11 posts tagged “coral”
Divers love coral reefs. Why wouldn't we? They're the lungs of the ocean, and provide ample living space for the lovely creatures we enjoy staring at under the sea.
Turns out the economic value these cavalcades of beauty manifest is even more dramatic than previously thought. A new NYT article discusses tourism, why people flock to coral seas, and how much money that brings in around the world.
Of course, it leaves aside questions of how these hordes affect the reefs themselves, and who profits most from all the money that's being made -- but answering those questions is what my book's for, I guess.
Another short, photo and video-heavy post. Two dives today in Ishigaki, one off of popular Yonehara Beach (featuring some of the most impressive coral formations I've seen) and one off the aptly-named manta point. Even though it's the off-season (they're more plentiful in fall), I saw an easy half-dozen animals.
Check out the short video of the manta gliding right above my head. I was experiencing technical difficulties, so it's not longer, but I did get some photos, too.
Internet access is still spotty for me, but after spending the afternoon snorkeling at three sites off the coast of Shiraho, I had to post some photos and a video.
First, a brief summary of why I was out in the sea with my camera here. For two decades, pro-development forces have been trying to build a new airport here in Ishigaki, right off the coast of Shiraho. Environmental activists have been fighting this, mostly on the strength of the island's stunning blue coral. The World Conservation Union actually declared the reefs here more diverse than Australia's, a stunning claim indeed.
There is more to say about this, either in the book or on the blog or both, but for now I wanted to see it for myself.
After interviewing one or two locals, I headed out and was just blown away by what I saw. The variety and abundance of coral (not to mention other sea life) here is just magnificent.
Many of the same fish one sees on Okinawa Hontou one also sees here, but a bunch more on top of that.
Notice the "Nemo" clownfish, the type that everyone loves. Atop one reef I saw a concentration of dozens of them. The video is here. Big clams and colorful fish also abound.
Then there's the famous blue coral. No, it's not the blue-colored staghorn color that you saw at the beginning of this blog. It looks like this:
When you're an environmentalist, the "wow" response gives way pretty easily to "wow, they're going to try to build something that'll destroy this." Occasionally, though, you just get stuck at "wow." That's where I'm at, and it's not so bad.
I'll leave you with one of the few pictures I took that actually does some justice to the color scheme underwater at Shiraho. No, no retouching needed.
Just north of Kadena Air Force Base's main gate is a spot called Mizugama ("Water town"). Americans call it The Pipelines because the coral crevasses resemble long, craggy trails for sea life. Bracketed by massive concrete sea walls -- the largest I've seen in Okinawa -- the spot attracts divers, snorkelers and the occasional surfer when the tide is ripping.
A friend of mine told me the spot was better for snorkeling than even crowded Sunabe, so I was anxious to check it out. Now that I've been three times, I'm regret that I haven't been here as long as my pal has. This spot must have been breathtaking at one point.
It's still beautiful, make no mistake. But there are too many vistas like this, which feature hauntingly beautiful, solitary coral heads looking out over ghostly rock faces. To the point: there is a lot of dead coral out here.
Here and there, you also see live coral stands that have been bleached by rising ocean temperatures:
This spot isn't as popular or as commercially developed as Sunabe, so there's comparatively little in the way of pollution. I did spot this old tire, though, raising copious questions about how it ended up there.
I just wrote an article for E: The Environmental Magazine about steps we might take to save the world's coral: I'll write about some of those steps in a subsequent post.
Okinawa's environment is special. All you need to do is walk, bike or paddle around to see it. Ecologists look for ways to assess that specialness -- I look for ways to express it to readers.
The reason I'm writing this book is simple: I think if people get to know the Okinawa I know, they'll love it as much as I do, and be inspired to come enjoy it, which will inspire folks further to protect this precious place. If you can't be here in the forest and see a velvety-blue butterfly land on a broadleafed, rain-flecked leaf, I'll try to tell you as much as I can about the place where such scenes are common, though never pedestrian.
But that's fun stuff, seeing animals and plants in the wild. The work comes in crunching numbers and explaining why bloodless calculations matter.
