- Alright, welcome everybody!
We are very pleased that you are joining us today for our
national marine sanctuaries webinar series.
This is a series for distance learning that is hosted by the
NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
And we find that it's a great way for us to connect with formal and informal educators,
students, and even families and other interested people.
And it provides you an educational and scientific experience
using some of our experts within NOAA and our partners.
And we often provide resources and training to help support ocean and climate literacy.
So, I wanted to let everybody know
that today during the presentation all attendees will be in listen-only mode.
We have over 600 registrants for today's webinar, which is very exciting.
And we have representatives from many, many countries across the globe.
As an attendee, if you have any questions or any technical difficulties,
you can enter them into the question box in the GoToWebinar control panel.
So, whether it's a question or a technical issue,
goes into that same spot – the question box.
We will have a Q&A at the end of today's webinar,
and there'll be an opportunity to either type in your question
or to use the raise hand feature in the control panel to let us know you'd like to verbally ask your question.
So, I wanted to let you know that we're recording today's session, as we always do.
We will share the recording with all registered participants.
We have an archive page where all of our great National Marine Sanctuary webinar presentations are archived.
That will come to you over email.
It'll also be listed at the end of our presentation.
So with that, I wanted to give a brief introduction to the National Marine Sanctuary system.
So these are your underwater parks.
These are special ocean areas that are set aside by Congress,
and each of those blue dots on this map represent one of these national marine sanctuaries.
We manage a network of 15 marine protected areas,
including two marine national monuments.
And this is over 600,000 square miles of ocean and Great Lakes.
And it's important to note that national marine sanctuaries and marine national monuments
help protect the ocean and Great Lakes.
And these areas are set aside by Congress for a wide variety of reasons.
It could be that there's a very strong ecological or intrinsic value to these marine protected areas.
It could be the maritime archaeology or cultural resources for other purposes as well.
And we like to call these places our living classrooms.
This is where people like yourselves, if you're in the United States,
can learn, touch, feel, experience these underwater parks.
And so with that, I'd like to introduce myself and my co-host.
I am Claire Fackler.
I am the National Education Liaison with NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
My co-host today is Jacqueline Laverdure.
She's the education coordinator at our Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
I'd like to now introduce you to our special presenter today.
We have Dr. Katie Lohr.
She actually has now a new title since we created this webinar event together.
She is the science and heritage coordinator at our NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
in Silver Spring Maryland, our headquarters.
She previously worked in that same office as a 2019 Knauss marine policy fellow.
She earned her Ph.D. in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences at the University of Florida in 2018,
and her studies focused on strategies for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness
of Acroporid coral restoration, which you're gonna learn about today.
Prior to completing her Ph.D.,
Katie spent several years working on coral reef conservation and restoration projects
at the Central Caribbean Marine Institute in Little Cayman, Cayman Islands.
She previously earned a master's in marine biology and of fisheries at the University of Miami,
and a bachelor's in biology from the University of Michigan.
So with that, we're gonna go ahead and change her to our presenter
and let her go ahead and give her presentation.
- Alright.
Well thank you so much, Claire, for the introduction,
and thanks to everyone online for being here today.
I really appreciate it.
And I'm really excited to talk to everyone today about a topic I'm really passionate about,
which is coral reef restoration.
And I'm gonna start us off with a little bit of background about coral reef ecosystems.
So, coral reefs.
One of the most important things they do is they provide habitat.
So you can see in this photo, we have two pretty large Elkhorn coral colonies,
and they're creating this space and shelter for a variety of fish species.
And that includes commercially important fish species, like lobsters and snappers.
And even though coral reefs only occupy a really small area,
so about 0.1% of our oceans,
they actually are home to about 25% of the known marine species in the world,
so they're really important biodiversity hotspots.
Coral reefs also have direct benefits to humans,
and one of the most important ones is shoreline protection.
If we take a look at this diagram,
up top we have a healthy coral reef.
You can see it's got a lot of different species on it,
and it has this really big structure.
And as the waves pass over that structure,
the coral reef actually reduces that wave energy,
so it results in smaller and less strong waves hitting the coastline.
If we look at the bottom panel,
you see a degraded coral reef.
So it doesn't have as much complexity.
It doesn't have as much structure,
and that results in bigger stronger waves hitting the coastline.
And that can result in problems like erosion, more storm surge, and flooding.
So these coral reefs provide really natural protective barriers to our coastal communities.
They're also an important source of food and income.
One estimate suggests there's about a billion people that in some way
rely on coral reefs for one of these two things.
Coral reefs are also great places for recreation,
so things like scuba diving, snorkeling, and recreational fishing.
And that also provides an economic benefit
of about thirty-six billion dollars per year for coral reefs worldwide.
And last, but not least, and this is something that people don't always talk about,
but species from coral reefs produce bioactive compounds,
and some of those have been isolated and actually been used to create medicines.
So, things like anti-cancer drugs, antiviral drugs,
and there's a lot more out there that we haven't started to research yet
so they're really valuable to humans for a lot of reasons.
And now I'm gonna talk about corals,
which are the foundation of these coral reefs.
But before we get into it,
I want you to take a look at this picture of a star coral.
And we have a poll that I'd like you to take a look at.
I think Jacqueline will introduce that for us.
- Okay, so we just launched the poll,
and the poll is what are corals?
