CURTAILING CORAL CALAMITY

I have mentioned corals before, in relation to the threats to them from global warming and climate change, but it is time for an update. Because we work almost entirely on land, it is easy to forget the largest planetary ecosystem on Earth that keeps us all alive but which we treat so badly. One of the “laws” of ecology is that everything is connected to everything else: adverse impacts in one place have severe consequences elsewhere, so severe that they can endanger all life on earth if, like climate change and abuse of our seas and tropical forests, they are wanton and widespread. 

It is good news, then, that nature conservation scientists in Australia are setting up what they call a “living biobank” of species of coral, a coral zoo if you like. This will be able to provide coral propagules for future reef recovery projects should that become necessary. We hope it won’t be required, but we have to recognise that corals are already displaying significant signs of stress, such as the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The biobank is an insurance and should eventually be able to keep stocks of 800 coral species, in aquarium tanks at first and then in larger bespoke habitation.

We think of corals as tropical but there are cold water coral reefs, some even around the UK, in Scotland. These reefs are built by one species of coral Lophelia pertusa (depicted in the illustration). The cold water reefs have been recognised as a threatened habitat. Even in our waters off Scotland, they are liable to damage, mostly from commercial trawler fishing, the laying of pipelines & cables, and seabed mining & resource exploration. Like their tropical counterparts, they are important biodiversity habitats on the seabed as fish refuges and nurseries as well as forming species-rich communities for other marine invertebrates. What folly to damage them!

Betts Ecology don’t have any marine sites, although we do survey coastal habitats from time to time and, from our French research location I have had some involvement with the famous red coral Corallium rubrum of the Jacques Cousteau reserve off Monaco. We very much hope to be able to have open space to manage that includes a littoral marine ecological community day …

 © Betts Ecology