in Alaska to supply seed for all the oyster growers in the region and even beyond.
The push to increase Alaska’s oyster seed operations has coincided with a sudden decline in larvae production down south, where larvae have been hampered by warming water and ocean acidification. In the mid-2000s, increasingly acidic seawater pumped into southern oyster hatcheries began killing billions of larvae, eating away at the young oysters’ shells before they could fully form, and preventing them from developing into seed. The effects of this have rippled through the market. In 2015, for instance, Canadian oyster farmers saw a 70 million seed shortfall.
But the southern oyster farmers’ plight has been Alaska’s boon. Gary Freitag, an agent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Sea Grant who’s been working with OceansAlaska to develop the state’s oyster industry, says Alaskan seed has been sold to growers in California and Washington State.
“We sent some seed down to California this year, and they said it’s the best seed they’ve seen in 10 years,” says Freitag. “There’s been a huge need for it in the market, because there’s just not enough seed to go around, period.”
Though some Pacific oysters have shown genetic variability in how they respond to acidified waters, it’s unlikely Pacific oysters will continue to thrive as far south as California as acidification seriously alters the ocean’s chemistry in the coming decades. The question now is how long Alaska’s oyster industry will be able to boom before it busts.
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Ocean pollution: Prince Charles warns humanity is ‘testing the world to destruction’ and must act.
During his speech to the 2017 “Our Oceans” environmental conference, Charles said that the world had “catastrophically underestimated” the sea’s “vulnerability to climate change, acidification and pollution.”
Humanity is “testing the world to destruction” and must act now to protect the oceans, British royal Prince Charles has warned. Speaking to Sky News Thursday after a speech at the 2017 “Our Oceans” environmental conference, Charles said that for years he had been urging action on climate change, but society often waited too long before tackling the most pressing problems.
“You don’t wait until it’s a total disaster before you do something,” Charles said. “It is a terrible aspect of human nature that we wait for proof, so what I was trying to say was: We’re testing the world to destruction.”
“So by the time you have actually tested it, and discovered, Oh, there’s the evidence—it’s too late,” the prince added.
The royal, who is first in line to the British throne when his mother, the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, dies, lamented the level of pollution in the world’s waters. During his speech to the conference, Charles said that the world had “catastrophically underestimated” the sea’s “vulnerability to climate change, acidification and pollution.”
“That significant portions of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s eastern coast have been severely degraded or lost over the last few years,” Charles said, "is both a tragedy and also, I would have thought, a very serious wake-up call.”
He said in his Sky interview there was a terrible human cost to climate change and the pollution of the oceans. Charles said that if climate change was left untackled, increasing sea levels and storms of growing severity would threaten coastal communities. “The insurance costs are gigantic and rising, let alone the appalling impact on all these billions of people who live on coasts around the world,” he said.
Meanwhile, Charles added, the depletion of fish stocks also affect many coast dwellers, who are unable to make a living. “What are they going to do? Where are they all going to go?” he asked. “So we end up with human tragedy and mass migration on a vast scale.”
“What we do on the land we don’t realize goes straight out to sea,” Charles added in his Sky interview. He said that there was “all this plastic waste that floats about in the water,” and that “all those chemicals and other things that are used in the makings of these bits of plastic…all end up now within our own system, our own bodies.”
“There is so much plastic broken down into little globules and everything else that fish…are eating what they think is plankton and in fact it turns out to be plastic,” the prince continued.
During his speech, the prince called for action, including more investment in recycling plastics, better protections for oceans and marine life, and “a realization that this small, beautiful blue dot of a planet may have been misnamed.”
“It is not Earth, it is actually mostly sea, and we are utterly reliant upon it,” Charles said.
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Chesapeake acidification could compound issues already facing the bay, researchers find.
As oceans around the world absorb carbon dioxide and acidify, the changes are likely to come faster to the nation’s largest estuary.
For ten days across recent summers, researchers aboard the University of Delaware research vessel Hugh R. Sharp collected water samples from the mouth of the Susquehanna River to Solomons Island in a first-of-its-kind investigation. They wanted to know when and where the waters of the Chesapeake Bay were turning most acidic.