The choices are plant, animal, mineral, or all of the above.
- It's a tricky question.
- The question is what are corals.
So is it a plant, an animal, mineral, or all of the above?
And we've got some answers coming in.
You got 57% who have voted.
Looks like they're torn between animal or all of the above.
We'll give another moment.
We have 60% in.
Five more seconds.
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll.
And here we go, it looks like
Share that.
It looks like we had one percent said a plant,
51% said animal, and 48% all of the above.
- Okay.
Alright, good answers and to some extent everyone is right,
but corals themselves are animals,
So, this is a close-up.
If you take a look back at this boulder,
you'll see these little circles all over the top of the colony.
And those are individual coral polyps that make up this coral colony.
And this is one of the polyps.
You can see it looks sort of like a sea anemone.
So corals are an animal that are closely related to some things like sea anemones.
And if you look at this sped-up video,
you can see that, yes, they're alive.
They move,
and like other animals they fight with each other, they catch prey from the water column.
And in this video, this was something that was discovered maybe five or six years ago,
it looks like they're hugging each other, those two polyps,
but they're actually sharing food, which is a pretty cool discovery.
But, let's take another look at a different view of a coral polyp.
So this is the top, this is the part we see,
and then here's a cross-section of the bottom of the polyp,
so the part that we don't see when we're looking at the colony.
And don't worry about the words there,
but what I want you to pay attention to is that as this coral polyp is growing,
its depositing a compound called calcium carbonate.
So, that's the same compound that makes up limestone and chalk.
And as the coral gets bigger,
it lays down more and more layers of this calcium carbonate,
and that results in the big structures that we see today.
So, this coral colony has layers of calcium carbonate underneath it
that have been built up over hundreds or maybe even thousands of years.
And only the surface that we're looking at, the surface polyps,
that's the part that's living,
So it does have that mineral skeleton that creates the structure.
And part of what facilitates that is a symbiotic relationship
between the coral animal and a type of algae that lives inside its tissue,
so there's your plant element.
So, here you see in that magnified image,
those are tiny algae known as zooxanthellae.
So they live inside the coral's tissues,
and they get shelter by living inside the coral's tissue,
so they get a benefit.
And in turn, through photosynthesis, that zooxanthellae
can turn sunlight and carbon dioxide from the environment into sugar.
And that sugar that the algae produce gives the coral up to 90% of its nutrition,
so that's a really important benefit.
The algae also gives the coral its color,
so when you think about the vibrant colors you see on a coral reef,
that's where those colors are coming from, this tiny algae.
I'm gonna focus specifically on a subset of corals called Acroporid corals.
And that just means any coral species from the genus Acropora.
And Acropora is actually the most common genus of coral worldwide.
There's about 180 species.
But, in Florida and the Caribbean, where most of my work has been,
we got kind of the short end of the stick because we only have two of those species,
and those are the two you see here:
the Staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis, and the Elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata.
Even though we only have two of those Acroporids,
they are historically really important on reefs.
They were spatial dominance,
so kind of the main species you would expect to see when you'd go diving or snorkeling on a reef.
And they have a fast growth rate.
So if we think back to that Boulder Star coral we saw earlier,
corals like that might only grow one centimeter in diameter per year.
In comparison, these branching corals,
each one of those branches can grow about 10 to 20 centimeters every year.
So they're really important for building up
the amount of that calcium carbonate structure on reefs.
They also have this complex growth form.
You can see those branching shapes form crevices and add to the roughness on the reef
that helps to slow things like wave energy and also create more habitat.
And if you look at this photo from 1975,
this is Carysfort Reef, a reef in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
And you can get an idea of what I mean when I say spatial dominance, right.
There's pretty much nothing but Elkhorn coral as far as you can see.
And the same was true for Staghorn coral.
This is an example from Jamaica, also from 1975.
And even though the photo's in black and white,
you can see pretty much nothing but staghorn coral on this reef.
And then as the Staghorn coral grows,
it forms these communities called thickets,
so pretty much you can't tell where one colony ends and the next begins.
And those interlocking branches are really important for forming habitat.
Unfortunately, if we take a look at the same reefs today,
you'll see that we've lost about 97% of both of these species throughout their range.
That's true for both Elkhorn coral and Staghorn coral.
And the primary driver of the loss of these two species
in Florida and the Caribbean is a disease.
Some people called it white band disease,
but that's the image you see here.
It started in the early 1980s and really contributed to the decline of both species,
but so did other factors,
so things like poor water quality, overfishing, and also global climate change.
So, we talked about how the algae that live inside the coral's tissues gives it its color.
When waters get too warm, as they have been doing more and more often via climate change,
the symbiotic relationship between the coral and the algae breaks down.
And that results in the algae being ejected from the coral polyp
in what's known as coral bleaching.
So it gets that name because without the algae,
the corals appear stark white.
And a bleached coral isn't dead,
so the coral's able to feed on zooplankton from the ocean and be able to survive,
but it might be compromised in terms of being able to resist disease.
And they typically don't reproduce as well.
And if the elevated temperature is prolonged,
it can lead to widespread mortality.
So you may have heard about the massive bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef two years ago.
Unfortunately, the Great Barrier Reef is right now going through its third mass bleaching event in five years,
so that happens globally to coral reefs,
and it's an increasingly, it's increasingly a problem.
