NOAA Coral Reef News

Based upon feedback received from both internal and external sources, Coral Reef News has undergone a makeover.

This page includes highlights from NOAA Coral Reef News, the monthly e-newsletter of the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. Click here for newsletter subscription information.

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June 2009 - (*pdf, 1.52 MB).

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NOAA Boosts Effectiveness in Addressing Top Three Threats to Coral Reefs

Final Annual Coral Fellowship Workshop for 2008-2010 Fellows

First International Coral Genomics Workshop Equips Coral Scientists for Genomics Era

NOAA Team Conducts International Workshop on Climate Change for Coral Reef Managers in Bonaire

NOAA Boosts Effectiveness in Addressing Top Three Threats to Coral Reefs. The decline and loss of coral reefs have significant social, cultural, economic, and ecological impacts on people and communities in the United States and around the world.  However, with effective leadership and management, healthy, resilient reef ecosystems can continue to provide these valuable services to current and future generations. The primary objective of the CRCP is to address strategic coral reef management needs in a targeted, cost-effective and efficient manner.

The CRCP is committed to continually refining its performance and efficiency measures to improve program effectiveness and better evaluate overall CRCP performance.  To make the most of limited resources and to have the largest impact to reverse general declines in coral reef health, the CRCP is narrowing the focus of its U.S. domestic program and shifting allocation of CRCP resources to taking on-the-ground and in-the-water action.  The CRCP is also expanding its international presence by becoming more actively involved in coral conservation efforts abroad, primarily in the Pacific, the Coral Triangle region, and the Caribbean.  To narrow its range of activities, the CRCP will emphasize efforts on understanding and addressing the top three recognized global threats to coral reef ecosystems: climate change impacts, fishing impacts, and impacts from land-based sources of pollution.  On June 29th, the CRCP released NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program Goals & Objectives 2010-2015 (pdf, 2.52 mb) and NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program International Strategy 2010-2015 (pdf, 1.50 mb).  These documents provide strategic guidance on the CRCP priorities for FY 2010-2015. 

To get to this point, the CRCP engaged a community of experts to help identify the twenty-year strategic goals and five-year objectives the CRCP will work towards to effectively address each of the top three threats to coral reef ecosystems, in both domestic and international arenas. An International Working Group was also established to focus on international efforts to alleviate all three major threats to reefs.  Each working group delivered draft goals and objectives on March 27th, a culmination of six months of work.  These draft goals and objectives were available for public comment through April 24, 2009.  Comments received were forwarded to the appropriate working group for consideration and incorporation into the final document, as appropriate.  To learn more about the process utilized to develop these reports, visit the Threat-based Working Groups page on the CRCP Website.

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Final Annual Coral Fellowship Workshop for 2008-2010 Fellows.  The Coral Reef Management Fellowship was established to respond to the need for additional coral reef management capacity in the U.S. Flag Pacific and Caribbean islands.  The Fellowship program provides the state and territorial coral reef management agencies with highly qualified candidates whose education and work experience meet each island’s specific coral reef management needs, while providing the individual fellows with professional training and experience in coastal and coral reef resource management.  Fellows spend two years working on specific projects determined by each island's coral reef management agencies.  NOAA maintains six two-year fellowships; fellows are located in Pago Pago, American Samoa; Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI); Honolulu, Hawai`i; Adelup, Guam; San Juan, Puerto Rico and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI).  The program will be expanded to include Florida in the 2010-2012 cycle.

The Fellowship program held its final training workshop for the 2008-2010 cohort of fellows on the island of Guam from June 15-20.  The annual retreat is conducted to provide training that will benefit the fellows in their positions, help them meet needs in their jurisdiction, as well as to allow fellows to share successes and lessons learned.  The fellows gave presentations on the work they have done during the course of their fellowship, which includes: RARE Pride Environmental Campaign (Elaina Todd, Guam); Population policy development (Alyssa Edwards, American Samoa); Watershed restoration (Kathleen Hermann, CNMI); Guanica Watershed & Lagoon rehabilitation (Raimundo Espinoza, Puerto Rico); and island-wide International Year of the Reef campaign (Karlyn Langhar, USVI).  Fellows took part in leadership training courses where they discussed methods for enabling change and managing conflict.  They were also able to visit several field sites to see how conservation management is addressed in Guam.  In addition, they visited the Talakhaya Watershed Revegetation project, which has successfully reduced sediment flow through the watershed and into the adjacent coral reefs on the island of Rota, CNMI.  This workshop provided professional development and allowed the fellows to share their success stories with one another and brainstorm ideas on methods to better transfer knowledge and experience between the U.S. states and territories that are tasked with coral reef conservation.