One finding: As oceans around the world absorb carbon dioxide and acidify, the changes are likely to come faster to the nation’s largest estuary.
Scientists have long studied the slow and steady acidification of the open oceans — and its negative effects. Acidifying waters can kill coral, disrupt oyster reproduction, dissolve snail shells like nails in a can of bubbly Coke.
But researchers are just beginning to investigate the consequences for the Chesapeake. And they’re finding that acidification could compound the ecological challenges already wracking the bay.
Not all effects are immediately negative on all species. Experiments are showing that blue crabs, marsh grasses and algae could theoretically thrive in the conditions expected to develop over the next century. But the acidification is a threat to other keystone bay species, such as oysters — a key source of food for crabs. Scientists say acidification could dramatically and unpredictably alter the delicate balances that stabilize the bay ecosystem.
With so many variables expected to affect bay creatures — including rising acidity, warming waters and continued nutrient pollution — research is complex.
“When you have three things changing at once, that’s where our challenges really increase,” said Jeff Cornwell, a research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge. “All these things are intertwined.”
Water, as they teach in middle school chemistry, has a neutral pH of 7. But over the past 300 million years or so, ocean water has registered as basic, with an average pH of 8.2.
As carbon dioxide has multiplied in the atmosphere over the past century, it has also dissolved into the oceans, producing carbonic acid. That has dropped ocean pH to 8.1. The shift might seem slight, but it actually represents a 30 percent increase in acidity, because the pH scale is logarithmic.
The consequences, coupled with the impacts of rising ocean temperatures, could eventually be severe. Research suggests that the acidity that could develop by 2100 could make it harder for oysters, clams, sea urchins and corals to build their protective shells, and could even dissolve the shell of the pea-sized creature at the base of the food web known as a sea butterfly.
But that’s just in the open ocean. Most research focuses on that massive habitat, because its chemistry is largely consistent from one spot to another. In environments close to land, where ecology is more complex and active, biological processes like photosynthesis and respiration drive more volatile swings in acidity and other chemistry.
Whitman Miller is a research scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater.
If an acidifying ocean is like a bottle of carbonated seltzer water, he said, estuaries like the Chesapeake are similar to a beer.
“Because it’s so uniform, in some ways, we know much more about the open ocean at the global scale than we do these local scales we’re tangling with in estuaries,” he said.
Researchers around Maryland and across the country are working to bridge that knowledge gap.
Research published last month in the journal Nature Communications showed that acidification is already apparent in the bay. The team that measured acidity across the bay, led by the University of Delaware marine science professor Wei-Jun Cai, found a zone of increasing acidity at depths of about 30 to 50 feet across the Chesapeake. While surface waters hover around the pH norm of 8.2, the deeper waters registered almost one point lower — nearly ten times more acidic.
The researchers, who included Cornwell and colleagues from UMCES, believe it’s not only the global effects of carbon dioxide emissions, but also the dead zones of low or no oxygen that have plagued the bay for decades. The zones are created when nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from farms, lawns and sewage fertilize large algae blooms. Microbes strip oxygen from the water to decompose the blooms when they die, and release more carbon dioxide in the process.
The problem is worsened when organic matter is decomposed in water that is already stripped of oxygen — the bacteria use up other compounds in the water that produce an acidic chemical, hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is what makes the muck around the bay smell like rotten eggs.
Cai said the processes suggest that the bay, and other waterways struggling to reduce nutrient loads, are especially vulnerable as the pH of waters around the globe decline.
“You have something we call a synergistic effect, where one plus one gives you something more than two,” he said. “There’s a very strong acidification effect.”
Miller and colleagues at the Smithsonian are exploring the consequences in a meadow of marsh in that looks like so many others around the Chesapeake — except this one is dotted with metal heat lamps and plexiglass chambers that are helping to simulate the environment of the future. They call it the Global Change Research Wetland.
Scientists are conducting experiments to study the effects of increasing carbon dioxide, nutrients and temperature on the growth of sedge grasses and invasive plants, and the ability of the Rhode River marsh to grow upward to match sea level rise.