For starters, some people still don't get why biodiversity is so important. Even if you don't believe, as I do, that life is intrinsically valuable and worth preserving, there are other reasons. Ecology enriches our lives in so many ways, from aesthetics to medical advances. More, we're learning that species loss in places like the ocean threatens the web of life itself, as this paper in the journal Science (abstract available to non-subscribers) demonstrates.
Places like Okinawa are essential to global species diversity, particularly in the ocean. But how do we know this? How do we demonstrate it?
Scientists think, correctly, that this back-of-the-envelope calculation often oversimplifies, glossing over what really happens in an ecosystem. That's right, but species richness is also an easy-to-grok starting point.
As for Okinawa, more than 1,000 types of fish live here -- that's a big number. And that's just fish, not coral, or mammals, or crustaceans.
Out here, we have filter feeders (corals, clams), bottom feeders, carnivorous fish and so forth. The sea is a spectacular example of diversity. Over 90 percent of Japan's coral is in Okinawa. There are roughly 370 species of coral here in the Ryukyus -- there are only about 500 in the whole world. This is true even with recent blows from invasive species and global warming.
Evenness calculates how the number of species are distributed. How abundant is the more common species versus the least common species? For example, let's say the most common species is the gurukun, a common food fish. You count those, and come up with 1,000. If the least common is the green sea turtle, and there are 100 of those, you compare the relative abundance and see how "evenly" they are distributed. This is the most academic measurement we'll address for a while, and most studies look simply at abundance, but studies indicate that it really helps flesh out your picture of an ecosystem.
Rare species are especially important if they are what's called endemic -- that is, they occur nowhere else but this particular earthly home. We've talked lots about the ocean, so let's talk about terrestrial ecology for a minute.
The Yanbaru forest up north contains many of Japan's endemic species. There are 17 types of indigenous birds here, including the famous Okinawa woodpecker and Yanbaru kuina. There are also endemic mammals like the Ryukyu long-tailed rat, and reptiles like the red-streaked Ryukyu yamagame (mountain turtle):
For a science-heavy examination of endemism in Okinawa, especially Yanbaru, check this PDF out. Short version: Okinawa has significantly more endemic species than anyplace else in Japan, and even environmentally significant Hokkaido pales in comparison to the great forests here just about however you look -- more different types of tree, more different animals, more different insects.
Yes, more different insects. Hey, nobody said biodiversity was always easy for hikers.
Next up: interview folks from this group. I've got a framework for understanding the ecology of the region: now I want to talk to the scientists on the ground who are working hard to understand it.
What we know about Okinawa now is more than enough to justify passionate efforts to preserve it. And we're learning more each day.
The student had already started pulling the two sea hares apart when the purple ink began to flow. The creatures excrete the colorful substance to deter predators, explained the professor. Was that also the reason these two congregated together, another student mused?
Oh no, he said, they're probably mating.
It's not my habit to interrupt the sex
acts of invertebrates, but it's not like I could prevent others from
doing so. Besides, the rich purple color was intriguing, and taking pictures beats stumbling around trying to take notes in the dark. We continued to ruin the sea hares' Saturday night attempts at wild times. They're hermaphrodites, so I didn't feel too bad -- their dating pool is twice the size of yours or mine.
I was tagging along with Dr. Robert Bolland's marine biology class at the University of Maryland's Asia campus here. An extreme minus tide would allow us access to nooks and crannies previously unnavigable. Dr. Bolland, a well-regarded biologist that I'd briefly interviewed for a story, took us to the south end of Onna flats. That's site six on this map, and it included a wet slog through a sequence of caves along with a trip to the small island Americans call Goat Island.
Dr. Bolland's been out here for decades. We walked across the flats, pausing occasionally. He pointed out a head of live coral that looks sadly out of place amongst all its the dead, petrified cousins.
“It wasn't so long ago – 10 years, maybe – that I'd come out here and all of this would be alive,” he said.
What are the problems? Elevated water temperature from global warming and red clay runoff from development on land. The silty, sticky soil seeps into the ocean after trees and grasses are removed. This chokes out the coral and helps spread disease.
That's not the only problem from development out here. As the tide pulled back, we saw this sewer pipe from one of the local hotels. Stories abound about the big resorts -- which are owned almost exclusively by big corporations from the mainland -- playing fast and loose with their waste.
