Honduran coral reefs have endured a century of pollution and disease, and if scientists can figure out how they managed to survive, it could be used to restore dying Caribbean reefs.National Geographic) provides details of various studies and results on the corals of Thera Bay.. [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.]
The coral at Tela Bay should be dead by almost any standard, but this reef off the northern Caribbean coast of Honduras has remained remarkably vibrant despite decades of pollution, industrial degradation, and heatwaves that have devastated other reefs in the region.
Thera Bay has over 68 percent live coral coverage, an astounding figure compared to the rest of the Caribbean, where the average coverage is just 18 percent. If scientists can figure out what makes Thera Bay’s reefs so resilient, their secrets, or even just their genes, might help revive the Caribbean’s declining reefs.
These efforts have already begun. In May, Scientists at the University of Miami Thirteen specimens of Elkhorn coral have been collected from the waters of Thera Bay in a world-first attempt to propagate corals from two different countries to make them more resistant to deadly marine heatwaves that are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change. If successful, the new corals could be used to restore the state’s rapidly disappearing coral reefs.
“If elkhorns are to survive in Florida, they’re going to need help from outside,” says University of Miami marine scientist Andrew Baker, “which means we need to introduce diversity, ideally from resilient populations that can tolerate the same conditions.”
Baker’s team also collected DNA samples in Honduras to answer a mystery researchers have been trying to solve ever since the tiny Central American inlet appeared on their radar in 2010: Why are the reefs at Thera Bay so robust?
Just a few weeks after being moved to a new tank in Florida, the corals are already starting to reveal their secrets.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Terra Bay was one of the first places Antal Borsok put on a scuba mask. In 2010, then the owner of a nearby hotel and newly certified diver, he and his wife decided to spend the afternoon in the small cove. “There was so much coral – so many different types, colors, species and growth patterns. It was just beautiful,” says Borsok, who is now executive director of Terra Marine, a nonprofit science and education program. “But we were just new divers and we thought it was just normal because no one was doing a big deal.”
Still, Borsok had a hunch he’d found something special, and soon he was inviting some friends, more experienced divers from the scuba-diving mecca of Roatan, to come and take a look. “Once we got in the water, they totally forgot about us and started taking pictures,” Borsok recalls. “They’d never seen anything like it.”
In fact, very few people had ever seen anything like it.
“Everybody would have thought that these mainland reefs would be in bad shape,” Baker says. “They have a lot of freshwater runoff, a lot of murky water, and a lot of fluctuation in salinity.”
Not only are Thera’s corals subject to heat events strong enough to bleach other corals, but they have also been exposed for decades to industrial pollution from the constant shipments of bananas that were once piled several feet above the delicate ecosystem, as well as agricultural runoff and overflow from a local wastewater lagoon that provides water for Thera’s 100,000 residents.
And yet the coral here thrives: the antlers of endangered elkhorn coral grow into gnarled clusters, and giant fists of brain coral dot the ocean floor. How did this happen? “That’s what people are trying to figure out,” says Borsok, who and his wife have become “coral reef evangelists.” The couple have made Thera Bay a marine protected area, The only public aquarium in Central AmericaIt invites Hondurans to discover the incredible marine life that most people don’t realize lives so close to their shores.
He also calls on scientists like Baker to study coral and find ways to save reefs around the world facing destruction from climate change. “The Gulf is resilient, but everything can only recover to a certain extent. Eventually, you hit a limit,” Borsok says. “So we may not have much time to solve this problem.” [. . .]
The Future of Terra Bay
More good news came from Miami: Four of the 13 Honduran elkhorn corals scientists collected have already spawned and successfully mated with Florida elkhorn corals. “We have thousands of larvae settling on the baby corals,” Baker says. “I feel like a new father!”
Still, the scientist is realistic about the work ahead: “This is just the beginning if Caribbean reefs are to survive,” he says. But Baker believes that such genetic exchange between countries could help: Required“Climate change ignores borders,” he says, and researchers should too. [. . .]
Read the full article below https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tela-bay-coral-reef-mystery
[Photo above by Antal Borcsok: Despite being exposed to decades of industrial pollution on the northern coast of Honduras, Tela Bay is abundantly alive with coral—including these spectacular great star coral (Montastraea cavernosa). What has made it so resilient?]