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First International Coral Genomics Workshop Equips Coral Scientists for Genomics Era.  The Coral Disease and Health Consortium (CDHC) was created in 2002 in response to the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force’s (USCRTF) National Action Plan to Conserve Coral Reefs.  It is now also a working group of the USCRTF.  Its goal is to provide coastal and ocean managers with scientific understanding and tools to protect healthy coral reef ecosystems and restore degraded ones. The CDHC is a network of field and laboratory scientists, coral reef managers, and agency representatives devoted to understanding coral health and disease.  Currently, over 150 partners contribute their time and expertise to the CDHC, while organizational infrastructure is supported by the CRCP.

The CDHC, the National Coral Reef Institute, and the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science co-convened a five-day training course on coral genomics from June 21-26 at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV.   The workshop brought together 20 trainees from seven countries that included a diversity of government scientists, university professors, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students. “Coral Genomics for the Non-Genomics Scientist” introduced the tools and language of genomic science and guided the trainees in the use of genomic tools using available coral data sets to identify protein coding sequences among libraries of cDNA sequences, explore microbial communities through their DNA, annotate a gene and delve into the world of microarrays.  The course used practical problem sets to illustrate each of the types of data available to today’s coral researcher and provided the participants with practical experience.

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NOAA Team Conducts International Workshop on Climate Change for Coral Reef Managers in Bonaire. The United States is one of many nations around the world working to halt the coral reef crisis and protect, restore and sustainably use coral reef ecosystems for current and future generations. Abnormal sea surface temperatures, in conjunction with natural and anthropogenic stressors are causing the delicate balance of these magnificent ecosystems to be disrupted thus increasing the frequency of bleaching events.  In 2005, the Caribbean experienced a severe mass coral bleaching event that left over half of all corals dead in some parts of the eastern Caribbean.  

Coral reef managers from around the Caribbean participated in the training workshop “Reef Resilience and Climate Change: A Workshop for Coral Reef Managers,” held June 9-12 in Kralendjik, Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles.  This workshop provided reef managers with the tools they need to understand coral bleaching, know when bleaching is likely to occur, and take actions to protect their valuable coral reef resources.  More than 25 international experts in coral reef management from Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten, St. Kitts/ Nevis, St. Vincent/Grenadines, Grenada, Antigua/ Barbuda, and Mexico met to learn about climate change impacts on coral reefs, responding to coral bleaching, resilience, incorporating resilience into management and marine protected areas (MPA) design, early warning tools available for managers to use, and ways to communicate about threats to coral reefs.  Participants were taught to use NOAA satellite tools to predict bleaching and ways to respond to these events.  They shared strategies and local management actions and participated in exercises that planned draft coral bleaching response plans and hypothetical MPAs that emphasize resilience to climate change.  Unique to this workshop was an open discussion between participants and stakeholders who work within the Stuchting Nationale Parken Bonaire (STINAPA)/Bonaire National Marine Park (STINAPA) to look at the issues of fishing and tourism. 

Workshop trainers came from NOAA Coral Reef Watch, STINAPA, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  The meeting was hosted by NOAA, TNC, the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance (DCNA), and STINAPA in conjunction with the 30th Anniversary celebration of the Bonaire National Marine Park.  It was funded primarily by the CRCP, TNC, DCNA, and STINAPA.  There was also funding from EarthEcho International and Dr. George Buckley of Harvard University’s Environmental Management Extension Program.

The workshop was the sixth in a series, which includes workshops in Australia (two), American Samoa, the Florida Keys, and Hawai`i.  To date, over 175 coral reef experts and managers have been trained; these individuals are able to apply what they learned to their local reefs in over 20 nations around the world. The next workshop will be held in Guam in September.

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