Red Bluff Daily News

March 14, 2017

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ByElenaBecatoros The Associated Press SOUTHARIATOLL,MALDIVES There were startling col- ors here just a year ago, a dazzling array of life be- neath the waves. Now this Maldivian reef is dead, killed by the stress of ris- ing ocean temperatures. What's left is a haunting expanse of gray, a scene re- peated in reefs across the globe in what has fast be- come a full-blown ecologi- cal catastrophe. The world has lost roughly half its coral reefs in the last 30 years. Scien- tists are now scrambling to ensure that at least a frac- tion of these unique eco- systems survives beyond the next three decades. The health of the planet depends on it: Coral reefs support a quarter of all marine spe- cies, as well as half a billion people around the world. "This isn't something that's going to happen 100 years from now. We're losing them right now," said marine biologist Ju- lia Baum of Canada's Uni- versity of Victoria. "We're losing them really quickly, much more quickly than I think any of us ever could have imagined." Even if the world could halt global warming now, scientists still expect that more than 90 percent of corals will die by 2050. Without drastic interven- tion, we risk losing them all. "To lose coral reefs is to fundamentally undermine the health of a very large proportion of the human race," said Ruth Gates, di- rector of the Hawaii Insti- tute of Marine Biology. Coral reefs produce some oftheoxygenwebreathe.Of- ten described as underwater rainforests, they populate a tiny fraction of the ocean but provide habitats for one infourmarinespecies.Reefs also form crucial barriers protecting coastlines from the full force of storms. They provide billions of dollars in revenue from tourism, fishing and other commerce, and are used in medical research for cures to diseases including can- cer, arthritis and bacterial or viral infections. "Whether you're living in North America or Europe or Australia,youshouldbecon- cerned," said biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Insti- tute at Australia's University of Queensland. "This is not just some distant dive des- tination, a holiday destina- tion. This is the fabric of the ecosystem that supports us." And that fabric is being torn apart. "You couldn't be more dumb ... to erode the very thing that life depends on — the ecosystem — and hope that you'll get away with it," Hoegh-Guldberg said. Corals are invertebrates, living mostly in tropical wa- ters. They secrete calcium carbonate to build protec- tive skeletons that grow and take on impressive colors, thanks to a symbiotic rela- tionship with algae that live in their tissues and provide them with energy. But corals are sensitive to temperature fluctuations, and are suffering from ris- ing ocean temperatures and acidification, as well as from overfishing, pollu- tion, coastal development and agricultural runoff. A temperature change of just 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahren- heit) can force coral to expel thealgae,leavingtheirwhite skeletons visible in a process known as "bleaching." Bleached coral can re- cover if the water cools, but if high temperatures persist for months, the coral will die. Eventually the reef will degrade, leaving fish with- out habitats and coastlines less protected from storm surges. The first global bleach- ing event occurred in 1998, when 16 percent of cor- als died. The problem spi- raled dramatically in 2015- 2016 amid an extended El Nino natural weather phe- nomenon that warmed Pa- cific waters near the equa- tor and triggered the most widespread bleaching ever documented. This third global bleaching event, as it is known, continues today even after El Nino ended. Headlines have focused on damage to Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef, but other reefs have fared just as badly or worse across the world, from Ja- pan to Hawaii to Florida. Around the islands of the Maldives, an idyllic Indian Ocean tourism destination, some 73 percent of surveyed reefs suffered bleaching be- tween March and May 2016, according to the country's Marine Research Center. "This bleaching episode seems to have impacted the entire Maldives, but the se- verity of bleaching varies" between reefs, according to local conditions, said Nizam Ibrahim, the cen- ter's senior research officer. Worst hit have been areas in the central Pacific, where the University of Victoria's Baum has been conducting research on Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, in the Re- public of Kiribati. Warmer water temperatures lasted there for 10 months in 2015- 2016, killing a staggering 90 percent of the reef. Baum had never seen anything like it. "As scientists, we were all on brand new territory," Baum said, "as were the cor- als in terms of the thermal stress they were subjected to." To make matters worse, scientists are predicting another wave of elevated ocean temperatures start- ing next month. "The models indicate that we will see the return of bleaching in the South Pa- cific soon, along with a pos- sibility of bleaching in both the eastern and western parts of the Indian Ocean," said Mark Eakin, coral reef specialist and coordina- tor of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis- tration's Coral Reef Watch, which uses satellites to monitor environmental con- ditions around reefs. It may not be as bad as last year, but could further stress "reefs that are still hurting from the last two years." The speed of the destruc- tion is what alarms scien- tists and conservationists, as damaged coral might not have time to recover before it is hit again by warmer temperatures. But some may have a chance. Last month, Hoegh-Guld- berg helped launch an ini- tiative called 50 Reefs, aim- ing to identify those reefs with the best chance of sur- vival in warming oceans and raise public awareness. His project partner is Rich- ard Vevers, who heads the XL Catlin Seaview Survey, which has been document- ing coral reefs worldwide. "For the reefs that are least vulnerable to climate