Disturbance in Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems and Linkages to Conservation and Management

A generalized light‐driven model of community transitions along coral reef depth gradients

“…Mesophotic coral communities in areas exposed to tropical storms such as the Great Barrier Reef (Bongaerts, Muir, Englebert, Bridge, & Hoegh‐Guldberg, 2013) and Okinawa (White et al., 2013) differ from MCEs where storms are less frequent and weaker [e.g. Papua New Guinea: Smith, Holstein, & Ennis, 2019] despite minimal differences in water quality and, therefore, light quality.…”

Why do mesophotic coral ecosystems have to be protected?

“…Recent reviews (Hinderstein et al, 2010;Bridge et al, 2013;Loya et al, 2016;Kahng et al, 2014Kahng et al, , 2017and Turner et al, 2019) have suggested that MCEs are among the richest (i.e., in terms of endemic and rare species) and least protected ecosystems in world's oceans. However, despite their importance within the context of global environmental change, discussions regarding the conservation of MCEs and their required management actions are scarce (Kahng et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2019;Turner et al, 2017Turner et al, , 2019.…”

“…Moreover, most of the Coral Triangle MCEs are found on the outer barrier slopes and are close from urban centers, which means that in some areas the MCEs are close to many human activities and their impacts (Longenecker et al, 2019). Furthermore, MCEs are susceptible to a wide range of other threats, including inorganic and organic contaminants (Bigus et al, 2014;Cai et al, 2016), ocean acidification (Baker et al, 2016), increased prevalence of disease outbreaks (Smith et al, 2019), invasive species (Andradi-Brown, 2019; Soares et al, 2019), environmental disasters (Silva et al, 2016;, and thermal stress as a result of a low bleaching threshold (Frade et al, 2018).…”

Mesophotic.org: a repository for scientific information on mesophotic ecosystems

“…Considering the rapid decline of shallow reefs due to the effects of climate change (18, 19), MCEs have become a common interest among not only the scientific community but also governmental organizations and non-profit groups (10, 20). There is an emerging consensus that despite their potential role as refuges, MCEs are not immune to disturbance and instead are vulnerable in their own right (16, 21, 22). In order to consider appropriate management for MCEs, it is critical to assess them under different pressures (23).…”