Branch Coral Foundation

SEA TURTLE CONSERVATION CURACAO

assisting in efforts to monitor and track tumor growth in sea turtle populations on the island.

There has been a recent outbreak in Curacao of Fibropapillomatosis (FP), a tumor-causing disease affecting green sea turtles, a major threat to their survival. STCC is currently raising funds to research foraging behaviors and preferred feeding grounds to determine the source of FP in curacao. Though the pathogenesis and epidemiology of FP in marine sea turtles is poorly understood, primary factors are believed to be changing water temperatures, environmental pollutants, and bacteria present in the turtles’ habitats. Currently, there is no cure for this disease. The best way to prevent it from spreading is to reduce our pollution into the oceans!

REEF RENEWAL

BAY ISLANDS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION / BICA

Diploria labyrinthiformis, nicknamed DLAB by researchers, is an important reef-building coral species in the Caribbean. These corals are hermaphroditic, producing male and female reproductive structures and releasing both eggs and sperm into the water column through broadcast spawning. These mass reproduction events usually occur once a year. Polyps form egg-sperm bundles in response to environmental cues. Within a very small window of time, colonies of the same species release millions of of these buoyant gametes synchronously, which then float to the surface, ready for fertilization. This method maximizes reproductive contact, increasing the likelihood of finding and fertilizing a matching bundle, while ensuring optimal environmental conditions for the dispersal, development, and recruitment of coral larvae. DLAB is an ideal coral species to monitor reproduction, as their mass spawning events occur during daytime and several times a year. 

How are all of these separate colonies able to time this magnificent mass gamete release across the reef? 

Synchronous coral spawning is regulated at three different time scales, month, day, and hour. The month is based on the rate of gamete maturation, which is largely determined by seawater temperature. Scientists have come to determine DLAB spawning to occur between the months of April and October, depending on location. It is expected that spawning day each month is determined by corals sensing environmental changes regulated by the lunar cycle, such as tidal changes and moonlight. Spawning hour is then determined by sunset time. 

Throughout May and June, predicted to be the peak DLAB spawning months in Utila, we set out every evening two hours before sunset to monitor DLAB colonies with Bay Islands Conservation Association (BICA). DLAB spawning was predicted to occur 8-12 days following the full moon, 0-75 minutes before sunset, and can be as short as 1-5 minutes. Conveniently, butterflyfish also serve as predictors of spawning, as they often feed on coral gamete bundles. Large aggregations suddenly swarming a colony, preparing to feast, is a good indication that this beautiful moment is near. Extremely close bonds were formed with the individual coral colonies that we observed for hours every evening, deeply wishing for reef prosperity to create more beautiful and resilient coral babies.

Over the course of monitoring, we observed 4 colonies spawn in May between 5:10 - 5:14 pm, 10-11 days following the full moon. Some colonies were particularly special to observe, as they had been previously treated for Stony Tissue Coral Loss Disease (STCLD), demonstrating hopeful recovery following antibiotic delivery. Witnessing this incredibly timed natural event was completely unreal- resembling an underwater snowstorm, pink and orange gametes exploding through the water column.

However, there are many disruptions to coral spawning interfering with the natural cues utilized to ensure synchronicity, such as artificial light, pollution, coastal developments, and warming temperatures. If a factor such as light pollution causes some colonies to spawn 1-3 days closer to the full moon compared to unlit reefs, this could drastically decrease fertilization probability and survival. Given the reliance on delicate and reliable environmental conditions, these are very serious threats to coral reef health, easily preventing a spawning event from successfully taking place. 

Response of Marine Microfossils to Climate and Local Changes: Geochemical Variance in San Diego, California

Ashley N. Meara, Sarah C. Gray, Environmental and Ocean Sciences, University of San Diego

The concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the oceans has decreased by about 2% over the past 50 years due to rising global temperatures and models predict further declines this century. However, little research has been done to examine how benthic foraminifera communities vary across this changing DO gradient offshore of southern California.   Foraminifera serve as important bioindicators to assess environmental health, reconstruct past climates and predict future climate change, as their tests are composed of calcium carbonate with morphology and porosity unique to their individual rate of gas-exchange. Given these factors, foram shells provide the most valuable geochemical archive of ocean conditions and climate spanning the last 100 million years, and play a vital role in the ocean carbon cycle. These shells are preserved in marine sediments as calcite, the stable polymorph of calcium carbonate.

The southern California continental margin is characterized by variable bathymetry, isolated low oxygen basins and high productivity, serving as an ideal location to investigate the impacts of variance in dissolved oxygen and climate on benthic foraminifera. The objectives of this research were to 1) characterize how foraminifera communities vary spatially and with depth and DO and 2) to examine if there have been changes in these communities over the past 20 years. In 2018-19, sediment samples from the sediment-water interface were collected using a multicorer at five sites of variable depth (200-900 m) from 10 to 170 kilometers offshore of southern California.  Two of these sites had been sampled annually from 2001-2012.  Though the communities at all sites included most taxa, the relative percent and abundance of each taxa varied between sites. Sites with reduced DO were dominated by Uvigerina and Bolivina, with a large decrease in Cassidulina. Generally, the same morphotypes were seen across two decades of observation at two sites without a clear pattern of secular variability. Further studies should be done to examine how hypoxic-associated species vary across the full depth range of the oxygen minimum layer and whether these taxa are developing morphological adaptations to cope with the changing environment. 

