Saving Seafood

Scientists discover an amazing new creature at the bottom of the ocean

October 2, 2025 — A new deep-sea coral species from the tropical western Pacific has a name that makes people smile – Iridogorgia chewbacca.

The colony stands alone on rocky bottoms, with a shining stem and long branches that look a bit like flowing hair.

Researchers first noticed the coral species off Molokai in 2006, then saw it near the Mariana Trench in 2016.

he Molokai colony measured about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall, the Mariana sample reached roughly 20 inches (50 centimeters), and the branches grow up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) long.

Finding Chewbacca coral

The work features Les Watling of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), a longtime deep-sea coral expert. His university profile shows decades of taxonomic and exploratory research in these waters.

The team formally described Iridogorgia chewbacca together with a sister species, Iridogorgia curva.

In a peer-reviewed study, the authors report that the genus Iridogorgia now includes 14 species, with 10 recorded in the tropical western Pacific.

The paper also noted that a common field characteristic, the direction in which the spiral grows, does not reliably separate species. Genetic evidence helped sort species boundaries where lookalikes made things tricky.

Read the full article at Earth.com

Reef Madness: A Baseless Coral Panic

September 5, 2025 — You might have gotten the impression that the Great Barrier Reef—the aquatic wonder off Australia’s coast—is in grave peril. Last month, headlines shouted in unison: Great Barrier Reef suffers worst coral decline on record. Environmental journalists paint a picture of immense devastation driven by climate change.

The truth is much less alarming. Australian scientists have meticulously tracked the reef’s coral cover since 1986. For many years, they published an annual average coral cover figure. The data show that the reef was mostly stable until 2000, then began declining, and by 2012 it had shrunk to less than half its original cover.

But then the reef started growing. It rebounded spectacularly. The scientists stopped publishing their reef-wide average, perhaps because it didn’t further the climate-change narrative. But they continued publishing regional and sectorwide averages, making it possible for anyone to effectively recreate the reef-wide average.

Read the full article at Wall Street Journal 

NOAA and Partners Launch Next-Generation Coral Restoration Following Florida Coral Bleaching

July 22, 2025 — Healthy coral reefs are vital to the survival of thousands of marine species and provide $6.3 billion in local sales and 71,000 jobs annually (PDF, 29 pages). But rising ocean temperatures are pushing these ecosystems to the brink. That’s why NOAA is investing in cutting-edge technology to create more heat-resilient corals.

In the wake of Florida’s severe 2023 coral bleaching event, NOAA and its partners are launching new strategies to restore reefs and prepare them for a hotter future. At the heart of this effort is NOAA’s Mission: Iconic Reefs. It’s an ambitious long-term initiative to boost coral cover from just 2 percent to 25 percent across seven key sites in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

In 2023, the Office of Habitat Conservation awarded $16 million to the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science for a project applying emerging science and technology to coral breeding and restoration. The goal: to grow and outplant corals better equipped to withstand future bleaching. Key approaches include:

  • Selective breeding of corals that survived the 2023 bleaching to pass on heat-tolerant traits
  • Breeding Florida’s remaining elkhorn corals with heat-adapted corals from warm-water reefs in Honduras (this work was funded through a previous NOAA award)
  • Pairing baby corals with beneficial symbiotic algae and probiotic bacteria to improve their ability to withstand future bleaching
  • Bioprinting coral babies—embedding coral larvae, algae, and bacteria in a protective hydrogel to increase settlement and survival
  • Rearing baby corals in high-temperature environments to condition them to tolerate warmer waters

This work is funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is also supporting similar efforts by other Mission: Iconic Reefs partners. Mote Marine Laboratory and the Coral Restoration Foundation are:

  • Breeding and rearing coral species that withstood the 2023 bleaching
  • Accelerating the outplanting of massive brain and boulder coral species, which fared much better than branching corals like elkhorn and staghorn during the 2023 bleaching
  • Expanding the capacity to store genetically diverse and heat-tolerant corals for future restoration

Many other partners and individuals support the Mission: Iconic Reefs program.

Finding a New Way Forward

Before the 2023 bleaching event, Mission: Iconic Reefs prioritized the outplanting of branching corals like elkhorn and staghorn at reefs in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. But a 2024 assessment on outplanted corals revealed that fewer than 22 percent of staghorn corals survived the bleaching, and less than 5 percent of the elkhorn remained alive.

In the face of this devastating impact, NOAA and its partners—alongside coral restoration groups from around the world—came together to chart a new path forward.

