Surprise rescue of Jamaica coral reefs shows nature can heal

Everton Simpson squints at the Caribbean from his motorboat, scanning the dazzling bands of color for hints of what lies beneath. Emerald green indicates sandy bottoms. Sapphire blue lies above seagrass meadows. And deep indigo marks coral reefs. That's where he's headed.

He steers the boat to an unmarked spot he knows as the "coral nursery." ''It's like a forest under the sea," he says, fastening his oxygen tank before tipping backward into the azure waters. He swims straight down 25 feet carrying a pair of metal shears, fishing line and a plastic crate.

On the ocean floor, small coral fragments dangle from suspended ropes, like socks hung on a laundry line. Simpson and other divers tend to this underwater nursery as gardeners mind a flower bed — slowly and painstakingly plucking off snails and fireworms that feast on immature coral.

When each stub grows to about the size of a human hand, Simpson collects them in his crate to individually "transplant" onto a reef, a process akin to individually planting each blade of grass in a lawn.

Even fast-growing coral species add just a few inches a year. And it's not possible to simply scatter seeds.

A few hours later, at an underwater site called Dickie's Reef, Simpson uses fishing line to tie clusters of staghorn coral onto rocky outcroppings — a temporary binding until the coral's limestone skeleton grows and fixes itself onto the rock. The goal is to jumpstart the natural growth of a coral reef. And so far, it's working.

Almost everyone in Jamaica depends on the sea, including the energetic 68-year-old Simpson.

Once a spear fisherman and later a scuba-diving instructor, he started working as a "coral gardener" two years ago — part of grassroots efforts to bring Jamaica's coral reefs back from the brink.

Coral reefs are often called "rainforests of the sea" for the astonishing diversity of life they shelter.

Just 2 percent of the ocean floor is filled with coral, but the branching structures sustain a quarter of all marine species. Clownfish, parrotfish, groupers and snappers lay eggs and hide from predators in the reef's nooks and crannies, and their presence draws eels, sea snakes, octopuses and even sharks. In healthy reefs, jellyfish and sea turtles are regular visitors.

With fish and coral, it's a codependent relationship — the fish rely on the reef to evade danger and lay eggs, and they also eat up the coral's rivals.

After a series of natural and man-made disasters in the 1980s and 1990s, Jamaica lost 85 percent of its once-bountiful reefs. Meanwhile, fish catches declined to a sixth of what they had been in the 1950s, pushing families depending on seafood closer to poverty.

Many scientists thought most of Jamaica's coral reef had been permanently replaced by seaweed, like jungle overtaking a ruined cathedral.

But today, the corals and tropical fish are slowly reappearing, thanks in part to a series of careful interventions.

The delicate labor of the coral gardener is only one part of restoring a reef. Convincing lifelong fishermen to curtail when and where they fish and controlling the surging waste dumped into the ocean are even trickier endeavors.

Still, slowly, the comeback effort is gaining momentum.

"When you give nature a chance, she can repair herself," says Stuart Sandin, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "It's not too late."

Sandin is studying the health of coral reefs around the world as part of a research project called the "100 Island Challenge." His starting assumption was that the most populated islands would have the most degraded habitats, but he found instead that humans can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on how they manage resources.

When Jamaica's fish populations began to collapse two decades ago, something had to change.

In the past 10 years, more than a dozen grassroots-run coral nurseries and fish sanctuaries have sprung up, supported by small grants from foundations, local businesses such as hotels and scuba clinics, and the Jamaican government.

At the White River Fish Sanctuary, which is only about 2 years old and where Simpson works, the clearest proof of early success is the return of tropical fish that inhabit the reefs — as well as hungry pelicans, skimming the surface of the water to feed on them.

The solution was to create a protected area for immature fish to reach reproductive age before they are caught.

Most of the more established fishermen, who own boats and set out lines and wire cages, have come to accept the no-fishing zone. But some younger men still hunt with lightweight spearguns, swimming out to sea and firing at close-range. These men — some of them poor and with few options — are the most likely trespassers.

Once it became clear that a no-fishing zone actually helped nearby fish populations rebound, however, it became easier to build support. The number of fish in the Oracabessa Bay Fish Sanctuary has doubled between 2011 and 2017, according to Jamaica's National Environment and Planning Agency. And that boosts catches in surrounding areas.

Oracabessa was the first of the grassroots-led efforts to revive Jamaica's coral reefs. Its sanctuary was legally incorporated in 2010, and its approach of enlisting local fishermen as patrols became a model for other regions.

After word got out about Oracabessa, other regions wanted advice.

"The fishermen are mostly on board and happy — that's the distinction. That's why it's working," sanctuary manager Inilek Wilmot says.