Sustainable Infrastructure Challenges for Small Island Provinces

Review: November 2020

Challenges of Sustainable Infrastructure and Domestic Wastewater Management and Impacts on Local Environmental Health in Bocas Del Toro, Panama

Ashley Meara 

Wastewater treatment continues to be a high-priority sustainability challenge in developing nations. Wastewater refers to water that has been used for domestic, manufacturing, industrial, agricultural, or commercial purposes. Domestic wastewater comes from houses, public facilities, and businesses, divided between greywater and blackwater. Blackwater refers to wastewater derived from sewage, while greywater is wastewater captured from sinks, showers, laundry machines, and dishwashers.1 Untreated domestic wastewater contains a variety of pollutants, including nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, fecal matter, pathogens, organic particles, toxins such as pesticides and herbicides, pharmaceuticals, solids, fats, oil, and grease. Despite technological and scientific advances, 95% of global wastewater is released into the environment, void of any treatment.2 The majority of populations, particularly in low-income countries, are therefore exposed to extremely poor water quality throughout their communities, in addition to ecosystem degradation of their local environment. There is a global need for increased awareness and policy regarding the lack of sustainability of current wastewater management strategies, and particularly in developing countries, in order to reach the 2030 United Nations water quality, wastewater treatment, and safe reuse development goal of halving the proportion of untreated wastewater, and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally.3  Throughout this paper, I will evaluate domestic wastewater management and the challenges of sustainable infrastructure, given the social injustices and environmental consequences perpetuated by the treadmill of production. 

The preliminary step to resolving this wastewater issue is allocating more resources toward wastewater treatment infrastructure in developing countries, where the most basic sanitation systems are not present due to limited public finance for treatment infrastructure. This should be a top priority in order to protect public health and prevent environmental degradation. In developing countries, each person produces, on average, six liters of toilet wastewater each day. Based on the number of people who don't have access to safe sanitation, that equates to nearly 14 billion liters of untreated faecally contaminated wastewater created each day.2 The discharge of untreated domestic sewage and wastewater from industrial and commercial establishments into surface water has caused extreme water scarcity. As a result, 1.2 billion people globally can barely get clean drinking water, and millions of people die annually from drinking unhealthy water.4  While the entirety of wastewater is increasing exponentially with population growth and industrialization, domestic sewage from individual households continues to be a large component of the contamination in water systems. The makeup of wastewater origin is dependent on location, and therefore efficient management of wastewater involves specificity to the country, while also acknowledging the unique cultural, economic, and environment of the area. 

Panama is a leading country in municipal water withdrawals, as 67% of total water withdrawals are from domestic sources. This is significantly higher than the global average of 11% being used for municipal purposes.3 Though there is high rainfall in this region, 67% is much higher than its’ neighboring country, Costa rica, which has shown to have 21% of its total freshwater withdrawal from domestic sources.3 This gives insight into future mitigation strategies, indicating particularly high domestic output in Panama, with agriculture being largely rainfed and industrial output being relatively low. With this, domestic wastewater infrastructure is important to investigate in Panama, and particularly in island communities in the Bocas Del Toro Province, where social and environmental inequity is extremely present. The majority of the indigenous population often does not receive fair water sanitation and resources, as is the case in many developing countries globally. The high amount of domestic water being turned to harmful wastewater containing abundant contaminants, impacts this island community drastically and disproportionately in a multitude of ways. Therefore, this case study aims to evaluate the challenges of sustainable infrastructure and the impacts on local environmental health in Bocas Del Toro, Panama.

Wastewater treatment, along with coastal and fresh water quality standards are established by governments to limit the release of untreated domestic wastewater to oceans, and to ensure that pollutants do not exceed a certain level that is deemed dangerous to ecosystem and human health. Some countries also establish bathing water quality standards for coastal bodies of water. Wastewater management in the Wider Caribbean Region is historically challenging due to the previous factors discussed. The lack of resources and infrastructure to properly treat wastewater has led to water pollution, resulting in negative impacts to important coastal and freshwater ecosystems and to human health. Across the region, 80% of domestic wastewater entering the Caribbean Sea remains untreated; 51.5 % of households lack sewer connections; and only 17% of households are connected to acceptable collection and treatment systems.1 In 1999, Governments of the Wider Caribbean Region recognized the importance of wastewater pollution issues by signaling their commitment to reduce marine pollution from untreated wastewater and agreeing to the Protocol on the Control of Land Based Sources of Marine Pollution (LBS Protocol).1 However, treatment centers are still extremely poorly maintained and there is not enforcement of the regulations surrounding this legislation due to the lack of economic investment and necessary infrastructure. 