“I’ve never seen so many dedicated people rise to the occasion and say, ‘We have to try harder,’” says Maddie Cholnoky, Mission: Iconic Reefs implementation manager. “These incredible organizations are sharing knowledge, science, and lessons learned. It’s inspired us to take those insights and help create adaptive tools for our partners and for the mission.”

In February, NOAA staff joined partners from the Coral Restoration Foundation, Mote Marine Laboratory, and Reef Renewal USA to mark the fifth anniversary of the initiative. They celebrated by outplanting new corals propagated from survivors of the 2023 bleaching event.

“We’ve done a fantastic job across so many organizations of preserving genetic diversity, which will be important in future outplanting efforts,” says Dr. Katey Lesneski, Mission: Iconic Reefs’s research and monitoring coordinator. “We have a lot of confidence that the corals will continue to do well even in future warming conditions.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Protecting Coral Habitat May Prove Vital As Ocean Becomes More Acidic

July 18, 2025 — Concerning news for coral reefs came out this week in University of Hawaiʻi research, while on the same day long-awaited protections for critical habitats offered some hope.

A paper published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research found the oceans around Hawai’i will become significantly more acidic throughout the 21st century, based on climate modeling.

That could do enormous harm to ocean organisms that form hard shells and skeletons, such as shellfish and coral, adding another layer of stress for already struggling species. And the scenarios UH researchers used for their models show to what extent carbon emission-driven climate change will make matters worse.

“Until about 2050, it doesn’t matter which scenario we’re on; we are on a path that has been built up over the last 100-plus years,” said Brian Powell, one of the four UH physicists who worked on the paper.

After 2050, however, he said the global carbon output will determine which scenario becomes reality.

“We don’t have to be on the business-as-usual track,” Powell said. “We can try to do better.”

On Monday, the National Marine Fisheries Service also announced protections for habitats around the world critical to endangered coral species, including in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The announcement came over a decade after the islands’ initial endangered designation.

David Derrick, one of the lawyers with the Center for Biological Diversity who sued to provide those protections, said that the Endangered Species Act played a vital role in their work. According to him, the law “gives groups leverage to hold the (government’s) … feet to the fire.”

Read the full article at Civil Beat

How We Can Restore Coral Reefs

June 9, 2025 — The ocean may be nature’s single greatest gift to humanity. It provides about half of the oxygen we breathe, feeds billions of people, supports countless jobs in every corner of the globe, and absorbs more carbon dioxide than anything else on earth. The ocean connects us all.

But right now, the ocean is sounding an unmistakable alarm. Fishing boats around the world are returning emptier. Coastal zones are growing warmer and murkier, and they are becoming more polluted as millions of gallons of water laced with pharmaceuticals, forever chemicals, and sewage leak into the sea. Coral reefs are turning white.

We come to these challenges with different experiences and perspectives. One of us lives in the Florida Keys and chairs the White House Environmental Advisory Task Force. The other lives in Hawaii and the Bay Area and leads a global technology company. At the same time, we share something fundamental: a deep commitment to the health of the oceans—and a deep belief that differences in some areas should not prevent us from working together on pressing issues where we agree. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

We have an opportunity for global action. From June 9 to June 13, officials from more than 100 nations, scientists, and innovators will gather in Nice, France, for the United Nations Ocean Conference, held only once every few years. The meeting will test our ability to work together across sectors, borders, and worldviews, and to act on behalf of future generations.

That’s why we’re calling for a focused global effort to restore coral-reef health. Coral-reef ecosystems—from the famous reefs of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to the Great Barrier—are the ocean’s rainforests. Vital and vulnerable, they shelter nearly a quarter of marine life, buffer coastal communities from storms, and sustain billions of dollars in fisheries and tourism. Yet they are disappearing at unprecedented speed.

Read the full article at Time

NOAA Fisheries proposes habitat protection for threatened corals in Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

December 5, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries has proposed a rule to designate critical habitat for five threatened reef-building coral species in the Pacific Islands region. This rule refines an earlier proposal in 2020 for Endangered Species Act-listed Indo-Pacific coral species following the inclusion of new data and information received from the community during the previous public comment period.

“Pacific coral reefs play an important role in shoreline protection, while also supporting the local economy and serving as biodiverse ecosystems,” said Dawn Golden, assistant regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Regional Office. “Despite facing threats – including temperature rise and pollution – designating critical habitat aims to minimize the impacts of these threats and promote coral resilience.”

