Abstract
Coral reef ecosystems are continuously degraded by anthropogenic and climate change drivers, causing a widespread decline in reef biodiversity and associated goods and services. In response, active restoration methodologies and practices have been developed globally to compensate for losses due to reef degradation. Yet, most activities employ the gardening concept that uses coral nurseries, and are centered in easily-accessible reefs, with existing infrastructure, and impractical for coral reefs in remote locations. Here we evaluate the effectiveness of direct outplanting of coral micro-fragments (Pavona clavus and Pocillopora spp.) as a novel approach to restore remote reefs in the Islas Marías archipelago in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Coral growth (height-width-tissue cover), survival percentage, extension rates (cm year−1), skeletal density (g cm−3) and calcification rates (g cm−2 year−1) were assessed over 13 months of restoration. In spite of detrimental effects of Hurricane Willa, transplants showed a greater-than-twofold increase in all growth metrics, with ~58–61% survival rate and fast self-attachment (within ~3.9 months) for studied species, with Pocilloporids exhibiting higher extension, skeletal density, and calcification rates than Pavona. While comprehensive long-term studies are required, direct transplantation methodologies of coral micro-fragments are emerging as time-effective and affordable restoration tools to mitigate anthropogenic and climate change impacts in remote and marginal reefs.
Highlights
The study was conducted from June 2018 to August 2019 (400 days) at Islas María Cleofas (IMC), Islas Marías Biosphere Reserve in the Central Mexican Pacific, located 132 km offshore to the nearest coast of Nayarit, Mexico (Figure 1)
Islas María Cleofas harbors a high diversity of scleractinians, including branching Pocillopora species, in shallow waters (2–6 m), and massive Pavona and Porites species on deeper reefs [61,63]
The Marías archipelago is located in an ocean convergence zone influenced by interannual transitional ocean currents, the California current with seawater temperature (SWT) ranging from 18 to 21◦ C during December–April [64], by the Mexican coastal current with warmer Seawater temperature (SWT) (~27–31 ◦ C) between July–November [65], the seasonal upwelling during April–May [66]
Summary
Worldwide distributed coral reef ecosystems host >25% of marine life, sustain important biogeochemical and ecological functionality [1,2], and uphold goods and services for human wellbeing [3,4,5], yet are continuously impacted by the cumulative effects of anthropogenic stressors and climate change drivers, causing a widespread degradation of these valuable coral reef communities [6,7,8].Several coral reef ecosystems revealed some resistance to the inflicted impacts, with natural recovery processes with slow recovery trajectories, yet, all providing some time for natural acclimatization to occur [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. Worldwide distributed coral reef ecosystems host >25% of marine life, sustain important biogeochemical and ecological functionality [1,2], and uphold goods and services for human wellbeing [3,4,5], yet are continuously impacted by the cumulative effects of anthropogenic stressors and climate change drivers, causing a widespread degradation of these valuable coral reef communities [6,7,8]. The notion of active coral reef restoration as a key strategy addressing the cumulative impacts of anthropogenic and climate change has been put forward, and new coral restoration approaches have been developed globally in the last decades [15,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25]. Public Health 2020, 17, 6574; doi:10.3390/ijerph17186574 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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