April 08, 2005

4/8 - The Coral Reef Debate: Palumbi endorses the Pandolfi et al. Science article

There's a long standing problem among coral reef ecologists. Some don't want to draw any conclusions until the data are very, very convincing. Others feel there will be no coral reefs left if we wait for that point. This was clear way back 15 years ago when the data showed a series of coral reef bleaching events that matched the years of warmest temperatures in the 1980's. Some scientists immediately jumped onto this pattern saying it was proof that warm water causes coral bleaching. Others criticized them for being too hasty. But now, 15 years later, its clear that those folks who jumped to conclusions quickly were ... right.

And yet, even though there is pretty clear consensus that warm water causes bleaching, there's still a lack of consensus on what's killing coral reefs. In this short article in Nature, our buddy Steve Palumbi (SB Photo Contest judge last summer) reaches back 100 years to the postulates that Koch developed to assess what causes someone to be sick, suggesting that the same rules might be appropriate for evaluating coral reef problems today.
Coral Today jpeg.jpg
Can we treat coral reef decline like it was a bacterial infection of the oceans?

Posted by Randy Olson at April 8, 2005 12:45 AM