Under the Endangered Species Act, NOAA Fisheries is proposing to designate areas containing habitat characteristics where Acropora globiceps, A. retusa, A. speciosa, Euphyllia paradivisa, and Isopora crateriformis reproduce, disperse, settle and mature. These include select locations in the waters around 16 islands and atolls.

Read the full story at Maui Now

 

From Fishermen To Rugby Players, Climate Change Has Become A Fact Of Life In Fiji

February 17, 2022 — When Shahadat Ali was learning how to fish, he was taught to put the smaller fish back into the ocean. But the quality, size and amount of fish have decreased so dramatically that he now has to keep every fish that swims into his net.

“Times are hard — it’s a struggle,” said Ali, who lives on the outskirts of Nasinu, the most populous town on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji.

Ali’s 72-year-old uncle, Iqbal Shah, has been fishing since he was a teenager and has seen the ocean he loves change drastically over his lifetime.

“In one week we used to catch 300 to 400 kilograms, sometimes 500 kilograms, but now if you fish one week, you can’t hardly get about 100 kilograms (220 pounds),” Shah said. “It is very hard.”

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

 

Bleached reefs still support nutritious fish, study finds

January 21, 2022 — Escalating ocean temperatures stemming from climate change are devastating the world’s tropical coral reefs. In response to the stress, corals, which are animals, sometimes unceremoniously jettison the algae that live within them. That expulsion drains the color from the reefs in what’s known as bleaching. In the severest cases, it can kill the coral, which need the algae to provide them with nutrients, oxygen and waste management.

At the same time, millions of people in the tropics eat fish that live on these reefs. And today, the widespread bleaching of tropical reefs, which is expected to continue as the Earth heats up, has thrown into question how those fisheries and the communities that depend on them for sustenance will respond.

Now, a new study published Jan. 6 in the journal One Earth has found that in certain circumstances, critical nutrients for human development found in reef fishes remain available even after mass bleaching has occurred.

“An important message here is that climate-impacted reefs can still provide some important ecosystem services, and therefore should still be considered in management plans and conservation,” said Camille Mellin, a quantitative ecologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, who was not involved in the study.

Read the full story at Mongabay

 

The race to rescue Florida’s diseased corals

August 30, 2021 — On any given day, aquarist Sara Stevens whips up a slurry of plankton, amino acids and other powdered nutrients to feed a voracious group of rescued corals. Using a turkey baster, she blasts the cloudy concoction over each colony made up of thousands of individual organisms called polyps, watching as their tiny tentacles slowly extend and envelop the meal. For the especially carnivorous ones housed at the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colo., she hand-feeds them full-bodied krill.

This ritual is just one part of the painstaking care Stevens and other aquarists across the country have been giving to a group of corals rescued from disease-ridden waters in Florida. Their future depends on it.

Since 2014, a mysterious illness known as stony coral tissue loss disease has plagued Florida’s reef tract, killing off nearly half the state’s hard corals, whose rigid limestone skeletons provide the architectural backbone of the largest bank reef in the continental United States. By 2018, it became clear that without drastic intervention, these corals would face imminent localized extinction.

“We couldn’t sit back and watch these corals disappear,” said Stephanie Schopmeyer, a coral ecologist from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

To save them, scientists devised a plan to remove the most vulnerable species from their natural habitat and create a land-based gene bank that would serve as a modern day ark for the animals. They knew that to succeed, time was of the essence and collaboration was key. What followed was an unprecedented effort, in which dozens of federal and state organizations, universities, zoos and aquariums joined forces to rescue thousands of Florida’s endangered corals.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

HAWAII: Marine debris team joins the Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project to remove fishing nets from coral reefs

August 30, 2021 — NOAA and the Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project partner to remove derelict fishing nets from coral reefs across the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

Scientists and divers from NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center are teaming up with divers from the Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project for a 30-day mission to remove marine debris from the islands and atolls within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

The team departed Honolulu on the M/V Imua on Tuesday. We expect the ship to return with more than 110,000 pounds of derelict fishing gear and other marine debris at the end of September.

The 2021 marine debris removal mission will focus on surveying for and removing marine debris from coral reefs and coastal environments. They will be working on Kamole (Laysan Island), Kamokuokamohoali‘i (Maro Reef), Kapou (Lisianski Island), Kuaihelani (Midway Atoll), Holaniku (Kure Atoll), and Manawai (Pearl and Hermes Atoll).

Read the full story at KITV