change, the key will be to protect them from all the other issues they are facing — pollution, overfishing, coastal development," said Vevers, who founded The Ocean Agency, an Austra- lian organization seeking new technologies to help mitigate some of the ocean's greatest challenges. If the reefs remain healthy and resilient, "they can hope- fully become the vital seed- centers that can repopulate surrounding reefs." Nature itself is providing small glimmers of hope. Some of Kiritimati's corals, for example, are showing tentative signs of a come- back. But scientists don't want to leave it to chance, and are racing ahead with ex- periments they hope might stave off extinction. "We've lost 50 percent of the reefs, but that means we still have 50 percent left," said Gates, who is working in Hawaii to breed corals that can better withstand increasing temperatures. "We definitely don't want to get to the point where we don't intervene until we have 2 percent left." Going a step further, she is also trying to "train" cor- als to survive rising temper- atures, exposing them to sub-lethal heat stress in the hope they can "somehow fix that in their memory" and survive similar stress in the future. ENVIRONMENT Scientistsracetopreventwipeoutofworld'scoralreefs VICTORBONITO—THEOCEANAGENCY —REEFEXPLORERFIJII A snorkeler explores a reef with bleached coral in Fiji. THE OCEAN AGENCY — XL CATLIN SEAVIEW SURVEY An underwater photographer documents an expanse of dead coral at Lizard Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. By Maggie Michael The Associated Press CAIRO Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak was ordered to be freed from detention on Monday, according to the prosecu- tor who signed his release order — ending nearly six years of legal proceedings against the long-ruling au- tocrat. The prosecutor, Ibra- him Saleh, told The As- sociated Press that he or- dered Mubarak's release after he accepted a peti- tion by the former presi- dent's lawyer for his free- dom on the basis of time already served. Mubarak, 88, was acquit- ted by the country's top ap- peals court on March 2 of charges that he ordered the killing of protesters dur- ing the 2011 uprising that ended his 29-year rule. That verdict, according to Saleh, cleared the way for the lawyer to request that his client be released since he has already served a three-year sentence for em- bezzling state funds while in detention in connection to the protesters' case. "There is not a single reason to keep him in de- tention and the police must execute the order," Saleh said. A criminal court ruled in May 2015 to imprison Mubarak for three years following his conviction of embezzling funds set aside for the maintenance of presidential palaces. Mubarak was first de- tained in April 2011, but has spent the nearly six years since in hospitals. LONG-RULING AUTOCRAT Prosecutor orders release of Egypt's ousted leader Mubarak AMR NABIL — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak waves to his supporters from his room at the Maadi Military Hospital, where he is hospitalized. By Julie Pace and Deb Riechmann The Associated Press WASHINGTON The White House on Monday appeared to soften President Donald Trump's unproven asser- tion that his predecessor wiretapped his New York skyscraper during the elec- tion. The shift came as the Justice Department faced a deadline to provide law- makers evidence to back up Trump's explosive claim. More than a week af- ter Trump leveled his alle- gations in a series of early morning tweets, spokes- man Sean Spicer said the president wasn't using the word wiretapping literally, noting that Trump had put the term in quotation marks. "The president used the word wiretap in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities," Spicer said Monday. He also sug- gested Trump wasn't ac- cusing former President Barack Obama specifically, but instead referring to the actions of the Obama ad- ministration. Spicer's evolving expla- nation underscores the bind Trump has put his own White House in. Cur- rent and former adminis- tration officials have been unable to provide any ev- idence of the Obama ad- ministration wiretapping Trump Tower, yet the pres- ident's aides have been re- luctant to publicly contra- dict their boss. Trump himself has not commented on the matter since his March 4 tweets, in which he said he had "just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory." He also wrote: "Is it legal for a sitting Pres- ident to be 'wire tapping' a race for president?" The president's accusa- tions against Obama came amid numerous political questions surrounding his associates' possible ties to Russia. The FBI is in- vestigating Trump associ- ates' contacts with Russia during the election, as are House and Senate intelli- gence committees. The White House has asked those committees to also investigate Trump's unverified wiretapping al- legations against Obama. The House committee has turned the matter back on the Trump administration, setting a Monday deadline for the Justice Department to provide evidence. Spicer said he expected the Justice Department to comply with that request. DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said Monday that the department was reviewing the request, "but we don't have any further comment at this time." Other congressional committees are also push- ing the administration to clarify Trump's claims. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sheldon White- house, D-R.I., asked Act- ing Deputy Attorney Gen- eral Dana Boente and FBI Director James Comey to produce the paper trail cre- ated when the Justice De- partment's criminal divi- sion secures warrants for wiretaps. The senators, who head the Senate Ju- diciary Committee's crime and terrorism subcommit- tee, are seeking warrant applications and court or- ders, which they said can be scrubbed to protect se- cret intelligence sources and methods. Trump's critics have slammed the president for making the wiretapping claim on his Twitter ac- count without evidence. 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