Read Dr. Andy Bruckner's Daily Updates archive to get a sense of how this exciting expedition unfolded! Most of us have read about the coral reef crisis and have heard about the factors that have contributed to the degradation of reefs – most often overfishing, pollution, sedimentation have been cited as the causes, and more recently climate change. There is good evidence, at least on a local scale in areas close to large human populations, that excessive of these types of anthropogenic impacts are the root cause of the death of the reef. There is a lot of disagreement, though, on the specific factors and it is often hard to attribute the cause to one broad scale (general) impact like overfishing. For instance, many Caribbean reefs have undergone what is often referred to as a phase shift, which is a shift from highly productive coral dominated systems to hardground areas inundated with fleshy macroalgae like Lopophora, Dictyota, Turbinaria and other types of seaweed. |
Foliose Montipora colony in turbid water |
In some locations, this has been attributed to a mass die-off of a critical herbivore, the long spined black sea urchin also known as Diadema. This is evident in locations that were overfished prior to the die-off, especially when few key herbivorous fish (fish that eat algae and plants), such as the surgeonfish and parrotfish, remained. |
