Earth’s Most Diverse Coral Reef Life Found Off Indonesia’s Papua Province

Washington, D.C. (Sept. 18, 2006) – Two recent expeditions led by Conservation International (CI) to the heart of Asia’s “Coral Triangle” discovered dozens of new species of marine life including epaulette sharks, “flasher” wrasse and reef-building coral, confirming the region as the Earth’s richest tropical shallow water seascape.

The unmatched marine biodiversity of the Bird’s Head Seascape, named for the shape of the distinctive peninsula on the northwestern end of Indonesia’s Papua province, includes more than 1,200 species of fish and almost 600 species of reef-building (scleractinian) coral, or 75 percent of the world’s known total.

Researchers described an underwater world of visual wonders, such as the small epaulette shark that “walks” on its fins and colorful schools of reef fish populating abundant and healthy corals of all shapes and sizes.

Threats from over-fishing with dynamite and cyanide, as well as deforestation and mining that degrade coastal waters, require immediate steps to protect the unique marine life that sustains local communities. The seascape’s central location in the Coral Triangle of the Pacific, which exports and maintains biodiversity in the entire Indo-Pacific marine realm, makes it one of the planet’s most urgent marine conservation priorities.

“These Papuan reefs are literally ‘species factories’ that require special attention to protect them from unsustainable fisheries and other threats so they can continue to benefit their local owners and the global community,” said Mark Erdmann, senior adviser of CI’s Indonesian Marine Program, who led the surveys. “Six of our survey sites, which are areas the size of two football fields, had over 250 species of reef-building coral each – that’s more than four times the number of coral species of the entire Caribbean Sea.”
Though human population density in the region is low, the coastal people of the Bird’s Head peninsula are heavily dependent on the sea for their livelihoods – which now are under threat from a plan to transfer fishing pressures from Indonesia’s over-fished western seas to the east toward Papua province.

“The coastal villages we surveyed were mostly engaged in subsistence fishing, farming and gathering, and they require healthy marine ecosystems to survive,” said Paulus Boli, a State University of Papua researcher led the socioeconomic component of the expeditions. “We are very concerned about the potential impact of planned commercial fisheries expansion in the region, and we urge a precautionary approach that emphasizes sustainability over intensive exploitation.”

The two Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) surveys earlier this year, along with a third expedition in 2001, studied waters surrounding Papua province from Teluk Cenderawasih in the north to the Raja Ampat archipelago off the western coast and southeast to the FakFak-Kaimana coastline. A few hundred kilometers inland are Papua’s Foja Mountains, where a team led by CI and the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI) last year discovered a virtual “Lost World” of new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and other wildlife.

Off the coast, researchers found more than 50 species of fish, coral and mantis shrimp previously unknown to science in the Bird’s Head Seascape that covers 18 million hectares, including 2,500 islands and submerged reefs. The seascape also includes the largest Pacific leatherback turtle nesting area in the world, and migratory populations of sperm and Bryde’s whales, orcas and several dolphin species.

“We’re thankful to the Ministry of Forestry and CI for the significant data from these surveys, and we are excited to be planning further surveys in 2007 to fill in remaining data gaps that will help us plan the most effective management possible for this exceedingly crucial area,” said Dr. Suharsono, head of LIPI’s Oceanography Center.

Only 11 percent of the seascape is currently protected, most of it in the Teluk Cenderawasih National Park that is supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Indonesia (WWF-Indonesia). Results of the CI-led surveys highlight the need for a well-managed network of multiple-use Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to conserve the seascape's biodiversity and ensure the long-term sustainability of commercial and subsistence fishing.

Partners in the two 2006 surveys funded by the Walton Family Foundation included the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry’s Department of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation and its local offices in Papua; Teluk Cenderawasih National Park Authority, the State University of Papua, and WWF-Indonesia.

Spotlight on the Caribbean

Staghorn Coral Restoration Project to Help Upper Keys

SUMMERLAND KEY, FL — The Nature Conservancy’s Florida Keys program is transplanting fragments of wild staghorn coral to restore degraded reefs in the Upper Keys with the help of a $36,000 grant awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Scientists also will be testing the staghorn’s resistance to heat stress that leads to coral bleaching. The reef-building staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) has experienced a massive decline throughout Florida and the Caribbean due to local, regional and global threats. Conservancy staff collected 100 staghorn colonies to add to the staghorn colonies populating a privately owned underwater nursery in the Upper Keys. The new colonies were fragmented and cemented onto platforms within the nursery. In May, these corals will again be fragmented and then transplanted to multiple restoration sites, to be monitored by staff and volunteers. The $36,000 grant is part of a national partnership between the NOAA Community-based Restoration Program and The Nature Conservancy. The Conservancy is working in collaboration with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, where the restoration sites are located, and Ken Nedimyer, who owns the nursery and is helping collect, tend, plant and monitor the corals. Scientists will also analyze the genes of the coral colonies to test the theory that some genes are better than others at resisting the heat stress that leads to coral bleaching and sometimes death. Additional data from reefs at different depths and distances from shore will indicate heat tolerance and suitability for restoration. Identifying these factors about reef resilience is part of the Florida Reef Resilience Program, a federal/state/Nature Conservancy partnership. “The grant will help restore damaged reefs in the Upper Keys to a healthy condition and that in turn will preserve the delicate ecological balance that is so important to Keys residents and to folks from all over the world who marvel at the beauty of our Florida Keys," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Miami), who supports this grant funding. "I am committed to conservation in the Keys and proud that this funding will be used for such a great project in my district.” Volunteer divers and boat operators interested in helping to monitor restoration sites should contact. The Nature Conservancy’s Meaghan Johnson at (305) 745-8402.