One study has been running for 30 years. Pat Megonigal, a biogeochemist and lead investigator of the research wetland, says it should be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest-running climate change experiment.
Along the creek that flows into the marsh, researchers from the Smithsonian Institute have built a gateway through which they are measuring the carbon content of water as it flows in and out twice a day with the tides. Some of it is carbon dioxide, but a portion is the compounds carbonate and bicarbonate — elements that may actually help counteract acidification in the estuary.
They hope the data will help explain not only what changes acidification could bring, but also what role natural ecological processes could play in limiting them.
“It tells us something about the influence of the marsh on the chemistry of the water,” Megonigal said. “We think the net effect of water leaving the marsh is to buffer the acidity of the estuary.”
Other researchers are eagerly testing what those changes could mean for the bay’s crabs and oysters.
For her recently completed dissertation, UMCES doctoral candidate Hillary Glandon exposed blue crabs to both warmer and more acidic waters and watched their response. She found that acidification alone didn’t affect them, but when it was coupled with warmer waters, crabs grew faster, molting old shells more frequently, and they also ate more food.
Previous research has already shown that oysters, mussels and similar shellfish could struggle in acidifying waters. They build their shells out of a compound in the water known as calcium carbonate, and scientists have found there will be less of those building blocks available as ocean carbon dioxide levels rise.
So Glandon’s colleagues Cornwell and Jeremy Testa are investigating what that could mean for restoration of the Chesapeake Bay’s oysters. They’re getting input from researchers in Oregon, where acidification has already challenged aquaculture efforts by killing oyster larvae. Though they don’t expect the exact same conditions in the bay, they are watching pH levels closely in places such as Harris Creek, one of three Choptank River tributaries where millions of dollars have been spent on building and seeding new reefs.
Any changes could throw off a complex food web. While crabs could be thriving in warmer and more acidic bay waters in the future, the oysters and mussels they eat could be struggling.
“Crabs don’t exist in a vacuum,” Glandon said. “If food they’re going to be eating is less abundant, there may be negative effects.”
Tom Miller, director of UMCES’ Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, said the stakes demand that more resources be put into measuring and understanding acidification. In the same way state and federal officials have tried to limit pollution to protect crabs, oysters, marshes and underwater grasses, he said, acidification should be getting more attention in bay policy discussions.
“It has the potential to fundamentally change the pattern, the seasonality and the location of fishing in a way that the grandfathers of today’s watermen wouldn’t recognize,” he said. “We should be having those discussions now — not in 20 years or so, when it becomes, I wouldn’t say too late, but when it becomes much more contentious.”
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Could techno-fixes and gene therapies really save the world’s coral?
A team of scientists and reef managers say it's time to consider 'riskier' and unconventional ways to save the world's coral habitats.
As the metaphorical canary in the global warming coalmine goes, the planet’s coral reefs are hard to beat.
Swathes of corals in all tropical basins have been hit by the longest mass bleaching event yet recorded that kicked off in 2014 and ended, at least officially, in June.
Fossil fuel burning is firmly linked to rising ocean temperatures that push the corals into a stress reaction – they expel the special algae that give them their colour and most of their nutrients. It’s not certain death, but it can take five to 10 years for even the fastest growing coral species to fully recover.
On Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one research group found the abnormally hot conditions that caused corals to bleach in 2016 were 175 times more likely under today’s climate than one that hadn’t been loaded with extra carbon dioxide.
In 2016 about 30% of all corals on the reef died. In 2017 James Cook University’s Prof Terry Hughes estimates another 19% died.
And all this as global warming reaches just 1C. What happens to coral reefs at 1.5C of warming – the target set by the United Nations Paris climate agreement? Or higher?
It’s under this stark reality that a group of 18 mainly Australian scientists and reef managers, including those in government agencies, have waded in with a controversial proposal in an article in the science journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Existing conservation approaches, such as improving water quality around reefs and imposing restrictions or bans on fishing, are not working, the article says.