Bolland is not one to softplay his take on environmental issues. “The tidelands are a disaster,” he said. “It's more than a little bit depressing.”
Yet there are still wonders here.
The glowing orange tubastrea, a stony coral known as cup coral, shone in the night. Most coral has symbiotic algae content that helps supply it with nutrients, but not tubastrea -- it has to rely on directly drawing nutrition from the water. Hence, it is found in the caves, where more edible plankton is found.
Outside the caves brought different sights. This sea cucumber uses sticky emissions to hamstring a crab's attempt to pinch of bits of it. If you get some on your hands, be sure to pick up a bunch of sand to abrade the gunk off of yourself – if you absentmindedly touch an eye, it can harm your sight.
A small pencil slate urchin moved around slowly but perciptibly:
Then there were the dangerous beauties, such as this diadema urchin, whose long spines contain dangerous venom.
A cone shell is toxic, too, but some researchers believe its venom will ultimately be used to treat diseases. For now, though, don't pick one of these up.
A vermillion sea star, which one sees out here only at night:
I asked Dr. Bolland about his prognosis for places like this. Can the coral recover? Maybe, the answer came, but slowly. He doesn't expect to see coral like a decade ago again, at least not in his lifetime. The Japanese are using this as a resort island. Since development is such a problem already, and there's more to come, well ...
"There is no real good news. It just makes you sick," he said.
After meandering through the darkened caves and miraculously making it out without my ninth (yes, ninth) concussion, I strolled home to transcribe my notes and think about what he'd said. In the second miracle of the night, my hastily scrawled recordings were legible. Stranger still, a large mosquito had somehow managed to fly into my notebook during the evening and -- without successfully biting me -- become pressed perfectly flat between the pages.
The ecology is rich out here, it flies into your notebook and dies before you even notice. Notice what I said: before you even notice.
Tomorrow night, a dramatic minus tide will reveal parts of the beach that one normally can't see from shore. I'll walk along the coast with a prominent local biologist, inspecting sea life. This is a tremendous opportunity to document oceanic wildlife without even getting wet.
But that's tomorrow.
The gifts of modern technology enable us to get as close as we please to innumerable underwater species by strapping on a tank of compressed air. Today, I continued this habit, preparing for the land-based view by taking the low road. The low road in question: three dives in the Kerama islands, off the coast of Takashiki and Zamami.
The crew? My usual dive buddy, Otis, and my friend Jon, a Watson Fellow who is on the island studying baseball. Jon just became certified in Puerto Rico, and this would be his first series of open-water dives. The introduction was memorable.
Almost immediately after entering the water, we happened upon two hawksbill turtles. One swam off into the clear blue ocean; another remained to feed and seek shelter around fan coral.
Jon was thrilled to see such a magnificent creature so soon. The hawksbill was less thrilled to see him, and proved that he was swifter than the new diver.
Jon reacted thusly to his defeat in the race, available for your perusal in video format.
[Note: all of my diving videos are available down the left sidebar, but are also posted in higher quality at my YouTube page. If you want less pixelated videos, go there.]
We also found Nemo. Lots of Nemo.
Further wildlife harassment:
This was an inflated pufferfish. We passed him around like a very prickly volleyball before he swam off, flustered but unharmed.
Jon and Otis both juggled with three sea cucumbers, but it was this nose-balancing technique that most impressed me.
Maybe both of those statements are true, but I shy away from taste-based field research. That, and research that involves touching venomous sea vipers.
It was almost enough to make a guy feel guilty. After taking two batches of visitors snorkeling under sub-optimal weather and tide circumstances, today the skies cleared and the currents cooperated. Perfection for snorkeling, and I had the beach all to myself.
Yeah, I felt guilt. Not enough to keep me dry, though.
The sun was shining. Almost no wind. The tide was in, making the entry at the Sunabe seawall much easier. I floated out into clear blue seas, watching the unmoving brilliant corals. Today the fish were shy, though.
Fish behavior is unlike human behavior. The prettiest ones rarely want to be the center of attention. Diving is an advantage, since you don't have that old bugaboo called buoyancy keeping you at the surface, nor do you require the occasional breath of oxygen. Despite the excellent conditions, I was having a tough time drawing a bead on any of my scaly brethren, so I had to content myself with paddling around and getting a photo-free gander.