Belinda Morrow, a lifelong water-sports enthusiast who runs the White River Marine Association, notes that, in Jamaica, "We all depend on the ocean."

"If we don't have a good healthy reef and a good healthy marine environment, we will lose too much," she says. "Too much of the country relies on the sea."

Foreboding sign for Monterey Bay sea lions

Rescue organizations in southern California are finding sea lion pups sick and emaciated, stranded on beaches without their mothers months earlier than in previous years. This may not bode well for marine mammals in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.

California sea lion pups generally stay with their mothers for their first six months to one year of life. But unseasonably warm water, like that found in “the blob” five years ago, can make it hard for sea lion mothers to find food for their offspring, leading to pups stranded on local beaches. NOAA Fisheries is monitoring a new warm water event that could be affecting sea lion populations.

From 2013 to 2015, scientists observed an unusually warm pocket of water in the northern Pacific where temperatures spiked as high as six to seven degrees above average. In response, marine food webs went haywire and record numbers of starving baby sea lions and seals were stranded along the California coast as their mothers struggled to feed them.

Most California sea lions migrate to the Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura County to breed every year. Because of their proximity to the mating grounds, southern California rescue organizations such as the Pacific Marine Mammal Center and Sea World San Diego often notice problems with pups earlier than the rest of the California coast. These organizations have already reported early rescues of sea lion pups that could be connected with the blob-like conditions.

NOAA Fisheries is monitoring everything from pup weights in the Channel Islands, the health of adult sea lions and ocean temperatures to try to get ahead of any problems.

“We’re paying very close attention to all of those indicators,” says Cara Field, medical director at The Marine Mammal Center whose Monterey Bay Operations rescues animals from Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. During the 2015 blob, The Marine Mammal Center rescued more than 1,000 stranded pups.

Even so, local temperatures are still well below the record blob temperatures, says Francisco Chavez, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. “This [event] doesn’t look to be as big of a beast as the other ones,” says Chavez. “But only time will tell.”

This year’s warming waters are part of a larger trend that has continued to develop over the last decade, says Chavez. Though he says scientists don’t know what specifically is causing the dramatic oscillations in ocean temperatures, they are still investigating the underlying causes.

In the meantime, marine life continues to experience the consequences of a changing climate.

When people start noticing stranded sea lion pups on their beaches, “that means there’s a bigger problem in the ocean,” says Field. Sea lions are a “sentinel species” because they eat a lot of the same fish that humans do. “Our lives are all intertwined together with the health of the ocean… and [sea lions] have a lot to tell us about what’s happening in the ocean,” says Field.

North Carolina's Offshore Shipwrecks Have Surprising New Tenants-Tropical Fish

North Carolina isn’t known as a hotspot for tropical fish, but a new study suggests scuba divers should give the waters off the state’s coast a second look. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications Biology finds that shipwrecks and other structures serving as artificial reefs in deeper waters provide habitat for tropical fish in the northern reaches of the range, and may give these species some refuge as climate change alters reefs to the south.

Scuba-diving research ecologists from NOAA and Duke University conducted species counts at 30 natural and artificial reefs off the coast of North Carolina four times a year between 2013 and 2015. They found that the number and diversity of both tropical and subtropical fish was greater deep in the artificial reefs. At the naturally-occurring reefs, which are typically found in shallow water, temperate species were common.

It’s the depth of the artificial reefs that matters, says Avery Paxton, a marine ecologist at NOAA and Duke University Marine Laboratory, in a press release.

“We didn’t see these patterns on artificial reefs at shallow or intermediate depths, we only saw them on deep reefs, located between 80 to 115 feet below the surface, where water temperatures often experience less seasonal change,” says Paxton.

Why the fish are attracted to these deep artificial reefs is hard to say at the moment. “It could be that the zooplankton and smaller fish these species eat are more plentiful on artificial reefs,” study co-author J. Christopher Taylor, a NOAA marine ecologist, says in the release. “Or it could be that human-made reefs’ complex structures give the fish more nooks and crannies where they can evade predators. We’re still trying to figure it out.”

Whatever the case, the finding could have big implications for how conservationists prepare for climate change. Many studies have found that as ocean temperatures tick up, fish are moving towards the poles, with tropical fish beginning to colonize temperate waters. That trend is expected to continue as climate changes. The artificial reefs in North Carolina and other places could act as refuges or stepping stones for tropical species as they move northward.

Carrie Arnold at National Geographic reports that artificial reefs are actually quite common. Since the 1800s, people have dumped junk in the ocean to create structures for fishing. More recently, humans have deployed structures intentionally to create artificial reefs, including old cars and outdated military equipment — after scrubbing them of any potentially harmful chemicals, of course.

