Robert Richmond appointed to NAS committee to explore interventions to save reefs
The current coral bleaching event began last year in the Pacific Ocean. This reef in American Samoa was healthy in December 2014 (left) but had lost its characteristic colour in February 2015 (right). Image courtesy of XL Catlin Seaview Survey.
Robert Richmond, SOEST researcher, was recently appointed to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee on “Interventions to Increase the Resilience of Coral Reefs.” The 12-person committee is comprised of researchers from the U.S. and Australia.
Richmond, a research professor and director at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory in the SOEST Pacific Biosciences Research Center (PBRC), focuses his work on coral reef ecosystems, with studies including coral reproductive biology, ecotoxicology, coral reef ecology and the impacts of climate change.
The situation facing coral reefs is nothing short of desperate — and a drastic cut in global carbon dioxide emissions won’t be enough to protect corals from deadly bleaching events and other environmental threats. In hopes of giving the reefs a fighting chance, a newly formed committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will review a variety of potential intervention strategies, from genetic modification of coral species to spraying salt water into the atmosphere to shade and cool reefs.
At the committee’s first meeting recently, Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration’s (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch, said the “severity” of what has occurred between June 2014 and May 2017 — the “longest, most widespread, and possibly the most damaging” bleaching event on record — has changed the scientific community’s perspective about what should be done.
The project is expected to take up to two years and will assess both the risks and benefits of intervention strategies. It is sponsored by NOAA.
Read more at Huffington Post.