So, in response to the decline of Elkhorn and Staghorn coral,
but also other species, a process known as coral restoration was developed,
and this is a strategy that we use to generate new coral colonies
and be able to take them and replace them on degraded reefs where they've been lost.
And I'll talk about a couple of the ways that we do that in a moment,
but I do want to emphasize that this is just one of many tools
that we have to combat the decline of coral, the decline of corals globally.
So it's not a magic process,
and it's not going to erase the issues we have like climate change, like disease,
but it does allow us to maintain healthy populations of some of these critically threatened species
while we have time to learn more about those threats and start to address them.
So, there's sort of two general methods that we can use to create new corals for restoration,
and both of them rely on natural coral reproductive processes.
So the first method I'm gonna talk about is asexual reproduction or fragmentation.
And this is something that's commonly, a strategy that's commonly used in Staghorn coral,
like the one you see here.
So if we take a look at this Staghorn coral,
imagine it's on a reef and a hurricane or a rough storm comes by and the water's churning up,
and one of the branches is broken off of that coral.
What can happen, if that fragment falls into the right crevice
or is captured by branches of other corals, and is stabilized well enough,
it can actually grow new polyps down onto the reef and grow into a brand new, healthy colony.
So it's as simple as that.
Because this is an asexual process,
the new coral that grows from that fragment is genetically identical to the colony it came from.
So, to generate corals for restoration,
we pretty much follow those exact same steps
but just with human intervention at every step of the way.
So a restoration practitioner will find a healthy coral on a reef
and clip a portion of a branch off and cut those into smaller fragments
that are established in what's known as a coral nursery.
And I have a cool resource to show you guys.
The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries has a really great VR library you can pull up,
and one of those is a virtual dive in a coral nursery.
So this is in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary,
and here you can see Staghorn corals growing in that nursery.
So a nursery is a place, typically, most of the nurseries we think of are in the ocean,
so ocean-based nurseries,
but some might be on land.
This one's ocean-based as you can tell.
And it's human-made structures that we can attach corals to,
and structures like the tree nursery you see here allow the coral to grow in all dimensions.
And with that fast growth rate, they can get very large quite quickly.
And at that point, they can be fragmented all over again to create even more corals.
And that's what these divers at the bottom here might be doing.
And that also creates a self-sustaining stock of corals in the nursery,
so practitioners don't have to go and keep taking additional branches from the wild population.
Once they're in the nursery they can be used there.
Go back to the presentation.
The ultimate goal of this process is to outplant the nursery-grown corals back to the reefs.
So the diver here is doing that with a marine epoxy,
so it's sort of like a putty that can be used to adhere the coral to the reef,
and eventually, the coral will grow down over the epoxy and cement to the reef naturally.
And those corals can grow large and begin to provide those services like creating habitat.
And eventually, the hope is that once a population of restored corals is established,
they can begin to reproduce naturally to contribute toward recovery of the species.
The other method corals can use to reproduce is sexual reproduction or spawning.
There's a few different sexual reproduction methods corals use
but I'll focus on Elkhorn and Staghorn coral again and the process they use.
So in this diagram on the bottom left,
there you can see are fragment propagules,
so there's your example of the asexual process,
but the rest of this cycle focuses on broadcast spawning.
So both Elkhorn and staghorn corals are hermaphrodites.
That means they release both male and female gametes,
and they do this once per year.
They release egg and sperm bundles,
which gently float up to the surface and then break apart.
And typically what happens is that the corals know when to spawn
based on the lunar cycle, water temperature, day length.
So all of the corals in an area typically know to release their gametes right around the same time.
So those egg and sperm bundles break up at the surface,
and the eggs will be fertilized by the sperm from another colony.
That will grow, that fertilized egg will grow into an embryo
and then into a pelagic planula or free-swimming larva.
So, the planula stage is the only time in a coral's life
when it can actually freely swim through the water.
And what the planulae do is they look for the right spot on a reef,
and then they go and attach themselves to that spot
and turn into a single polyp, that primary polyp.
The one polyp grows into a few polyps, then many polyps,
finally into a juvenile coral and then an adult coral
And we can use this process for restoration as well.
So here's an example of Elkhorn coral spawning.
Some people describe it as an upside-down underwater snowstorm,
and you can see why with those bundles slowly floating to the surface.
What practitioners can do is use these conical nets,
and then as the coral spawns, those bundles will gently float up and into collection cups.
Those can be brought to the surface
and then mixed with bundles from other colonies.
And ultimately, the eggs will get fertilized and make it to that primary polyp stage.
These, these planulae are typically settled in a lab setting or an aquarium,
and then ultimately, they will grow into juvenile and adult corals.
And it's the same end goal, right,
we want to create more corals that can be put back out onto the reef.
This, using this method has a couple advantages.
The first is that a single spawning event can provide
maybe hundreds or thousands of new corals.
And it also adds to genetic diversity,
since these are, since through sexual reproduction you get brand new genetic individuals,
whereas with the asexual process, you're creating the same genetic individual over and over again.
So now I'm gonna jump to,
now that we have a background in the restoration process,
I'm gonna talk about a few current topics in coral restoration.
The first couple topics, cryopreservation and assisted gene flow, as well as coral rescue,
are not projects I've led,
but I've been lucky enough to assist with these in some capacity.
