NOAA Lists 20 New Corals as Threatened Under the Endangered Species Act.

[marinebiologist]

Interesting read but sad for the ocean

 

http://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/stories/2014/08/corals_listing.html

 

 

[AlanM]

Are there really no cervicornus at all in the gulf of mexico? I thought SECOR was doing something with staghorns in gulf of mexico, but maybe that was just elkhorn.

[MBVette]

I dont know where they are considering Bonaire.  but I know both elkhorn & staghorn are there

[AlanM]

Right, that would be the Caribbean Sea, I assume, not the Gulf of Mexico since they're below Cuba and closer to South America.

[DuffyGeos]

 They are only listing areas that are touching  "U.S. Geographic Areas"  which include: Florida on the Atlantic, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands (Atlantic on the North and Caribbean on the South), and any state that touches the Gulf of Mexico. Not the entire Caribbean Sea where the ABC Islands are located.

 

       

[Gatortailale]

I MO I'm disappointed that politics influences the real story of the health of the reefs. Yes certain reefs are suffering but officials also make political choices that are far from the truth. But also money to be made by certain groups by raising an alarm as easier to get donation when saying things are in poor health.

 

Look at what Colin Foord presented to us at summer meeting - there is a large stretch of Elkhorn and /or stag horn coral almost 100 yards long north of Ft. Lauderdale, but few know that this patch is there. Also success in the original Miami channel but economic decisions made that harm the existing reefs.

 

And they didn't want to recognize the hybridization of these 2 corals despite the fact that they probably did hybridize.

[Origami]

I gotta say, that this is an 1,100 page document makes it really tough to come to a quick conclusion of the effort or findings. In having skimmed about the first 140 pages, I picked out two things that I found noteworthy:  First, beginning on page 86, they list the impact of further study and comment on changes to the originally proposed rule. These changes were overwhelming in that they reduced many species listings from endagered or threatened to unwarranted; and in other cases downgraded the originally proposed rule for listing some species from endangered to threatened. And second, while they mention it in several places beforehand, on page 137, there's a table that lists attempts to evaluate the threat factors to the various species. This table rates the impact of collection and trade at the bottom of the list and as "low."  The top threats listed are ocean warming, disease, and ocean acidification. These are followed by fishing, sedimentation, nutrients and a rising sea level. All of these threats are classified as high- to low-medium threats. Predation and collection/trade are at the bottom of the list.

 

Jumping ahead to page 197, you'll find a discussion of the Collection and Trade threat. It's worth reading. According to the section, 1.5 million stony corals are collected from 45+ countries every year with the US consuming 64% of the live corals and 95% ofthe live rock. Notable quotes:

 

"For the purposes of this final rule, collection and trade refers to the physical process of taking corals from their natural habitat on coral reefs for the purpose of sale in the ornamental trade industry." It then goes to to differentiate this from aquacultured and maricultured corals. 

 

"Recently, advances in both aquaculture and mariculture propagation techniques show promise in shifting the deamnd of the ornamental trade industry away from wild-collected corals to corals reared via captive-culture techniques."

 

"Globally, there are approximately two million aquarium hobbyists involved in a complex trade networks that sells an estimated 50 millioon coras every year to use." And, "Import reports do not account for this "hidden" domestic production...."

 

Nearing conclusion, on page 1089: "In this final rule we have determined that no species warrants listing as endangered. We have determined the follwoing 20 species warrant listing as threatened...." This is a considerable reduction from the proposed rule which proposed that 12 species be listed as endangered and 54 more as threatened.

 

From page 1094: "In the case of threatened species, section 9 ["take"] prohibitions do not automatically apply. ...Therefore... we wil evaluate whether there are protective regulations necessary and advisable for the conservation of any of the 20 species newly listed as threatened...."