“Experimental support for alternative attractors on coral reefs”, Russell J. Schmitt, Sally J. Holbrook, Samantha L. Davis, Andrew J.Brooks, Thomas C. Adam, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2019, 116 (10) 4372-4381; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1812412116
This article was reposted from March 2019.
Why Too Much Algae Hurts Coral Reefs
Coral wages a constant battle against algae for space and dominance. On a healthy coral reef, it’s a battle that the coral mostly wins.
But in recent decades, scientists and reef managers have noticed with alarm that entire coral reef ecosystems have been overgrown by algae. Familiar, colorful coral reefs quickly became unrecognizable, with only the algae-coated outlines of dead coral hinting at the reef’s former bounty. Warming waters, agricultural pollution, or overfishing can all cause this sudden shift to algae dominance, but it’s often a combination of factors that tip the scales in favor of the algae.
This abrupt change in ecosystem type is called a phase shift, and a big part of conserving coral reefs is predicting when it might happen to a particular reef—and how to prevent it. A recent study in Moorea, French Polynesia helps us better understand how and why coral-algal phase shifts happen.
A Fragile Balance
Imagine a marble balanced on top of a hill. If you nudge it gently, it will roll down the hill, but once at the bottom it becomes much harder to return the marble to the top. Coral reefs that are overtaken by algae face a similar problem—once the ecosystem has slipped into algae-dominance, it’s much harder to get a healthy coral reef back.
To learn more, scientists used two distinct parts of a coral reef in Moorea as a natural laboratory. The coral growing on Moorea’s forereef, or the side of the reef closer to the ocean, had been very resilient and remained strong across years of natural disturbances. In the lagoon, however, patches of the reef had historically succumbed to algae after disturbances. The researchers used both the lagoon and forereef to test how they handled disturbances.
Testing the Reef
To imitate an overfished coral reef, the researchers set up cages with different sized holes over portions of the reef. Small holes excluded larger algae-munching fish from swimming inside. Half of the cages contained coral, while half went over algae. At the end of the experiment, the scientists realized that it was not just the hole size of the cages affecting whether or not algae grew inside, but whether the cage had started off with coral or algae inside.
The researchers also tested how patches of the forereef and lagoon would react to algae removal. They removed either all, some, or none of a common type of algae (Turbinaria) from the experimental sites, then tracked whether it grew back over several years. The healthy, algae-eating fish population on the forereef ensured that the algae didn’t grow back on those test sites. In the lagoon, Turbinaria made a full recovery within a year at the sites where some of it had been removed. It was only at sites where they had completely removed algae from the lagoon that it didn’t grow back right away.
A Tool for Better Management?
The study confirmed what scientists had previously suspected but been unable to test: that returning an area to the exact same environmental conditions before algae took over often isn’t enough to bring back a coral reef. In the hill analogy, it isn’t enough to push the ecosystem (marble) to the top. You have to push it over the top and then further down the other side for the ecosystem to have a chance to flip back.
Facing challenges like ocean acidification, a warming ocean, and overfishing mean that coral reefs need all the extra help they can get. Needing to recover coral reefs overrun by algae may sound like yet more bad news on an endless list of problems facing coral reefs.
But the study authors hope that the opposite may be true.
If managers and scientists can predict the range of conditions where either coral or algae can dominate (where the dotted lines are on the hill for a particular reef), they’ll be better armed to protect existing coral reefs and even help recovery when possible. That way, we can focus on preserving the coral reefs most likely to resist an algae-takeover.
Sierra is a master’s student in Stanford University’s Earth Systems department studying science and environmental communication. Her bachelors degree was also in Earth Systems, with an emphasis on oceans and climate, which took her from Australia to South Africa to French Polynesia and Kiribati. She is from Monterey, California.