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS from Defying Ocean's End Agenda for the Wider Caribbean

Change mindsets; raise awareness with a targeted drive towards education at all levels.

• Make fishermen aware of benefits to them of new approaches. • Educate tourists on ecologically responsible behavior. • Bring the marine environment into school curricula. • Give journalists compelling, science-based “stories.” • Target government and industry decision-makers using economic arguments.

Use the available science:

• Encourage regional analysis of existing datasets. • Provide further training for Caribbean scientists and managers. • Pursue basic research in some high-priority remote areas.

Improve management systems:

• Disseminate examples like the Soufriere Marine Management Area in St Lucia and the Hol Chan Marine Reserve in Belize that demonstrate effective management improving both local livelihoods and biodiversity protection. • Implement more — and more effective — protected areas. • Include full stakeholder participation. • Consider local ownership of nearshore fisheries assets as a management approach. • Set targets: include 30% of nearshore habitats within no-take zones; install mooring buoys at all commercial dive sites and yacht anchorages; raise sewage treatment to 90%. • Establish park user fees to support management efforts. • Initiate active interventions where ecosystem function requires restoration. • Include innovative approaches for industrial involvement; balance punitive measures ("polluter pays" or "zero net loss" approaches) with positive incentives.

Work Internationally:

• Encourage and support multi-lateral governance approaches. • Build up regional capacity through training and support of programs in poor or small nations.

Nature article: Beard Chromodynamics

Here’s another peer-reviewed scientific article, published in Nature, that was probably published in the vicinity of April 1 due to its title:

Vincent A. A. Jansen and Minus van Baalen (2006). “Altruism through beard chromodynamics.” Nature 440, 663-666 (30 March 2006).

Abstract: The evolution of altruism, a behaviour that benefits others at one’s own fitness expense, poses a darwinian paradox. The paradox is resolved if many interactions are with related individuals so that the benefits of altruism are reaped by copies of the altruistic gene in other individuals, a mechanism called kin selection. However, recognition of altruists could provide an alternative route towards the evolution of altruism. Arguably the simplest recognition system is a conspicuous, heritable tag, such as a green beard. Despite the fact that such genes have been reported, the ‘green beard effect’ has often been dismissed because it is unlikely that a single gene can code for altruism and a recognizable tag. Here we model the green beard effect and find that if recognition and altruism are always inherited together, the dynamics are highly unstable, leading to the loss of altruism. In contrast, if the effect is caused by loosely coupled separate genes, altruism is facilitated through beard chromodynamics in which many beard colours co-occur. This allows altruism to persist even in weakly structured populations and implies that the green beard effect, in the form of a fluid association of altruistic traits with a recognition tag, can be much more prevalent than hitherto assumed.

The phrase “green beard” was invented by Richard Dawkins as an example of an inherited visual display that would indicate that its possessor also possessed a genetic disposition for altruisum, and thus could be trusted. This sounds like it might be a way for genetic altruism to evolve, but if such a “tag” can evolve, then “fakers” might also easily evolve, making the tag pointless. This paper explores a situation, however, where beards (of multiple colors, hence “beard chromodynamics”) and altruism persist. From the conclusion:

Our results imply that the scope for green beard genes is much wider than often assumed. This is for a number of reasons. First, altruism can be maintained without all the functions for tag, recognition and altruism having to reside in a single locus: loose coupling between a recognition allele and altruistic trait suffices. Second, our results suggest that rather than there being a single green beard gene in a population, one can expect to find a diversity of such genes, especially if the population is weakly structured. A possible reason that so few coloured beards have been reported is the concentration of research on highly structured populations in which the diversity of beard colours is predicted to be low. Our analysis leads to the testable hypothesis that diversity in recognition tags inversely correlates with average relatedness. This suggests that relatively easily observed tag diversity can serve as an indicator for the nature of the underlying social interactions. Third, to detect the green beard effect one should look for cases where tag and trait can dynamically associate. A tag that functions as a green beard in one instance need not be associated with altruism in another population or at another instance in time, which obviously has consequences for our capacity to detect green beards.

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