Instead, the scientists argue: “New and potentially riskier interventions must be implemented alongside conventional management efforts and strong action to curb global warming.”
Those interventions include “assisted evolution” – a suite of techniques that have been commonly used in commercial settings (think of selective breeding in plants and livestock as one example) but are now being considered as a way to develop coral species that have better tolerance of the heat extremes that reefs are increasingly facing.
Another idea is known as “assisted gene flow” – and involves essentially moving coral larvae or corals that can cope with higher temperatures into areas where current coral species are dying.
Much further down the track, the authors also suggest developments in synthetic biology where beneficial genes are either created or selected from the same species.
Across all these methods, the authors write there are multiple issues, some ethical and some practical, that need to be much better understood. But the time to start is now.
For example, physically moving coral species could see dangerous pathogens hitching a ride. Or, once in place, transplanted coral could simply die because of a lack of adaptation to local conditions.
How do you select which species to “save” and which ones to discard? With those decisions, also come knock-on effects of the multiple marine species that rely on those coral habitats.
How would the public react to an “artificial reef” or the inevitable claims that scientists are playing God?
It could all get very messy and very costly.
Several leading scientists I’ve spoken to say a key danger in advocating technological fixes is that it could be an excuse to ignore what everyone agrees is the main game – cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possibly.
The lead author of the new article is Dr Ken Anthony, a principal research scientist at the Australian government’s Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Anthony accepted that some in the science community could see the pursuit of unconventional methods as a tacit admission of defeat on the emissions front.
“But we need a philosophy where we don’t just give up,” he told me. “We do need two balls in play. We need to fix climate change and the more we can mitigate carbon, the better the chances that these things will work. It is not an either, or, situation.
“But we agree it’s controversial to talk about this … We have to start looking at the reef in an objective way. How can we protect habitats that protect species?”
James Cook University’s Prof Terry Hughes, a director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and also the convenor of the national coral bleaching taskforce, is deeply skeptical about the viability of many of the proposed techniques.
In particular, whether corals are developed in laboratories or are physically transferred from one location to another, the physical placement of corals on reef structures is “extremely expensive”.
He said: “I actually see this problem we are now facing – with back-to-back bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef killing about half the corals – that this is more a governance problem. What’s broken is not so much the corals – they don’t need fixing – but the legal frameworks, the politics and the institutions.
“We need to find solutions, but I don’t think growing corals is part of that. I think it’s about changing people’s attitudes and behaviours and getting carbon dioxide emissions down by transitioning away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Without that, nothing else really works.”
On this point, AIMS’s Anthony is in agreement. “The better outcome we get in terms of carbon mitigation, the better chance we stand with conventional and these new interventions,” he says. “I can’t imagine having success where you don’t have both. As I said, you have to have two balls in play and if you drop either of them, then it could be game over.”
Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, thought it was “responsible and necessary” to have open discussions about alternative strategies.
“Corals and coral reefs are now at a critical juncture,” he told me by email. “Conventional conservation measures alone are no longer enough. We need to be looking at all of the tools in our toolboxes.”
But critically, Eakin added: “The biggest danger of moving in this direction is the potential that some will see this as being a way to engineer our way out of the problem — using it as an excuse to not act on the rising CO2 that is the ultimate cause of the problem.”
Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a leading marine biologist and director of the University of Queensland’s global change institute, is a pioneer in coral bleaching research.
He told me there was a “movement sweeping the coral research community” in response to the massive and unprecedented bleaching at reefs around the world.
“The pace of environmental change is outstripping the natural ability of corals to keep up, and people are now operating under the terms that everything should be on the table. That’s reasonable.”
But he said each time the media reported on new technological fixes, there was a ripple effect among politicians looking for a way out.
“A solution might look good on paper and yes, you can grow heat-resistant corals in a lab, but nobody wants to talk about the economics. Once you scale these things up, they can become very expensive.”
One study looking at marine restoration projects found coral reefs were the most expensive to restore, with costs as high as $1.8m per hectare (the entire Great Barrier Reef covers about 35m hectares).
Hoegh-Guldberg offered up a “back of the envelope” calculation on costs.
