Resource managers and conservationists have been offered an innovative, new approach to selecting coral species for reef restoration. In a study published in Journal of Applied Ecology, an international team of scientists, led by a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researcher, revealed a strategy for choosing a set of key coral species that will best maintain ecosystem functions critical for reef health.

“The ecosystem services that coral reefs provide for people, such as coastal protection and fisheries, depend upon coral species with a broad range of what are called life history strategies, for example slow to fast growing, mounding to branching shapes, and under to upper storey,” said Joshua Madin, study lead author and research professor at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “Therefore, restoration practitioners need to consider this range of local species when restoring coral reefs—much like forest restoration requires more than just fast-growing plants.”

The scientists worked together to develop this approach during a workshop organized by the University of Melbourne (U Melbourne) and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).

Coral reefs worldwide are rapidly disappearing due to a number of anthropogenic disturbances, with global warming being the biggest threat. In response, coral reef restoration is a growing research field and industry. Most coral reefs comprise tens to hundreds of stony coral species, yet resources for coral reef restoration are insufficient to restore them all. Methods for selecting species that will best maintain species diversity and ecosystem function are currently unavailable.

The research team combined databases of coral species traits with their ecological characteristics, including their resistance to thermal bleaching, to see how best to select sets of species for restoration using a hedging approach, much like that used for investment portfolios.  

“Selection based on ecological characteristics is important for hedging against future species loss, whereas trait diversity is important for hedging against the loss of certain ecosystem services, reef-building groups, life history categories and evolutionary variety,” said Madin.

Aiding restoration practitioners

This hedging approach provides a simple framework for aiding restoration practitioners in selecting target species for their projects, depending on spatial scale and resources.

“For example, if a program only has funds to focus on 20 coral species, they would want to focus on the sets of species to get the most ecosystem bang for their buck,” said Professor Madeleine van Oppen from U Melbourne and AIMS, who is the senior author on the paper. “Current coral restoration programs tend to focus on easy to collect, ‘weedy’ coral species, which have similar characteristics and cannot support ecosystem services on their own.”

The study also found that, if species data are limited, selecting species at random is much better than selecting species that are easy to collect. The extra effort required will pay off in terms of preserving ecosystem services that communities rely on. The method can be applied to any coral reef for which coral trait data are available.     

As coral reefs face greater risks, including in Hawaiʻi and Australia, where people depend on reefs for tourism, recreation, coastal protection and sustenance, coral restoration is the focus of much research and development. The new approach to selecting coral species is already being applied to a hybrid reef program in Hawaiʻi funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The goal of that groundbreaking project is to create an engineered structure that provides habitat for corals and other reef life while protecting coastlines from flooding, erosion and storm damage.

Read also on Maui Now, UH News, Eurekalert, and Maui News.

Using unoccupied aerial system (UAS), or drone, photographs, researchers from the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) are now able to determine the age-structure of free-ranging dolphin groups. This work will aid monitoring the health of dolphin populations and inform timely conservation efforts. The findings of the study that developed and applied this new technique were recently published in Ecology and Evolution. 

When dolphins come to the surface to breathe, they expose their blowhole and dorsal fin. By measuring the distance between the two, researchers can estimate their total body length. Since total length is related to age, the international team of researchers, led by scientists at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in SOEST, developed a technique of inferring age based on length for each measured dolphin within a group.

“This method can help us quantify the age-structure of free-ranging populations,” said Fabien Vivier, lead author of the study and marine biology doctoral candidate in the Marine Mammal Research Program at HIMB. “Healthy dolphin populations usually contain a certain proportion of newborn, immature, and mature animals, while deviances from this distribution may be interpreted as a population growth or decline.”

Previous studies documented encouraging results of using drone photography to study and measure the size and body condition of large whales. However, no studies had applied this approach to assessing small dolphins, such as bottlenose dolphins.

“Because it is difficult working with free-ranging animals, we could not be sure if it would work out as planned,” said Vivier.

To understand whether analyzing UAS photos would be reliable for estimating the length of free-swimming dolphins, the researchers collaborated with Dolphin Quest O‘ahu and tested the method on their bottlenose dolphins. They then tested the approach in estimating the age-class of free-ranging dolphins by collaborating with the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program in Florida, the world’s longest-running dolphin research project.

The Sarasota Dolphin Research Program provided the age, total body length, and distance between the blowhole and dorsal fin for many individuals in their study community. This offered the unique opportunity to calibrate and test the accuracy of the team’s age estimates and the inferred age-class based on length for free-ranging individuals.

“Our hope in developing and using this method is that we can quickly monitor the health of free-ranging dolphin populations,” said Vivier. “This may facilitate the detection of early signs of population changes, for example, a decrease in the number of calves, and provide important insights for timely management decisions.”

While this method was developed on bottlenose dolphins, it can be applied to other dolphin species which will aid in their monitoring and conservation. The team’s current research focuses on spinner dolphins in the main Hawaiian Islands.

Read also on Hawaii News Now, Big Island Now, Eurekalert, Phys.org, Science Daily, West Hawai’i Today, and UH News.