And I think this group will really find those interesting.
The third topic, restoration site selection,
will focus on the study I conducted during my time at University of Flordia.
And then last we'll end on Mission: Iconic Reefs,
which is a really exciting new plan to restore reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Okay, so let's talk first about coral cryopreservation
and how it can help us create corals for use in restoration.
So we discussed the pros of generating new corals through sexual reproduction,
but there are some cons.
And one of them is that something called asynchronous spawning can happen.
So typically, all of the colonies in the same area get the same cues from the environment
and they know to spawn at once,
but sometimes that doesn't happen exactly on schedule.
So let's say we're working on a reef with two Elkhorn colonies.
Colony A spawns on Saturday,
and Colony B doesn't spawn till Sunday
but you want to create new baby corals from those two colonies.
Because the gametes are typically only active for a few hours,
if they spawn in different days we won't be able to make those baby corals.
So this is where cryopreservation can help.
Cryopreservation is a method for preserving living cells by freezing them at very, very low temperatures,
and Dr. Mary Hagedorn who's pictured on the left there,
and her team at the Smithsonian Institution have really pioneered
cryopreservation method, methods for coral sperm as well as coral larvae.
So now using those methods,
what we can do is cryo-, cryopreserve coral sperm that's released on Saturday
and then spawn that sperm Sunday and use it to fertilize those eggs from Colony B on Sunday.
So it gives us a little bit of a leg up when trying to create these colonies.
And that's an image of what cryopreserved-sperm look like after they're, after they're thawed,
and what's really cool, you'll see in a minute,
these sperm can be cryopreserved for years and still be thawed like this and be viable.
So recently, Dr. Hagedorn led a, led a study
to look at application of cryopreservation in assisted gene flow.
So assisted gene flow is the human-assisted movement of individuals or gametes between geographic regions
to introduce new genes that could aid in long-term survival for a given coral species.
So corals, as we talked about,
corals are currently under threat from rapidly warming oceans.
And so you and me, if our environment got too warm, let's say we're down in Florida,
we can move further north, right, where it's a little cooler.
Corals can't do that because once they settle as a planula,
they're stuck in the same spot for their whole lives.
And they also can't adapt fast enough
to keep up with the rapid rate of warming that we're seeing in our oceans,
so they're really threatened.
Using assisted gene flow, scientists can breed corals from different regions
to potentially introduce genes from, let's say Curacao to Florida,
that could improve the ability of corals to survive those warm waters.
So the first test of assisted gene flow in Elkhorn corals happened in 2018,
and the team did just that.
So, Elkhorn coral sperm was collected and cryopreserved in Florida in 2016,
and the same was done in Puerto Rico in 2008.
And then that sperm was brought to Curacao in 2018
where it was used to fertilize eggs from Curacao Elkhorn coral
to determine whether successful fertilization would occur.
And if we take a look at this graph,
you'll see that although reproductive success was not as high
as it was for Curacao sperm crossed with Curacao eggs,
those are the middle two columns, those higher ones.
On the right, you'll see Florida and Puerto Rico sperm crossed with Curacao eggs,
and you'll see that there was successful reproduction for the very first time.
And then this is the results,
so this is pretty exciting.
On the left, you see six-week-old baby Elkhorn coral colonies
with moms from Curacao and dads from Florida,
and on the right, it's the same but with moms from Curacao and dads from Puerto Rico.
So a lot more research is needed to learn more about this study
and understand if these babies actually can stand up to those warm temperatures
a bit better then their parents can,
but what we found in this is a potential new tool in the box to aid in making new corals for restoration
that could potentially be able to better survive these conditions.
And now I'm gonna change gears a bit
to highlight another project that is currently underway to help corals survive a different threat.
So I previously discussed the threat of disease,
and I talked about that disease that affects Staghorn and Elkhorn corals,
that's sometimes known as white band disease.
Well in 2014, a different brand new disease popped up off of Florida,
and it's called stony coral tissue loss disease.
This disease affects nearly half of all Florida and Caribbean coral species,
and as you can see in this photo, it can result in really rapid mortality.
So, in just about a month of, since the disease started affecting this colony,
60% of the colony would, unfortunately died.
So to help protect Florida's remaining corals from this disease,
NOAA, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, the National Park Service,
and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums have teamed up to develop a coral rescue strategy.
And I actually got to participate in one of these cruises as a Knauss fellow last year.
As stony coral tissue loss is slowly sweeping south along the Florida reef track,
so it started near Miami, and it's slowly making its way south through the Florida Keys.
What the coral rescue team is doing is they're collecting
the diseased susceptible species from reefs that haven't yet been affected by the disease.
And those are being brought into academic and AZA facilities for safekeeping.
And that creates a living genetic archive of these disease susceptible species.
So in the future once we learn more about this disease and figure out how we can combat it,
these rescued corals can be used to create new baby corals that can help us with restoration.
And some really exciting news just came out yesterday related to this project.
Some of my former colleagues at the Florida Aquarium,
just observed for the very first time, they got one of these susceptible species
that was actually rescued as part of this project, it's called the Ridge Cactus coral,
and they were able to reproduce it successfully in captivity for the very first time.
So, that is a very good sign for the project.
This is a screenshot of a dashboard of information for the coral rescue project.
