Coral Reef Service Providers

By: Luis Castillo 


Image 1: A diver using an XL Catlin Seaview SVII camera allowing a panoramic 360° frame, allowing self navigation for virtual divers (XL Catlin Seaview Survey, 2015).

Ecosystem servicing is an analytical field of environmental science that has come a long way for habitat conservation in efforts to counter the detrimental effects of the anthropogenic era. This research calls for a comprehensive approach encompassing coral reef sustainability, specifically -the reality that social and ecological systems are symbiotic and thus: should be met with an angle that asserts both dynamics for the future existence of coral reef ecosystems. Coral reefs and its service providers, or the ecological units that comprise these ecosystem services (Woodhead et al. 2018), are minimally understood -yet the benefits of these are known to be bountiful. Solar energy dissipation, ocean water nutrient eutrophication,  fishery services, coastal protection from extreme weather events and waves, as well as tourists' cultural appeal are a few of the functional ecology paradigms that coral reefs yield for habitat sustainability. It is therefore critical to be systematic in defining the productivity thresholds for these ecosystem mechanics. Let us take for example a single species of coral, X, which contributes to calcification. White sands are closely linked to reef tourism (Spalding et al. 2017) and therefore the loss of a single taxa will certainly not have a overbearing effect as even fish abundance and their digestive processes (coral consumption produces calcifying agents in fish fecal matter) contribute to this provisioning ecosystem service -sand generation. This is only one example in which associations between service providers in coral reefs correlate to a functional ecosystem. There is still more for us to learn from coral reefs and the ranges of their goods and services, but it is universally known that it is interconnected to the well-being of piscifauna, marine flora, and the complex cultural elements of us people. 


Reference

Woodhead AJ, Hicks CC, Norström AV, Williams GJ, Graham NAJ. Coral reef ecosystem services in the Anthropocene. Funct Ecol. 2019;33:1023–1034. https:// doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13331

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