The Great Barrier Reef is 40,000 sq km. If you were to grow a coral in a lab and transplant it every five metres at $5 each time, then this gives a cost of about $40bn, “and that’s just for one single species,” he says. Scale this up globally, and he says you easily get to costs in the trillions of dollars.
“We are in a desperate situation and we need to try all sorts of things because you don’t know what might work,” he says.
“But on the other hand, you can get distracted from the main game. The only economic way to deal with this issue is to reduce emissions and take up renewable energies at a furious rate,” he says.
“Clearly we have to think outside the box, but let’s not pretend the core issue is not reducing emissions. For coral reefs, it’s really the Paris agreement and 1.5C … or bust.”
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For the success of coral restoration, a matter of scale.
Restoring depleted reefs with nursery-grown coral is a captivating idea, but how do its goals measure up?
VARIABLES/News & Features
For the Success of Coral Restoration, a Matter of Scale
Restoring depleted reefs with nursery-grown coral is a captivating idea, but how do its goals measure up?
09.19.2017 / BY Haniya Rae
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THIS PAST JUNE, SCIENTISTS declared that a third massive global bleaching event, in which large sections of the Great Barrier Reef were damaged, finally seemed to be easing. Despite the relative calm, however, there’s much debate about how to protect these underwater creatures before the next round of bleaching occurs.
News stories over the past few years have highlighted restoration efforts — where coral is grown in a nursery and planted back onto coral skeletons — as “life-saving.” But they often fail to note that these projects are relatively small in scale, leading some critics to argue that the time and resources put towards them would be better spent on improving policy.
Joshua Cinner, a reef expert at James Cook University in Australia, is one such critic who thinks the presentation of coral restoration is lopsided.
“I agree that restoration is better than doing nothing, but your options aren’t doing nothing or doing restoration,” Cinner said. “The millions of dollars spent on restoration could be spent improving water quality, managing fisheries, and reducing impacts of tourists. If well done, these all can have tangible impacts on improving coral reefs.”
Corals get their color from the symbiotic algae that lives within them. As ocean temperatures rise, however, corals become stressed and expel the algae, leaving them white and without a source of nutrients. Bleached coral can recover, but only if temperatures quickly return to normal and other threats like pollution are kept at bay. Climate models suggest that our current rate of greenhouse gas emissions will lead to annual bleaching events by 2050.
Coral reefs cover less than 1 percent of the ocean floor, but they provide habitat for a quarter of all marine species. With one estimate putting their global economic value at nearly $30 billion a year, coral reef decline has consequences for hundreds of millions of people who depend on them for fishing, tourism, and coastal protection. Indeed, in assessing the damage Hurricane Irma caused in Florida this month, scientists said the degradation of reefs across the Caribbean and Florida weakened their ability to act as a buffer and led to worse flooding than otherwise would have occurred.
Given all this, restoring coral via a nursery is a captivating idea. If corals can be healthily grown in large numbers to replant nearby reefs, we can buy “a little time,” as Christopher Page a biologist with Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, told The Times a few years ago. Page even suggested that using nursery-grown coral, “may be our last, best chance,” for saving coral in the Florida Keys.
But buying time is just that. As Cinner stresses, re-growing coral doesn’t address the actual causes of reef decline, “such as overfishing, climate change, and pollution.”
He pointed to a 2013 study he co-authored in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment that tracked reef regrowth in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii after diverting a sewage outfall that was leading directly into the bay. Improving water quality helped reverse an unwanted phase shift, or a transition to a different suite of organisms within the reef structure — this case, one that would reduce the likelihood that coral could survive in large enough quantities.
Nurseries like Mote’s require that the ocean water be relatively stable and devoid of toxins for coral growth. They’re also expensive to set up and maintain. Cinner’s colleague, Terry Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, calculated that one square meter of coral gardening costs $200 to $500.
That’s not to say restoration isn’t feasible on some level. A recent Mote fact sheet states a goal of restoring 1,000 acres, or 1.5 square miles, of reef in the Florida Keys within the next 10 years. The entire Florida Reef tract, however, is 600 square miles.