I added a link in the notes for this presentation,
but you can also pull it up from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's website.
This shows you how many corals have been to date,
what species, where they come from.
But one of the coolest things is on the bottom left
where you see current housing facility.
So you might think these corals are being rescued only in Florida,
so they're probably being kept in Florida,
but one of the great things about the partnership with AZA is that these rescued corals are being kept
in zoos and aquariums all over the country.
So, from Michigan to New Jersey to Texas to Iowa to Nebraska,
these corals are being, are being held and taken care of all over.
So I strongly recommend you check that out
and see if there's any rescued corals in your neck of the woods.
And a lot of them are being kept on public display,
so once those facilities are open to the public, you might be able to even go visit some of the corals.
Okay, now I'm gonna transition a little bit
and talk about once we generate these corals for restoration, where do we put them?
So this was actually part of my PhD studies at the University of Florida,
and it focused, we're gonna go back to Staghorn coral again.
So this focused on Staghorn coral.
Staghorn coral typically used to be found on four reefs like the ones you see here,
and those are the reefs you typically think of when you think of
where you'd go to dive or snorkel in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Those kind of iconic reefs that used to have those thickets of Elkhorn and Staghorn coral.
But more recently, what we're finding is that wild Staghorn coral, what's left of it,
tends to be found potentially in higher abundances
and it might be a little healthier on these smaller inshore patch reefs.
So we wanted to conduct an experiment to take corals generated for restoration
and outplant them to both patch reefs and fore reefs
and see how they grew and how healthy they were.
So we took 48 colonies of Staghorn coral,
reared by the Coral Restoration Foundation in the Florida Keys,
and planted 48 colonies each to two patch reefs and two fore reefs in the sanctuary.
And we monitored those corals over the course of a year,
taking measurements and photographs.
And something kind of happened that we did not expect halfway through that experiment.
Hurricane Irma passed over the Florida Keys,
so that was an unexpected variable that was introduced to our study.
And it delayed our monitoring till January of 2018.
And if we take a look at the size of Hurricane Irma,
here you can see the hurricane but you can't see the state of Florida,
so that gives you a sense of the size of this storm.
And if we zoom into the eye,
there's the hurricane passing over the Florida Keys,
and the red star indicates our study sites.
So we were a little nervous about what we might find when we returned after the hurricane,
and it was sort of a worst-case scenario at our fore reef sites.
So, we couldn't find a single colony, not even a dead coral skeleton,
so that was pretty disappointing.
But we were surprised when we went to our patch reef sites
to find about 50% survival of all of the corals that we outplanted.
And even though we did have some damage from the hurricane,
these corals were able to recover and have had positive rates of growth by the end of the experiment.
So relatively, they did well.
Because the hurricane wasn't something we were expecting,
we worked with Coral Restoration Foundation to look at their pre- and post-Irma monitoring records
for an additional three patch reef and three fore reef sites.
And what we found was exactly the same trend.
So post-hurricane survival was higher at patch reef versus fore reef sites.
So what exactly was going on?
So one of the things we think happened had to do with reef geology,
and this is something we've known for a while.
If you take a look at this diagram,
you'll see the reef crest lies between the fore reef and the patch reefs.
Well that reef crest is responsible for dissipating
86% of wave energy that hits the reef.
So those patch reefs are a lot more protected
and were a lot more protected when the hurricane passed over.
Additionally when we look at those 1975 photos and those thicket structures,
those thickets, historically, helped the broken fragments that will break off in a storm stay at the site,
helps them kind of stabilize and be able to reattach and grow into a new colony.
Because we've lost that structure now,
there's not as much complexity and not as much structure to keep broken fragments at the site,
and it makes it much more likely that they would roll away and be transported away from the site.
And that's likely why we didn't find a single coral at our fore reef sites.
So what does that mean?
That doesn't mean we should discount fore reefs completely,
but it does mean we should increase the amount of effort at patch reef sites.
This study did show that they're able to withstand some disturbances, like hurricanes,
potentially better than fore reefs.
But it shows us that we need to change the way we look at restoration on fore reefs.
So, likely increasing the number of corals that we plant to facilitate those thickets I'm growing,
so 48 colonies most likely wasn't enough to do that.
But also increasing the biodiversity associated with our restored sites,
so outplanting more than just Staghorn coral.
Staghorn coral has these thin branches which are a lot more prone to breakage
than let's say the star coral, those boulder corals.
So including a lot of different types of coral
and organisms that can help keep corals healthy
could potentially increase the resilience of the site after a hurricane.
And those ideas lead me straight into the last topic I'm gonna talk about,
which deals with the future of coral restoration and what that might look like
in Florida and Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
So, researchers and managers are recognizing that while we've made a lot of progress,
a huge amount of progress in the past three decades,
to truly achieve rescale restoration,
we need to start rethinking some of the ways that we're doing things.
About a year ago, I was able to participate in a workshop
that was a team of managers, researchers, and restoration practitioners.
And that group met up to discuss what it would truly take to restore an iconic Florida reef.
A lot of factors were discussed,
so everything from how to prioritize sites, to reef zonation, species composition,
methods for coral grow out and outplanting genetic diversity,
and also how to maintain and monitor restoration sites.
And out of that discussion,
a plan known as Mission: Iconic Reefs was developed.
