MESOPHOTIC CORAL ECOSYSTEMS

Lifeboats for coral reefs?

By GRID-Arendal

May 25^th, 2016

By Peter Harris, Managing Director at GRID-Arendal.

There has been a lot of bad news in the last weeks about coral reefs. We have heard that 93% of reefs in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have bleached as a result of the current El Nino, which climate scientists all agree has been exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. So people are looking for some glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape. I think our report on mesophotic coral reefs has provided just such a glimmer.

The report was launched today during a side event at UNEA-2 on coral reefs, with a panel of Ministers from several coral reef nations. The audience was presented with the sobering facts of the current reef-bleaching situation by coral reef expert Dr. Ruth Gates from Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology; Ruth is the current President of the International Coral Reef Society. The various Ministers told the stories of reef management from their own countries, with the speaker from Indonesia noting that, in spite of the multi-billion dollar value of reefs to their economy and the thousands of jobs provided, 75% of that countries reefs are in poor to very poor condition.

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But there is hope for the future of reefs.

Norwegian Ambassador Victor Ronneberg noted the existence of mesophotic reefs that could provide “lifeboats” to replenish the corals on damaged surface reefs. He also explained that Norway had its own cold-water corals growing at great depths. Minister Tebao Awerika from Kiribati also noted that reefs in his country are in better condition than many other places, protected within large Marine Protected Areas.

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Many people are unsure about the meaning of “mesophotic” reefs. “What does that mean?” they asked. We explained that these are the reefs you can’t see from a plane or in satellite pictures, because they live below the surface. The moderator of the event, UNEP’s Jerker Tamelander, explained that these are relatively new ecosystems that we know very little about. Maybe our report will make things a bit clearer for the Ministers attending. I asked them if they knew about such “mesophotic” reefs in their countries and if they were given adequate protection. Lets hope that, sooner rather than later, the answer to both questions will be “YES!”.