Welcome! An introduction...

In the last quarter of my year abroad in Los Angeles, I enrolled in a class which was broadly named 'Humid Tropics,' it was one of the more simple yet interesting courses I attended whilst there (I have discussed this in my Year Abroad blog). The purpose of this class was to learn about the fascinating terrestrial and oceanic species that are found in the tropics. Whilst it may seem comical, I visited the Los Angeles Aquarium as a form of revision to see some of these elegant tropical species. 

When I was presented with the opportunity to identify a topic related to Global Environmental Change, choosing something related to these reef species wasn't a difficult decision for me.

Whilst my interests in Geography do not lie in ecology, analysing Coral Reef destruction be it through anthropogenically induced impacts or more natural impacts such as coral reef bleaching is a strong interest of mine. 

Corals undeniably provide significant benefits to humans and represent $30 billion a year of goods and services. Whilst supporting fisheries which are vital for sustaining the diets of poorer coastal regions of the world, they also are the focal point of a lot of tourism and medical advances (WWF, 2015). Most importantly however they are home to the most diverse assemblages of tropical fish species that no aquarium could replicate. 

The focus of this blog will be on the non intrinsic ecological value of these coral reef species and how habitat destruction has affected tropical fish species that rely on the health of coral species. Figure 1 shows the distribution of coral reefs, around the equator, in the warmest waters and crucially in areas where El Nino Southern Oscillation events occur.

Figure 1. Global extent of Tropical coral reefs (Source: Coraldigest.org)

When thinking about this post, I wanted to investigate further the impacts of the well known 1998 ENSO event on tropical fish assemblages. I looked into a paper by Garpe et al. (2006) which assessed the 'long term' impacts of the coral bleaching that occurred due to ENSO. The ENSO event is widely regarded as the most severe on record and affected coral reefs worldwide, leaving 90% of coral species in some localities being decimated and rendering significant impacts on the species that relied on coral for habitat.

The paper looks at the effects on destroyed coral of Tutia Reef in Mafia Island Marine Park (MIMP), Tanzania in 1997, 6 months after the ENSO event of 1998 and 6 years later in 2004, attempting to provide an analysis of the long term impacts on this particular reef. Following the 1998 mass bleaching event, all corals in 28/32 plots had died. The paper places strong emphasis on the importance of structural complexity of habitats and how with structural complexity there exists abundant and species rich reef fish communities, affected more intensly over longer timescales. Whilst  Garpe et al. (2006) emphasises the impacts of bleaching on long timescales, others report that fish assemblage is not affected significantly with only 10% change following a 40-50% reduction in Coral cover. I will be looking at this in a further post.

An aspect I would have found interesting would be an investigation similar to that of  Garpe et al. (2006) but on a longer timescale to see if there is another notable response that occurs later. In further posts, I will introduce some species that are in danger of increasing global temperatures and the resulting frequency and severity of future ENSO events.

Importantly however, this blog is being created in the midst of a coral bleaching event that could be more severe than the 1998 event, I will be posting more up-to-date articles that reflect on and assess this current bleaching event.