Mission: Iconic Reefs is a comprehensive plan for conducting ecosystem-level restoration
at seven iconic sites in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
In each selected site, detailed habitat maps were developed using GIS,
as well as in water surveys.
And based on the area of each of these reef zones,
experts were able to determine values from target, for a target percent cover
of each coral species that would typically live in that zone.
So, by percent cover, I mean the two-dimensional area
that each species should cover on the reef.
And one of the ways that I got to be involved in this effort
was to help integrate information about
restoration techniques, species growth rates, and expected mortality
to try to translate that percent cover target into
the actual number of corals that would need to be outplanted.
So if we take a look at this row for Elkhorn coral.
So this is just for one section of one reef, Loo Key Reef.
And for Elkhorn coral, the target for just that zone
is 9,000 corals over 30 years,
so that's a far cry from the 48 that we planted in that experiment before.
So that addresses that concern of not enough corals
and not enough scale in these restoration efforts.
The other thing I want you to notice is that on the left,
you'll see this plan also incorporates a wide variety of species groups,
so not just Elkhorn coral and Staghorn coral,
but Star coral, Brain coral, a variety of other species groups
that can help increase the biodiversity at the site,
so that addresses that concern as well.
And in addition to, in addition to this plan for actually active coral restoration,
there are a lot of other components that this plan takes into account.
So things like site preparation, removing nuisance algae.
Algae on reefs, if there's too much of it,
it can compete with corals for space and light,
so it's not great for keeping corals healthy.
So, practitioners can come in and remove that excess algae before planting.
You'll notice in number three, supplementing with grazers,
that's something that was built into this plan as well.
So, we're starting to think about how we can restore historically important grazers,
like sea urchins, that will help naturally control that algae.
How we can restore them in tandem with corals.
Stewardship and maintenance is also an important component,
so sites will need to receive professional care to make sure broken corals are stabilized,
to keep coral predators, like snails, away, and things like that.
And then last, last but not least, monitoring and adaptive management
is a really important aspect of this project as well.
That's important to make sure that we're reaching our goals
and to be able to correct things if we're noticing any problems.
And the last thing that I want to highlight which I think is
kind of one of the most important aspects of Mission: Iconic Reefs and one of the coolest things.
So, over the last 30 years,
like I said, we've made a ton of progress in the field of coral restoration,
and there's been tons of state and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions,
all of them working on various aspects of coral restoration
and answering really important questions that we've had.
But what makes Mission: Iconic Reefs different is that for the first time,
all of these organizations are coming together and working toward
this one common goal to conduct ecosystem-level restoration on Florida Keys reefs.
And I personally think that's really exciting,
and I think that's what's gonna make all the difference in this effort.
And I will leave you on that positive note,
and say thank you very much for your time today.
I really appreciate it.
- Excellent, thank you, Katie.
That was a great presentation,
and boy, are we getting tons of questions.
- Oh goodness, alright!
- So I'm gonna let Jacqueline kick off questions from the question box,
And then again, for any of you that would like to raise your hand in the control panel,
that alerts me to unmute you and then you can verbally ask your question, okay?
So we'll start with the question box,
go ahead Jacqueline.
- Okay, so this question was by Robin.
Robin asked Elkhorn and Staghorn corals are both listed for protection
under the Federal Endangered Species Act.
What permitting process did you go through,
restoration efforts have to go through?
- That's a great question.
So, so restoration permits are,
if they take place in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary,
they require a permit from the sanctuary and also from the state of Florida.
That is the process I'm unfortunately most familiar with,
so I can't really speak to other, other locations unfortunately.
- Great!
- Okay let me go ahead and check if there's anyone raising,
oh there's a few people, okay.
So, Judith Cuco, if I said that correctly,
you've been unmuted go ahead and ask your question.
- No, I just, I wasn't, I don't have a question,
I just wasn't able to enter my information on the poll.
- Okay, no problem.
We'll go to the next person.
Sorry, there was some issue with the poll question,
we apologize for that,
but it was great that many of you typed in your response to the question box.
and sorry that there was a problem with that.
But for now, let's now go to Lawrence Raimondi.
You've been unmuted on our end Lawrence.
If you go ahead and unmute yourself on your end,
you can ask your question orally.
Jacqueline get ready if this doesn't work out
you can ask another one from the question box.
Alright, doesn't look like it's working for Lawrence,
so let's go ahead and pull another question.
- Okay.
- Actually, this is a good one.
Oh, unless you have one.
Go ahead.
-Go ahead, Claire.
- Okay, okay so this one's coming from a Lorraine,
and she's saying are any of these species able to adapt,
such as finding stands that are more warm water tolerant.
I know you talked a little bit about this.
- Yeah, excuse me.
Yeah, so, so adaptation is a process that takes place over generations of time.
So, as these corals reproduce sexually, naturally,
over time, nature will select for offspring that are more tolerant to current ocean conditions.
But because the rate of ocean warming is happening so quickly,
we really don't have time.
There's not enough time for that process to work because so many corals are dying.
There are corals of all species that are naturally adapted to warmer climates
just by nature of their genetic makeup.
There have been some really good studies done on reefs that are just
naturally really really hot and sometimes really really acidic as well,
and there are corals that sometimes thrive there because
just the right planula with the right genetic makeup landed on that reef
and was able to survive and grow.
