Tropical harmful algal blooms: An emerging threat to coral reef communities?

Settlement Patterns of Corals and other Benthos on Reefs with Divergent Environments and Disturbances Histories around the Northeastern Arabian Peninsula

“…Its waters are also highly productive compared with the Gulf and Musandam as a result of monsoon-induced upwelling (Sheppard et al, 1992). Although reefs in the Sea of Oman have experienced widespread disturbance in the past decade as a result of cyclone storm damage and a hypoxic event associated with an algal bloom (Bauman et al, 2010;Burt et al, 2016), the frequency of impacts to coral reefs here has not been as severe as in the Gulf and there are indications that recovery of reef communities is underway (Bento et al, 2016;Pratchett et al, 2017). Barnacles were one of the primary drivers of the divergence of Sea of Oman reefs from the other regions, with barnacles here covering nearly a quarter of settlement tiles (22%) on average, compared with low abundance in the Musandam (5% cover) and a near absence in the Gulf (0.2% cover).…”

“…Additionally, juvenile surveys on these sites in 2012 showed that corals were recruiting to these reefs, although densities were half of that observed in the southern Gulf (Pratchett et al, 2017), suggesting that recruitment is impaired here. Reefs in the Sea of Oman sites have low coral cover (18%) relative to the southern Gulf and the Musandam (56 and 58%, respectively, Bento et al, 2016), mainly as a result of a algal bloom in 2009 when 50-90% of corals were lost from reefs (Bauman et al, 2010;Foster et al, 2011). As a result, while individual corals here are fecund, reef-wide reproductive output for a variety of dominant coral species is low as a consequence of the limited number of fecund adults in the community (Howells et al, 2016), potentially explaining the absence of coral settlers on tiles and the relatively low overall juvenile recruitment rates observed by Pratchett et al (2017).…”

“…Recurrent bleaching events and disease outbreaks have heavily affected reefs in the southern Persian/Arabian Gulf (hereafter 'the Gulf ') while reefs in the adjacent Sea of Oman have been impacted by a super-cyclone and a large-scale harmful algal bloom (Bauman et al, 2010;Riegl and Purkis, 2015;Burt et al, 2016). All of these disturbances have caused substantial declines in coral cover and shifts in the composition of the wider benthic community (Bento et al, 2016).…”

A Large Review of the Pre Treatment

“…One or more sequential red tide events may occur per year and each event may last 6 to 8 weeks. Recent red tide in 2006 and 2008 in the Arabian Gulf caused considerable environmental damage and economic losses in the Gulf countries (Bauman et al;2010, Choules et al,2007 and also in Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. Red tide is not caused by any single organism, although some are more common than others.…”

Trophodynamics as a Tool for Understanding Coral Reef Ecosystems

“…Due to the complexity and variability of coral reef ecosystems, simplifications are often applied. For example, global databases (e.g., Fishbase; Froese and Pauly, 2000) may be used to source available data in lieu of extensive field collection to obtain site specific data (Bauman et al, 2010;Alva-Basurto and Arias-González, 2014;Ashworth et al, 2014;Ceccarelli et al, 2014;Aguilar-Medrano and Barber, 2016). However, information within these databases is often limited to specific regions.…”