The cover of June 2023 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society features an investigation co-authored by SOEST atmospheric scientist Christina Karamperidou that identified the role played by La Niña in the deadly drought experienced by German and Austrian expatriate settlers on the remote and rugged volcanic island of Floreana in the Galapagos archipelago in the early 1930s.

Karamperidou and Michael J. McPhaden, with NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, used an atmospheric reanalysis and other data sources to describe for the first time how an extended period of cold La Niña conditions led to a two-year (1933–35) drought in the Galapagos, and how these conditions affected the drama that unfolded on Floreana Island. The settlers’ extraordinary adventures and struggles to survive formed a compelling saga that was highly publicized in popular press accounts of the day. Their story, except for the role played by La Niña, was chronicled in a 2013 Hollywood documentary titled The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.

Drawn to the islands by their impression of local climate being idyllic and “constant”, the settlers were poorly prepared for the year-to-year variations that are now known to be due to El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO). 

“This story provides an opportunity to reflect on how far climate science has advanced in the past 90 years,” said Karamperidou and McPhaden. “And, we see how much our society has benefited from that progress, particularly since the 1960s, when Jacob Bjerknes provided the modern conceptual framework for understanding and predicting ENSO, and the 1970s, when Klaus Wyrtki of SOEST identified key processes in the development of ENSO events that ultimately led to our ability to forecast them.” 

Accompanying the feature article is cover art created by Sarah Battle, also with NOAA’s PMEL,  in the Art Deco style of the 1930s, referring to the exotic, isolated locale where the Galapagos Affair took place. The color scheme of earth tones, greens, and blues emphasizes the tropical and semiarid climate of the Galapagos Islands and the vast ocean that surrounds them. The woman’s image, the photos, and the news-print extracts refer to the human drama that unfolded there that decade, while snippets of data are clues to La Niña’s thread that weaves through the story.

Student scientists successfully collected coral egg and sperm bundles to test on a redesigned cryo freezing device at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) on Moku o Loʻe (Coconut Island) in the evening of June 19, marking a crucial step in saving the species threatened by climate change and pollution.

Montipora capitata, a type of coral commonly found in Hawaiʻi, is known to reproduce on nights surrounding the new moon in late May to July. During these rare spawning events, colonies release thousands of egg-sperm bundles.

At 8:45 p.m. on June 19, under the glow of red light headlamps that are less invasive to the coral, scientists and students at UH Mānoa and the University of Minnesota waited patiently for egg-sperm bundles that resemble tiny styrofoam beads to rise to the surface of the water. Once at the surface, the bundles were carefully extracted and placed into vials. The work during the evening produced thousands of bundles for collection and testing.

Coral sperm will be stored using cryopreservation, which is a process that freezes to preserve them. By freezing coral sperm, scientists are able to bank samples until they can be transported around the world and transferred to coral eggs of varying species of coral. Having diverse coral reefs provides a more flourishing ecosystem that supports more plants and wildlife.

UH Mānoa biology and business student Jia Cashon said, “We were very lucky to get to experience the magic of it all with the Hagedorn Lab (at HIMB) and to see how it contributes to our understanding of coral ecology and conservation efforts.”

Successful partnership and cross-disciplinary collaboration

Both UH Mānoa and University of Minnesota students worked for several months leading up to the successful June event. Minnesota mechanical engineering students have been improving and redesigning a portable cryofreezer since January. Improvements to the device include increased capacity to freeze more samples, and utilization of a microcontroller computer for better control over freezing and thawing rates and temperatures. Using the redesigned cryofreezer, the team was able to produce healthy and viable post-thaw sperm at a higher rate than the previous version of the device.

The Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (PACE) in UH Mānoa’s Shidler College of Business identified a team of UH students who are passionate about ocean conservation efforts and tasked them to develop a market feasibility study and commercialization strategy for the freezing device.

The team includes Cashon, computer engineering major Sincere Bolling, marketing major Rzenseth Cabansag, entrepreneurship major Joshua McDade, and marine biology major Quentin Shores. This team of students has been working on market validation and customer identification for the device since January, and is currently completing its final weeks in the PACE Summer Startup Launchpad program. Guided by PACE Faculty Fellow Blake Nichols and mentors in the program, the team identified what could be a billion-dollar market for cryopreservation of not just coral sperm, but other biological organisms, and honed in on potential customers for the freezing device.

PACE Executive Director Sandra Fujiyama said, “When School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Judy Lemus proposed this project, I knew PACE needed to be involved. Students from varying fields of study can learn so much more from each other. I am grateful to Dr. Judy Lemus and Dr. Mary Hagedorn for seeing the value in looking ahead to the commercial potential of inventions and technologies. We hope to participate in more interdisciplinary projects like these that bring different disciplines and groups together, and give students unique, dynamic, real-world learning experiences.”

The collaboration was made possible with the support of Hagedorn, senior research scientist at HIMB, who offered lab space, lodging and scientists from her team to lead the sperm-egg bundle collection and testing.