So there's being, there's a lot of work being done
with those natural, naturally stress-tolerant corals.
There's a lot of interest in identifying those,
and that was, so this is kind of, the other aspect of my PhD was
looking at some of those aspects in Staghorn corals.
But one of the reasons that we really want to identify those individuals is to
start to be able to do some of that work, like assisted gene flow and assisted
assisted evolution is sometimes what people call it,
to try to introduce more of those adaptive genes into restored populations.
So, that's a huge area of work in coral restoration right now.
-Alright, thank you for that.
Alright Jacqueline, do you have one in the queue.
- There we go, sorry I was on mute.
So the next time we had,
is there any, I'm sorry, this one comes from Tara,
is there any concern about lack of genetic diversity when using fragmented method.
- Yes, yeah that is definitely a big concern.
So for that reason, when using the fragmentation method,
practitioners make a real effort to collect not just from one colony of origin on the reef
but try to get as many colonies of origin as possible.
And they do genotype all of the corals that come into their nurseries,
so they're 100% sure what coral, who's who in the nursery
and keep rigorous track of those.
And when they outplant,
they outplant stands that are genetically diverse.
So, we definitely don't want to be outplanting the same genotype over and over and over again.
It's not great in terms of surviving disturbances,
and it's not great for reproduction either,
so it's something that people are carefully considering when using that method.
- Okay, let's see.
Yeah, we have more time for a few more questions.
There's just so many to choose from,
and honestly, Jacqueline and I have been responding to a lot of questions and such
that I'm like, wait did she talk about this,
'cause unfortunately, we don't get to enjoy your presentation like most of the attendees
since we're so focused on all these things coming in.
So trying to make sure we're asking questions that aren't redundant to what you've already presented.
Oh, here's a good one from John.
- This is a good one from Jessie.
- Okay let's start with John,
and then I'll have you go to Jessie.
John, if Staghorn corals get bleached from global warming,
why are we using them in coral restoration?
- That is a great question,
and there are a lot of people that criticize coral restoration because
there's sort of a difference in ideologies.
So some people say we shouldn't be restoring these corals
because of all these huge global threats.
One thing I'll say is that, we, that's part of why we're trying to identify
these stress-tolerant corals.
And it's not just the coral that's stress-tolerant,
the algae plays a huge role in thermo-tolerance,
so that's being carefully looked at as well.
But the main thing I guess I want to say is that,
without restoration, it's possible that Staghorn coral would be wiped out a lot quicker
than if we actually do intervene and conduct restoration.
So restoration helps us maintain populations with a lot of effort on our parts,
but it helps us maintain a population that we can actually work with
as we hopefully start to abate these stressors.
It's definitely something that needs to be done together.
We can't just restore.
We need to be abating global climate change as well,
but restoration is a tool in the box that will help us keep this species alive
until these stressors are reduced.
- Alright, Jacqueline, you have one up?
- So this is from Jessie, who teaches zoology at Oklahoma High School,
and she wants to know what would you say are the biggest things
that people who are landlocked states can do to impact coral reefs in a positive way.
- That's a great question,
and I would say the number one thing you can do
is do everything in your power to try to address climate change,
whether that is voting in your local or national level elections,
reducing your energy use.
There's a lot of strategies I think on epa.gov that you can use at home,
but I would say, yes, climate change is the number one thing you can address
because that is arguably the number one threat to corals around the world right now.
- Yep so finding ways to reduce those carbon emissions,
which right now planet Earth is getting a big, big breather, right,
with a lot less fossil fuels being spent during our shelter at home times.
Ah let's see, Brian Aldridge has an interesting one,
and he brings up a good point.
This type of ecosystem restoration is pretty bold,
and boy, is that a true statement.
Like 20 years ago, we used to, I think we even had a national marine sanctuary video
that talked about, we can't plant coral reefs,
as like, if we let them go to waste now, we can't plant them,
and here we are now, fast-forward, doing just that.
So his question is how confident are you that you have covered all of the possibilities?
You and the larger coral reef restoration network.
- In terms of Mission: Iconic Reefs?
Or like ecosystem-level.
- It doesn't specifically say,
I guess just this whole reef restoration ecosystem restoration, restoration projects.
- Well so, I'll talk about, I can use Mission: Iconic Reefs as an example, I guess.
And, first of all, I will say, Claire, that
the approach of the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries to ecosystem restoration
has really changed over the past several years
and it's something that the sanctuary is now actively collaborating on with these partners
so that is a really exciting change for our office.
So for Mission: Iconic Reefs, how confident can we be that
we're covering all the bases of, I guess
whether we're adding, I'll assume you're asking like whether we're adding the right species,
whether we've added enough herbivores, things like that.
So that's where the monitoring aspect is so, so important.
So, monitoring efforts for coral reefs in general can really inform us
how rapidly things are changing and what kinds of things are changing.
So, it'll help us identify any problems.
So, if we see huge amounts of algal overgrowth, for example,
we'll know, okay, well, we either need to add more or herbivores or start to address
some of this algal overgrowth with actual humans that are diving and maintaining the reef.
So, monitoring is a huge aspect of any conservation project
because some people don't think it's as exciting as other science,
but it's really telling us the information we need to know to be protecting that ecosystem effectively.
Hope that answers the question.
- Thank you for that.
