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| CORALS GROWING SMALLER
| |  | Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 @ 05:21:41 EDT by Capt_Dave |  | | 
CORALS GROWING SMALLER
A recent study by the Wildlife Conservation Society that measured the size of more than 21,000 corals over a 14-year period found that corals are growing smaller and these changes are associated with coral bleaching events and fishing. The researchers measured coral sizes in marine parks in Kenya where fishing is not allowed and compared those findings with corals in nearby fishing grounds. The researchers studied 26 different types of coral and found that coral bleaching (associated with warmer-than-normal waters) and fishing reduced the sizes of them all. The researchers noted that because corals live in colonies and often only a portion of the colony dies when bleaching or damage from fishing occurs, the result is smaller colonies. Smaller corals are expected to reproduce less, possibly resulting in poorer recovery from future disturbances. Previous studies had suggested that the largest and oldest corals may be the hardiest survivors on impacted reefs, but the researchers found that older coral heads were often broken up into smaller colonies, so their size was not fully protective.
The lead author on the study is Dr. Tim McClanahan, Pew Fellow and Senior Conservation Zoologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society
Citation: T. R. McClanahan, M. Ateweberhan, J. Omukoto. Long-term changes in coral colony size distributions on Kenyan reefs under different management regimes and across the 1998 bleaching event. Pps. 755 - 768. DOI: 10.1007/s00227-007-0844-4
http://springerlink.com/content/j711362j11v1t712/
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