“We wanted the UH and University of Minnesota students to be exposed to a remarkable natural event, and to think creatively about the many problems and opportunities in conservation and cryopreservation,” said Nikolas Zuchowicz, University of Minnesota PhD student and workshop organizer. “We anticipated that the design team and the entrepreneurship team would look at cryopreservation technology in a new way and bring fresh ideas into our community. They have done this, and we are delighted with their work. We look forward to planning the next steps to further improve freezing methods and to get our collective work out into the world.”

Read also on UH News and Hawaii News Now.

At the 2023 Hawai‘i STEM Conference last month, researchers, staff, and students from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa offered 300 students and 70 teachers inspiration and hands-on professional development opportunities focused on ocean, space, and aerospace science. 

Rosie Alegado, an associate professor in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), delivered a keynote address to the conference attendees. Her talk, “Our Science, Our Way,” focused on the importance of asking science questions about problems that affect our local communities.

“I emphasized this because I feel that the problems facing Hawaiʻi, for example, climate, food security, and biological diversity, are questions that have broad applicability,” said Alegado. “I also focused on the importance of each person bringing their whole self to science, especially our cultural knowledge.”

Among the professional development sessions offered to students was one by graduate student Anamica Bedi de Silva and research technician Kelsey McBeain, both in the SOEST Department of Oceanography. Their hands-on workshop revealed the secret world of marine viruses, which, they shared, are found in every environment and, in some cases, can be beneficial in the marine environment. 

“I want young people to understand that all scientists, no matter how smart, struggle, but we carry on because of our curiosity,” said Bedi de Silva. “Therefore, when teaching a class or a workshop, I try to emphasize that aptitude and attitude, rather than grades, make for a good scientist. Girls in STEM, and other historically excluded people, benefit from face-to-face interaction with real scientists and I am so happy that the Hawai‘i STEM conference gave me the opportunity to be a role model for high schoolers.”

“Watching people learn about what we do and why we do it gives so much to both us as presenters and the students as learners,” McBeain added. “Even if they’re only interested in the moment, for that session there’s a common interest, something everyone gets excited about. And maybe, just maybe, that will ignite a spark.”

Teachers were offered professional development sessions covering free resources available for place-based genome science and aerospace education. Eric Tong, a marine biology graduate student and colleagues from Iolani School shared Aina-Informatics, a teacher network supported by Iolani School designed to bring place-based genome science, bioinformatics, and pono bioethics into local high school classrooms. 

Through his connection to Hawai‘i Wing Civil Air Patrol, SOEST oceanographer Maj Martin Guiles and his colleague shared the benefits of joining as an aerospace education member, which is free for all STEMworks teachers. They walked educators through the STEM Kits, pre-packaged lesson plans, and hands-on activities provided with the kits. Educators are eligible to receive up to two sets of STEM kits each year and a yearly flight in one of the Civil Air Patrol airplanes.

In an opportunity to network with industry presenters, Kelly Ngo, an electrical engineer at the Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory in SOEST, and Mariana Rocha de Souza, a coral reef biologist at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology connected with teachers and students. 

Engaging students, teachers and communities

Knowledgeable and engaged teachers, students, and communities are essential as humans face climate change and issues of sustainability in Hawai‘i and around the world. Alegado is committed to training scholars to draw upon multiple knowledge systems to address key problems and empower communities to understand and protect their resources. Connecting with Hawai‘i’s teachers forms a crucial pathway for preparing the next generation of stewards and leaders.

“Key influences in my science journey have been my family, as well as my science teachers from elementary through high school,” said Alegado.

The HI STEM Conference was hosted by STEMworks, a program of the Maui Economic Development Board, with sponsorship from state and federal agencies and public and private organizations. 

SOEST oceanography professor Angelicque White has been invited to speak at the 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) 5th Annual Frontiers in Ocean Sciences Symposium on Thursday, June 22, 2023 from 6:30 to 11:00 am HST (12:30 to 5:00 pm ET).

In celebration of June as World Ocean Month, the NSF Frontiers in Ocean Sciences Symposium highlights NSF-supported scientists who are transforming ocean science and are at the frontiers of their field.

White, who conducts research through the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) and is the principal investigator for the Hawai‘i Ocean Time-series program, will discuss ocean observing systems and the predictability, as well as mysteries, of life.

“It’s such an honor to be invited to this important forum to discuss and highlight our research,” said White. “Hawai‘i is a nexus for cutting-edge oceanography and an important and wildly relevant place for seagoing open-ocean research. It is fitting that we share our stories of ocean observation and ocean change.”

Additional speakers will join White for the annual event, including Heidi Sosik from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Noel Bartlow Jackson from Kansas University, and Patrick Heimbach from University of Texas Austin.

The symposium will also include three of last year’s speakers returning for an alumni panel discussion, including Amina Schartup from U.C. San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Claudine Hauri from University of Alaska, and Dan Okamoto from Florida State University. 

The event is free and open to all. To register in advance for the virtual symposium, click here.