The Great Barrier Reef — the world’s largest — is over 200 times that size. And according to Hughes, it would cost trillions of dollars to restore the nearly 1,000-mile stretch of coral lost there.
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But coral restoration efforts aren’t really aiming for success on that scale, said Rebecca Albright, assistant curator of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology at the California Academy of Sciences. “Most programs that are successful are the scale of a hectare. Meanwhile, global destruction is thousands of hectares — reef restoration is not going to recover global destruction.”
Albright, who does work to conserve reefs in many countries, sees restoration as trying to keep certain reef ecosystems alive while national and international policy toward warming oceans is dysfunctional, at best.
“In a perfect scenario, if we could address the underlying causes,” of climate change through policy, Albright said, “then yes, that’s the answer. But we can’t seem to change the political mindset. I’d be skeptical of funneling reef restoration money to political change. It hasn’t happened before, so why would it suddenly happen now?”
With the looming threat of another round of bleaching, nursey grown coral may even have some benefit besides simply replacing what’s been lost. Andrew Ross, a marine biologist and founder of Seascape Caribbean, a for-profit coral restoration company with clients like Round Hill Hotel in Jamaica, said he’s seen the staghorn species he’s propagating come back hardier after being grown in a nursery. A study published in September in Coral Reefs points to genetic variability and differences in plasticity for nursery-raised Staghorn corals.
“When you put [corals] into a nursery, you get these beautiful branching rates,” Ross said. As the coral growth accelerates, “you see a lot of spawning,” he said. “They’re shooting up babies once a year.”
Nurseries like Seascape Caribbean’s are generally located at more shallow depths than the reef itself, allowing researchers and restorers more control over the health of the animals. They also might serve as a way to salvage the genetics within a particular area of a reef. But that doesn’t mean these corals can necessarily return to their original reef location — just that they thrive where the scientists can monitor their health.
Ultimately, there likely isn’t a single correct approach. In terms of how the issue is characterized in the media, Albright believes coverage has highlighted both sides of the debate — though it might be giving readers too positive of an impression.
“We need to recognize that realistically — that this is one of many things that is being explored [to] buy us some time,” while we change the root causes of the destruction.
Steve Palumbi, a professor of marine sciences at Stanford University, takes a similar view.
“There are times and places where some judicious help can goose along the natural system and help it recover,” he said.
Palumbi recently completed work with a team of researchers at the northern atoll of Kayangel in Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific, where they showed the community there how to plant coral fragments. Typhoons had damaged large areas of the lagoon, but other conditions such as clean water and low algal cover made it possible for the researchers to plant fragments.
“Re-growing corals won’t work in areas in which the basic reason they died off in the first place has not been fixed,” Palumbi said. As he put it, there’s “no point in trying to put a vegetable garden on a landfill.” But if temperatures continue to climb, no part of the ocean will be amenable to nurseries and replanting.
“Overall, corals will have a very hard time surviving after the next century unless we solve the carbon emission problem, something no number of coral fragments can accomplish,” Palumbi said.
Haniya Rae is a journalist for Consumer Reports and frequently writes for publications including The Atlantic, Popular Science, and Sierra Magazine. She currently cares for her own coral fragments in Brooklyn, New York.
coral reef, coral restoration, great barrier reef, Joshua Cinner, Mote Marine Laboratory
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2 COMMENTS / JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Craig Quirolo
09.20.2017 @11:03 AM
https://www.reefreliefarchive.org/cgi-bin/archive/index.cgi?direct=09_Western_Sambo_coral_nursery
Coral Nursery Project conclusion
In Conclusion to ‘coral nurseries placed nearby coral reefs’. The water passing over the nursery must be clean, clear and nutrient free in order to produce healthy coral. Storm and hurricane events severely damage coral reefs and nurseries. The percentage of storm damaged coral loss in a nursery is approximately the same percentage of loss that occurs on the nearby reef. This is true for coral disease outbreaks as well, the percentage of corals infected by disease in a nursery is approximately the same as on the nearby reef. Coral nurseries are great tools for gauging the health of coral reefs but as far as saving a reef put your money in cleaning up air, land and water pollution.