Then I saw it: the invasive species responsible for destroying coral here and in Australia, the Crown-of-Thorns Starfish. Unlike the lovely fish, it doesn't swim away, so I got a shot of it and thought about how to proceed.
During my first encounter with this vile creature, I wasn't certain enough of my identification to take steps. This time, there was no doubt I was looking at the reef-murderer itself.
Multiple means are used to eradicate the Crown-of-Thorns, none of which I had at my disposal. Out here they like to remove the beast from the ocean entirely, but in my snorkeling gear, I didn't even have protective gloves. Still, I wanted to try something.I toed at it with my stiff, long dive flipper. The environmental scourge was softer than you might think, though I had no luck dislodging it at first.
So I did what any responsible ecologist (or drunken redneck) would have done. I kicked the absolute snot out of it.
This is how justice looks. Very blurry, that justice.
These creatures can regenerate, so I wanted to do as much damage to it (and as little damage to the coral) as possible.
After a few minutes of careful kicking -- I didn't want to harm the coral beneath, nor did I want to be accidentally pricked by the star's spines -- my flipper pierced crown, thorns and flesh. Innards became outards.
If I've learned nothing else from The Predator, I've learned that if things can bleed, you can kill them. Spurred on by this encouraging developed, I sprayed the water orange with starfish gall bladder, spleen and pancreas until it gave up the ghost, came loose and went belly up. In poker parlance, let's see the flop:
Starry the Gutted Invasive Species floated away, hopefully to trouble us no more and leave the reef in peace. Here's the coral stand to which it was formerly affixed. You're welcome, coral, just doing my job.
Virtue is its own reward, it is said. But it's always nice when virtue gets one a little something extra. In this case, all those beautiful fish that ran from me before were made ravenous by the sight of starfish guts. Butterflyfish, parrotfish, blennies and angelfish all wandered toward lunch, apparently oblivious of yours truly.
Instant karma. A trip saved by starfish innards.
The weather promises to be even better the next few days, so the forecast calls for more diving and snorkeling posts. Stay tuned: I have some exciting things planned.
Today I went diving at three spots along the southern coast of Okinawa. The weather wasn't the best; it was chilly for here, and we felt a strong tidal surge at each site that left me spent this afternoon. It was well worth it, though, as always.
I played around with my new color filter, and after determining that I could in fact extract truer color from an image with it attached, also learned some ways to best use my new tool.
The more soft coral I see, the more charmed I am. I feel like just stopping and watching, trying to capture these strange and beautiful creatures' movements, either with still photographs or video. Here are some attempts at each:
This is a shellfish known as a sea rabbit. Similar to a conch, it congregates near reefs, consuming food.
It's the black shell, below the soft coral.
And out of dark caves:
Since this will have to be a quick post -- it's an early day tomorrow -- here are a few decent shots of the coral and colorful fish that rely on them:
Three dives today. Lots of swimming. With luck, another two or three dives tomorrow. looking for the elusive dugong. Wish us luck.
Let me drop a mathematical equation on you. New Haircut + Sunny Morning + Tropical Island = Snorkeling. QED.
As you may have noticed from the profile pic over there on the left, I've snipped off the vast majority of my long locks. It's a hassle while diving, and will be even more so when the weather starts warming up. Yesterday mom and I went to a local salon and I picked the least punk-rock looking of the haircuts ... which still looked pretty punk rock at first. I beat it into submission, stuffed it under my hood and away from my mask and snorkel, and hit the water with mom.
We went to the pipeline site north of Kadena, just a few kilos north of our last expedition at the Sunabe sea wall. While I think I like the Sunabe site a bit better for diversity of life, this spot is less crowded and has an easier entry. Not as many fish, at least this time, but a really tremendous assortment of hard and soft corals.
Soft corals are fast becoming one of my favorite creatures in the sea. They wave with the tide, almost hypnotically, and come in a grand tapestry of colors:
Here's a shot of mom in my dive skin so, in her words, "people believe I actually did this":
See, that's really her, swimming above the school of reef fish:
At first I barely noticed the fellow hiding in this stand, but once I did, I dove to get a few more shots of him.