In fact, North Carolina has a program dedicated to creating artificial reefs that has 42 artificial reefs in the ocean and 22 in estuaries. Besides those reefs, North Carolina’s coast is known as “The Graveyard of the Atlantic,” with around 2,000 shipwrecks strung along its coast. Many of those wrecks serve as artificial reefs as well. Just last month, another study showed that those shipwreck-reefs are important to sand tiger sharks, an endangered species that might use the wrecks during its annual migration.

But building artificial reefs is becoming more sophisticated than just scuttling an old ship. Some researchers are experimenting with plastic and silicon reefs that mimic some of the coral species that are disappearing due to ocean temperatures in places like the Mediterranean to give some of the fish species that rely on them a place to survive. Studies like this one could help researchers decide where exactly to deploy new reef technologies.

Ethically Fraught Experiment Has Produced Monkeys With Added Human Brain Genes

In a bid to learn more about the way the human brain develops, scientists in China have added a human brain gene to the genome of rhesus monkeys. It's called MC HP 1, or microcephalin, and it's involved in regulating the foetal growth of the brain.

The addition does seem to have made the monkeys smarter. The transgenic animals' brains took longer to develop - more like those of human children - and they also exhibited better memory skills, and faster reaction times, compared to their unmodified peers.

"This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model," geneticist Bing Su of the Kunming Institute of Zoology told Technology Review.

Transgenic organisms are nothing new. The first was published in 1974, when Staphylococcus aureus genes were spliced into Escherichia coli. The first transgenic monkey, inserted with jellyfish genes, was created in 2001.

Human genes have been added to monkeys to study diseases and conditions such as autism, and mice have been modified with human cognition genes, including altered microcephalin. But the researchers believe that this is the first time researchers have used transgenic monkeys to look into the genetic origins of the human brain.

It is, scientists say, an experiment with concerning ethical implications.

The team exposed the monkey embryos to a virus carrying human microcephalin. This generated 11 transgenic rhesus monkeys carrying the human gene, only five of whom actually survived.

"Our findings demonstrated that transgenic nonhuman primates (excluding ape species) have the potential to provide important - and potentially unique - insights into basic questions of what actually makes humans unique, as well as into disorders and clinically relevant phenotypes," the researchers wrote in their paper.

But not everyone agrees. In fact, a 2010 paper expressly condemns the entire concept of editing apes with human brain genes (although not necessarily monkeys), calling such potential studies "ethically unacceptable" due to the elevated risk of harm to the animals.

But using monkeys could be a step down that path.

"The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take," geneticist James Sikela of the University of Colorado, who co-authored that 2010 paper, told Technology Review.

"It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued."

In addition, one of the researchers of this latest study, computer scientist Martin Styner of the University of North Carolina, noted that there were aspects of the study that would not be allowed in a country with stricter regulations, such as the US. In fact, the research was unable to find a publisher in the West.

Chinese genetic research is already being side-eyed after the work of geneticist He Jiankui, who claimed to have edited the germline of human twins. His American collaborator, Michael Deem of Rice University, has also come under fire.

It's difficult to know whether Su's new research would receive the same reception were it not under Jiankui's shadow, but the geneticist is not letting it slow him down. He is already at work making new transgenic monkeys.

But Styner said he considered taking his name off the paper.

"Now we have created this animal which is different than it is supposed to be. When we do experiments, we have to have a good understanding of what we are trying to learn, to help society, and that is not the case here," he said.

"They are trying to understand brain development. And I don't think they are getting there."

The research has been published in National Science Review.

Leopard strikes up friendship with mare at Gujarat farmhouse

A young leopard has forged an unlikely bond with a mare at a farmhouse in Gujarat.

The one-year-old leopard has been visiting the farmhouse, located near a forest at Virod village on Vadodara’s outskirts, for the past four to five days apparently after taking a liking to the mare kept tied there to a tree.

The farmhouse and the mare belong to villager Jagdishbhai Patel, who said the leopard had been coming to his field everyday during the night time.

“The leopard rolls on the grass and plays near the mare, who has not resisted the big cat’s move and keeps standing near the tree without any sign of panic,” he told PTI over phone on Wednesday.

He said while his family was worried about the unusual visitor in their field, the other villagers were flocking to the place to catch a glimpse of the camaraderie between the two animals.

“The leopard has been coming to the farmhouse, located just about 25 metres from my house, after sunset and sits near the mare for some hours before disappearing. The carnivore has not attacked any human being though it bit a dog a couple of days back,” Patel said.

He said his farm labourers were scared of going near the mare to feed it and as a precaution he has shifted his other cattle behind the house.

He also requested the forest department to catch the spotted animal.

Arvind Pawar of the city-based NGO Wildlife Rescue Trust said they had installed two night vision cameras to capture the leopard’s images.

The district forest department’s rescue team member, Nitin Patel, said the young leopard’s mother was also seen near the farmhouse in a video footage.