I fear you're gonna have a lot of homework
'cause we're not gonna be able to get to all of these questions.
- It's alright.
- We probably can ask one, maybe two more,
and then for those questions that remain unanswered,
we will send them to Katie and give her a week or so to respond to them,
and then we'll make sure to send her responses out to all of the attendees.
So thanks for your patience on that.
- Is it my turn or your turn Jacqueline?
- You might have one ready, go for it,
otherwise, I have one here as well.
- I'll let you go.
- Okay, so this one asks, how do you stimulate coral growth in captivity to enable faster growth,
or do they just grow naturally on their own usual pace.
- That's a great question.
So, essentially they're just growing at their own rate,
but there are things, there are strategies that people can use to control their growth rates.
So, one of the cool things about land-based facilities
is they can control every aspect of the environment.
They can control how much light the coral is getting.
That can affect how fast it grows.
They can control temperature, they can control everything.
And then for some of the boulder coral species that grow really slowly,
Mote Marine Lab in the Florida Keys developed a really cool strategy called micro fragmentation
where they can actually stimulate these coral species that typically grow slowly
to grow much, much faster than they normally would by cutting them into really, really small pieces,
and then that actually has been shown to stimulate growth.
And those little tiny pieces can be sort of mounted on a structure and then fused together,
so you get kind of a coral this size.
That might take decades or even hundreds of years to grow that big,
and you can generate a coral that size in a relatively shorter amount of time.
So that is actually going to be a really important strategy for Mission: Iconic Reefs as well.
-Alright, we'll take one last question,
and we're gonna gamble.
I'm going to unmute someone, see if we can get it to work this time.
It's always unpredictable.
So, let's see.
Lawrence Raimondi, I was trying to private message you to see if you're prepared,
but I'm gonna go ahead and unmute you now, Lawrence, if you have your question ready.
You're muted on your end, but go ahead.
- Hey, I have my question.
We're gonna be starting a new business called Reef Quest.
We're gonna be launching down in the Islamorada area.
And our focus is really helping young families, children,
to really understand the importance of reef development and reef conservation,
and I was wondering what kind of tools would you recommend
for us to be able to generate more information.
I want to do a situation where there's literally media and knowledge to these people
on a regular basis of how we're doing with coral restoration and growing it.
Are there a lot of tools that we could use to help people to be more focused on this?
- In terms of educational tools,
the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries actually has a lot of educational resources,
I believe, on coral reef conservation.
There's actually a really good education module on our website
on coral spawning and a variety of other topics.
The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary themselves might have
more resources specific to that sanctuary.
Claire, you might have actually have more thoughts on those types of resources.
- Yeah, like you said Katie, we do have,
between the National Ocean Service and our national marine sanctuaries,
we do have a robust library of coral reef materials.
I'll make sure to, I guess this brings up a good segway, a good point.
A lot of people are like, how am I gonna get all those web links?
I have been putting them into your GoToWebinar control panels.
They're showing up there if you want to click on them immediately,
but I will also work to put together a little one-page PDF file that will be
downloadable from our webinar archive of today's live presentation.
So you'll be able to able to access all those links
and share it with students and other interested folks.
And I'll include some of the educational resources related to
coral reef ecosystems on that as well.
So thanks, Lawrence, for your question.
We're gonna go ahead and wrap up our presentation today.
Let's make sure, okay, we're good to go here.
So I've already mentioned several times we do archive these recordings,
and that's a long government URL, not to worry, you're gonna get it over email.
Everyone that's attending today live will get a certificate of attendance,
so it looks similar to this.
It provides one contact hour of professional development.
For those that watch the video recording and get to this point,
you can email the sanctuary.education@noaa.gov, which is linked to this webinar, and request it.
And then just to let you know,
we do have this robust distance learning series.
Tomorrow, we have another presentation.
This is going to be focused on the marine heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest,
and this is with Dr. Jan Newton, who's from the University of Washington.
So we're very excited to have her joining us,
and this will be the same time, time 12 p.m. Hawaii, 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern.
And it'll be archived if you can't make those times.
And then we have a couple of weeks of breather,
well actually I think we have one on May 1st that we're just putting together now,
but not ready to advertise it quite yet.
But we also have mid-May, we've got our Earth is Blue,
so this is educational videos about your national marine sanctuaries.
So we have our actual videographer, Nick Zachar, and another video tech, Shannon,
who will be presenting on this absolutely fabulous,
like photos of the day and Earth is Blue videos and Stories from the Blue,
so great ways to bring the ocean directly into your home or your future classrooms and facilities.
There is an evaluation that follows today's webinar.
It's a four-question, like one to two-minute evaluation.
We greatly appreciate if you guys take the time to complete that
because it gives us valuable information about today's webinar and the experience.
In there, is also a link to this broader, larger NOAA multimedia and distance learning survey,
which is really specific to formal and informal educators.
So if you're out there participating today,
we'd love for you to go ahead and do the webinar evaluation,
and then get the link from that to do this distance learning multimedia survey.
We want to know like what kind of video products and materials
will help you bring the ocean and NOAA into your facilities and classroom.
So with that, we're so pleased that you were able to join us today.
Thank you so much,
another webinar tomorrow, maybe some of you will be participating in that as well
to enhance your marine science skills and topics.
So with that, it concludes today's webinar.
Thank you so much.