The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus, initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness.

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We studied zooplankton abundance and emergence patterns over coral reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba using highresolution acoustics (multibeam sonar, FTV, 1.6 MHz, and WH600 ADCP, 614 KHz), emergence traps, and an underwater pump, supplemented with field observations on feeding behavior of zooplanktivorous fish. The zooplanktonic community over coral reefs is a complex and highly dynamic mixture of pelagic plankton advected into the reef, larvae and eggs released by benthic animals, and demersal plankton. At sunset (0 Ϯ4 min, mean Ϯ95% confidence interval) acoustic back-scattering intensity and zooplankton biomass started to increase rapidly. In contrast with this ascent, the predawn decline began much earlier during the dark (82 Ϯ5 min before sunrise) and terminated before sunrise. This light-dependent diel behavior was highly consistent throughout the year, regardless of seasonal and environmental changes. Smaller zooplankters (500-700 m) ascended first and demersal zooplankton accounted for most of the increase in zooplankton soon after sunset. Surprisingly, the emergence of zooplankton occurred while large schools of diurnal zooplanktivorous fish were still foraging in the water column. However, at that time, prey-capture efficiency by the fish is greatly reduced and corals had not yet expanded their tentacles, producing an optimal window of opportunity of low risk for emergence.Diel vertical migration (DVM) is one of the most conspicuous features of zooplankton behavior, occurring in di-

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Sediment resuspension has a major ecological role in many coastal habitats, lakes, and marine environments. Waves and currents are generally thought to be the major control on sediment resuspension. In this study, the temporal and spatial distributions of suspended sand concentrations (SSAC) were measured at five coral reefs in the northern Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, by directly filtering seawater through 100-m mesh nets. Levels of nearbottom SSAC were twice as high during the day (4.8-9.7 mg m Ϫ3 ) than at night (2.3-5.2 mg m Ϫ3). Vertical profiles showed a sharp increase of SSAC (2-6-fold) toward the bottom during the daytime but not at night. The contributions of wind, waves, and currents to variations in SSAC were nonsignificant except during rare southern storms. Temporal and spatial changes in the level of SSAC during the day corresponded with the abundance of benthivorous fish and their activity pattern. Resuspension activities by fish numbered Ͼ1.5 resuspension events m Ϫ2 h Ϫ1 and were confined to daytime. An in situ experiment in which fish were excluded from a large section (250 m 2 ) of the reef resulted in elimination of the day-night differences and a significant decrease in daytime SSAC over the treated reef section in comparison to the open, control sites. This study is the first report of a daily pattern of suspended sediment at coral reefs with fish activity as its causative agent. AcknowledgmentsWe are indebted to I. Ayalon, M. Ohavia, Y. Shiff, D. Weil, E. Booton, M. Pery, A. Pery, A. Brandes, R. and C. Wyeth, A. and A. Bookai, S. Rickel, R. Motro, S. Eckstein, R. Holzman, T. Zalogin, A. Rivlin, R. Shem-Tov, and Lt. Cdr. Amr Attia for their professional and most dedicated help with the field and laboratory work. S. Fridman and K. Madmoni greatly assisted with the English writing. A. Almogi-Labin helped with the sediment analysis. Special thanks to M. Reidenbach, M. Brennan, and the journal reviewers P. Larcombe and an anonymous reviewer, who greatly improved the manuscript.

Man-made submerged structures, including shipwrecks, offering substrata for fouling organisms and fish, have been classified secondarily as artificial reefs (ARs). The current approach in AR design is that of low-profile structures placed on the seabed and attempting to mimic natural reef (NR) communities with the aim of mitigating degraded marine ecosystems. To examine the validity of this concept, a long-term comparison of the developing AR fouling communities to those of nearby NRs is required. A survey of the fouling reefal organisms was conducted on seven shipwrecks (Red Sea, Egypt), comprising three young (ca 20 years old) and four old (>100 years old) unplanned ARs, in comparison to nearby NR communities. The hypothesis tested was that the age of the ARs shapes the structure of their fouling coral communities. The results demonstrated distinct differences between ARs and NRs and between young and old ARs. While the species composition on ARs may resemble that of NRs after approximately 20 years, obtaining a similar extent of coral cover may require a full century. Moreover, differences in structural features between ARs and NRs may lead to differences in species composition that persist even after 100 years.

[1] In this study, we link groundfish activity to the marine silica cycle and suggest that the drastic mid-1980s crash of the Baltic Sea cod (Gadus morhua) population triggered a cascade of events leading to decrease in dissolved silica (DSi) and diatom abundance in the water. We suggest that this seemingly unrelated sequence of events was caused by a marked decline in sediment resuspension associated with reduced groundfish activity resulting from the cod crash. In a study in Saanich Inlet, British Columbia, Canada, we discovered that, by resuspending bottom sediments, groundfish triple DSi fluxes from the sediments and reduce silica accumulation therein. Using these findings and the available oceanographic and environmental data from the Baltic Sea, we estimate that overfishing and recruitment failure of Baltic cod reduced by 20% the DSi supply from bottom sediments to the surface water leading to a decline in the diatom population in the Baltic Sea. The major importance of the marginal ocean in the marine silica cycle and the associated high population density of groundfish suggest that groundfish play a major role in the silica cycle. We postulate that dwindling groundfish populations caused by anthropogenic perturbations, e.g., overfishing and bottom water anoxia, may cause shifts in marine phytoplankton communities.

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