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Joe
09.20.2017 @5:39 AM
Interesting that Cinner is taking credit for a 1980’s study conducted by Steven Smith. I guess that is the way it is these days…
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Master plan to protect sea.
A master plan on the use of Vietnam’s sea is being built by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, a necessary move according to experts.
Master plan to protect sea
A master plan on the use of Vietnam’s sea is being built by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, a necessary move according to experts.
Fisherwomen in the central province of Thanh Hoa unfurl their fishing nets in the early morning on Sam Son Beach.
The plan will map out sea-based socio-economic activities until 2035 in line with integrated management of sea and island resources and environment.
It focuses on marine environment and resources, the value of marine ecosystems and appropriate exploitation of the sea.
The plan is being built in accordance with the Vietnam Law on Sea and the Law on Vietnam’s Sea and Island Natural Resources and Environment.
It will cover all sea areas of Vietnam, including internal waters, the territorial sea, contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf of Vietnam, including Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spartly) archipelagos, as defined in the Vietnam Law on Sea and in line with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The plan sets out three main groups of criteria for zoning off sea areas.
The first group targets the conservation of coastal ecosystems, including mangrove forests, coral reefs, wetlands, estuaries and bays, along with marine protected areas, bio reserves and national parks.
The second focuses on economic development, evaluating advantages in terms of natural conditions, resources and position for developing sea-based economies including port services, waterways, tourism, fishing, aquaculture, energy development, and seashore industries.
The third group looks at national defence and security in strategic locations and the needs to protect sovereignty and security at sea.
Under the plan, Vietnam’s sea comprises six zones, namely a zone for special use, a coastal zone focused on conservation and an integrated economy, a coastal zone for the integrated economy in tandem with preservation, an oil and gas exploitation zone, a fishing zone and a zone for other purposes.
Each zone will be defined and categorised with activities allowed, disallowed or restricted to reduce contradictions in using marine resources, contributing to protecting the environment and creating legal grounds for departments, branches and sectors of coastal localities to base their plans on.
Conflict reduction
According to Deputy Head of the Vietnam Administration of Seas and Islands, Pham Ngoc Son, Vietnam can develop sea-based economy, with its more than 3,260km coast, an exclusive economic zone of about one million sq.km and diversified maritime resources.
Building the master plan is urgent to protect Vietnam’s sea areas and islands on the basis of harmonising economic benefits, environmental protection, ensuring security and national defence, and reducing conflicts between sectors using the seas.
Many plans relating to the management and use of seas have been built but there is no master plan to regulate all sectors and areas that use maritime resources in tandem with overall Party and State planning.
Son said the intense exploitation of maritime resources from various sectors was not in line with the ecological function of sea areas, leading to a clash between economic development and sea preservation. This could reduce maritime resources and biological diversification, and cause environmental pollution, he added.
Natural disasters and climate change also threatened the sustainable and effective use of the sea.
Head of the Department of Sea and Island Exploitation Management Nguyen Duc Toan said integrated marine use planning was a new tool for sea management. The master plan on sea use would be built by analysing natural conditions, marine environment and ecosystems, and sea exploitation, use and management.
It would be based on a regional and international context as well as international experience in sea use planning.
To make the plan, Toan suggested some tasks, including reviewing development plans of sea-based economies and socio-economic development plans of coastal provinces and cities.
Focus should also be put on completing co-ordination mechanisms between ministries and agencies in granting licences, supervising and punishing violations in using and protecting maritime resources, setting up a national system to manage sea environment incidents and reviewing related policies and regulations.
It would also be essential to build mechanisms and policies to encourage investment in developing infrastructure and exploiting the seas, he said.
VNS
Master plan to protect sea, Vietnam environment, climate change in Vietnam, Vietnam weather, Vietnam climate, pollution in Vietnam, environmental news, sci-tech news, vietnamnet bridge, english news, Vietnam news, news Vietnam, vietnamnet news, Vietnam ne
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