Abstract
The health of coral reef communities has been decreasing over the last 50 years, due the negative effects of human activities combined with other natural processes. We present documentation of a White Plague Disease (WPD) outbreak in the Serrana Bank, an isolated Western Caribbean atoll with presumably inexistent pollutant inputs from local human settlements. In addition, this study summarizes seven years of observations on diseased corals in the nearby island of San Andrés, which in contrast is one of the most populated islands of the Caribbean. There was a massive coral mortality in the atoll lagoon (14 degrees 27'53.24", 80 degrees 14'22.27" W, and 12m depth) due to WPD on May 4 of 2003. Seventeen species were found dead or largely affected by the disease. The information resulting from GPS and manta-tow transects revealed that approximately 5.8 ha of reticulate Montastraea spp. patch reefs were lethally affected by the disease in the atoll. On May 8 of the same year we observed and calculated a mean coral cover of 7.03% (SD +/- 2.44), a mean diseased coral tissue cover of 5.5% (SD +/- 1.1) and a 13.4% (SD +/- 8.05) of recently dead coral covered with a thin filamentous algae layer; approximately 73% of mortalities caused by the disease occurred before the end of the outbreak. A rough estimate of 18.9% in recent coral cover reduction can be attributed to WPD. This represents about 82% of the total coral cover decline since 1995. Semi-enclosed environments such as atoll lagoons and the reticulate patch-reefs of Montastraea spp. seem to be particularly vulnerable to this kind of coral disease, which constitute an alert to increase the monitoring of the same kind of atoll environments. The WPD has been present in the area of the nearby island of San Andrés at a low prevalence level, with sporadic increasing peaks of disease proliferation. The peaks observed during 1999 and 2004 comprised increases of 266% and 355% respectively, suggesting an alarming progression of the disease in this area. This study includes new information of the epizoolotiology of White Plague Disease and documents the permanent prevalence and progression of the WPD in the area of San Andres Island.
Highlights
The health of coral reef communities has been decreasing over the last 50 years, due the negative effects of human activities combined with other natural processes
In this note we describe an extensive and lethal White Plague Disease (WPD) outbreak observed in the lagoonal patch-reef areas of Serrana Bank
Due to the severity and high incidence of WPD in the affected area, we returned to the area on May 8, 2003 to perform a more detailed estimation of the damage caused to the coral reef by the pathogen
Summary
The health of coral reef communities has been decreasing over the last 50 years, due the negative effects of human activities combined with other natural processes. The. White Plague Disease (WPD) is one of the most common, virulent and prevalent diseases that has been observed affecting coral reefs in the Caribbean basin, which is considered a marine disease hot spot (Harvell 1999, Weil et al 2002, Santavy et al 2001, Borger 2003). Its one of the few true oceanic atolls of the Caribbean surrounded by depths of thousands of meters (Sánchez et al 2005) It has been inferred, for its location, that Serrana Bank has suffered little impact from local human activities (e.g. contamination). We include the results from monitoring activity of the same disease over seven years in the nearby island of San Andrés, Colombia, which in contrast is one of the most populated islands of the Caribbean
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