“While the young feline sits in a water pit dug up near the spot where the mare is tied, its mother was seen climbing a nearby tree,” he said.

A cage along with a bait was placed nearby, but the leopard was yet to be caught, he added.

A red fox family in Yellowstone

Many of the stories I write in this space come from my background in biology, generally information about a specific species. But occasionally I want to share what I've learned about individual animals I've gotten to know. Because I am both a wildlife scientist and a filmmaker, I spend hours and hours in the field watching animals, sometimes the same individuals for days. Over the years I have come to realize how unique animals are, with their own distinctive personalities, likes, dislikes, and quirks.

One such example is a red fox family I got to know fairly well several years ago when they decided to build their den and have their kits,  in a very public place: under a large Douglas fir tree right next to the Yellowstone Picnic Area on the north side of Yellowstone National Park. From a photographer's view point, it was almost as if we had put up a sign in fox language reading, "Free home to any fox family who doesn't mind having us photograph their every move"! A pair of foxes took us up on that offer and moved in.

You might think that since there were right next to a picnic area they would become habituated to humans and learn to beg for food. Surprisingly that didn't happen, but we never had the foresight to see was what actually did happen. They knew we were there, but they went about their foxy business as if we didn't exist. We kept a respectful distance from them, they understood we meant them no harm, and everyone was happy, especially the 50+ photographers that snapped their pictures every day for about ten days.

We first became aware of their presence when we saw the male digging for a ground squirrel across the road from their den site. That fox knew exactly where the squirrel was. It would repeatedly dig furiously, stop, listen carefully, and then dig some more. At one point it tore a large sagebrush out of the ground, tossed it aside and kept digging. He was on a mission. He finally emerged from the hole, looking quite proud, with a mouth full of ground squirrel and triumphantly crossed the road. It was then that we saw his mate and two of the cutest little kits I've ever seen.

From that moment on we were there every day for hours recording their every move like proud grandparents. They had a routine. The vixen and the month-old kits hung around the den while the male went hunting. Every few hours he came back with a mouth full of several ground squirrels and gave them to the female.

The kits were still nursing but they used the squirrels in their tug-of-war games. Occasionally the female left for a little while, presumably to go hunt, but only when the male was there to babysit. The kits didn't care whether their mom or their dad was there, although they did seem more respectful of their dad. They climbed all over their mom, but they usually kept a little distance between themselves and their dad, who was rather aloof.

On the tenth day a badger suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Badgers have a reputation for being fairly tough, and this one probably had kits to feed as well. The male was out hunting but the female was there. She and the badger fought. The kits went into their den and it was obvious the female was trying to keep the badger away from the den. Every time she lunged and bit, the badger lowered its head and took the brunt of the bites on the back of its head. A little blood was visible, but the badger was determined. The fox fought hard but the badger got into their den. The vixen stared down into the den and dug around the opening, but it was obvious she didn't know how to get the badger out, and the male wasn't there to help. We all had visions of the badger down there killing the kits.

We stood there quietly for about 20 minutes and hoped for the best. After what seemed like hours, the badger came out and then, miracle of miracles, the kits emerged untouched. We don't know this for a fact, but we believe the badger was down there eating their stash of ground squirrels. The female fox and the badger fought again, and again the badger went into their den, but this time the kits stayed above ground.

That evening the female dug a new den about 50 yards to the west of the old one. The old one had at least two exit holes; the new one was shallow, and only had one opening. The next day, when the female had been without food for over 24 hours she left to go hunt. She had never left the kits alone, but I assume her hunger overcame her caution. As soon as she left the kits went into the new den. Then a few minutes later the badger emerged from their old den and went to the new one, silently disappearing down the only entrance/exit hole. There was suddenly dead silence from all the photographers. We knew a second miracle wasn't likely. After what seemed like a long time the female fox returned. She immediately knew the badger was in the new den with her kits and she began to dig, and dig, and dig. The badger finally came out and quickly disappeared. There was no fighting. It just left. The female went down the hole and after a minute or so came out with the small remains of one of the kits.

Then she did the most remarkable thing. She put the remains on the ground and slowly walked around in a circle pushing dirt over them. She was burying her kit.

That's when I lost it.

She did such an unbelievably human-like act. I'm purposely avoiding the use of the word "anthropomorphic" because I don't believe in that word. Of course, humans do things similar to other animals, especially other mammals who we are most closely related to. If we all evolved from common ancestors, it makes sense that we have a bunch of things in common, including the way our brains function. I've watched wolves mourn the loss of one of their pack, bison females mourn when their baby is stillborn, and many other examples of animal feelings. Do I think they grieve the way we do? I don't know. But I do know they show some of the same behaviors we would exhibit in similar situations.