In addition to the poor maintenance and enforcement, declines in water quality are only being amplified with increasing ocean temperatures, sea level rise, and ocean acidification due to climate change. The resulting water pollution has detrimental impacts on the main tropical coastal ecosystems in this area, such as coral reefs and mangroves being a primary component of the nearshore waters surrounding the island communities. These environments provide key ecosystem services, such as aiding in biodiversity, shoreline protection, and carbon sequestration, which help mitigate the anthropogenic impacts driving climate change. In turn, degradation of these ecosystems further accelerates global warming at an exponential rate. Mangroves serve as the only blue carbon forest in the world, with the ability to pull remarkable amounts of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, storing up to four times as much carbon as other tropical forests. In addition, mangroves and coral reefs operate in symbiosis, enhancing tropical environments and providing protection against natural disasters by forming a combined wave-resistant structure to aid in creating a buffer zone from waves and erosion.6  The health of coral reefs is dependent on mangrove forests, which are highly productive and dynamic environments. Mangroves also provide a nursery habitat and maintain fisheries, with their lower threat of predation, the protection they provide, higher oxygen concentrations, and high food availability. These factors therefore provide ideal grounds for breeding and spawning of fish and in turn, increase biodiversity of coral reef fishes.5  Unfortunately, over 80% of coral reefs have been lost in the Caribbean in the past two decades and this has largely been attributed to wastewater pollution.1 Coral reefs also happen to be a main component of ecotourism throughout the Caribbean, attracting divers and fisherman year round. Loss of these environments will make these island communities more vulnerable to natural disasters, cause economic losses in fisheries, and their tropical tourism industry, which is largely dependent on these habitats and acts as a primary source of GDP in Panama. Therefore, examining this issue from an ecological perspective is important in understanding long-term economic impacts, and should then play a large role in influencing conservation efforts in terms of wastewater pollution.

The social consequences for indigenous people of these regions are numerous due to historically remaining governmental priorities and allocation of resources. Over 500 indigenous families that currently live near the WWTP do not currently have any wastewater treatment, leading to their sewage being disposed of directly in the coastal mangroves.1 Houses in this community are positioned directly on the shoreline of these mangrove ecosystems and therefore are innately tied to their historical culture and entire livelihood, in daily activities such as bathing, washing their clothes, and fishing.9 However, these historical aspects are blatantly threatened in a disproportionate manner, with greatly increased water quality health risks for the indigenous and poorer populations. These communities are thought to have a higher infant mortality rate that may be associated with exposure to untreated domestic wastewater in mangroves.1 Some of the most common illnesses connected to exposure to these waters include acute respiratory disease (ARD), and eye, ear, and skin infections, cholera, typhoid, and hepatitis.2 Additionally, exposure to the toxins associated with algal blooms, which comes from this large influx of nutrients, poses significant human health risks. These algal bloom events also influence anoxic zones in ecosystems, decreasing dissolved oxygen concentrations and therefore accelerating ocean acidification, as discussed previously. The lack of investment in sustainable wastewater infrastructure is largely attributed to poor knowledge of the impacts that poor management practices are having on human and environmental health, and in turn, how this will lead to economic costs for these island communities. In 2003, studies estimated that polluted coastal waters generate 120 million excess cases of gastroenteritis and 50 million excess cases of ARD annually, resulting in a global cost of $12 billion per year in public health expenses.1 Awareness of the connectivity between wastewater treatment and human and ecosystem health is important in order to shape policy and management to improve domestic wastewater practices. 

In order to formulate solutions to these issues, examining institutional causation is crucial. Following discussion of the vast environmental degradation occurring in response to sewage waste, it is evident that there is a clear disconnect between human decision and nature. There has been a loss of connection between humans and the natural world, and commonly no longer able to be informed when Earth needs care, attention, and preventative measures for conservation.7 Tropical ecosystems are being deconstructed at the expense of blatant pollution. If nature was at the forefront of decision-making and not seen as something to be so easily dismissed, these habitats would not be depleting at such extreme rates. Though mangroves are resilient environments, they will not persevere indefinitely and this major carbon sink will come to an end, as the atmosphere feels the impacts of greenhouse gas emission and global warming at alarming rates. With this, every human action should be so engrained to the effects on nature, given that the natural world essentially allows for human survival. There is a need for understanding that there is an ultimate limit to human consumption and disregard of nature.

 Indigenous people have played a critical role in protecting biodiversity, natural resources, and the climate in the lands that they have inhabited for millennia. Panamanian governments struggle to recognize the rights and respect for these populations that are so intertwined with climate change mitigation and resource allocation. Industry and capitalistic ideals have disrupted this harmonious historical tie that ropes nature and people as one. Over-extraction and lack of consideration is possibly not embedded in human nature, but has come to drive human action based on societal views and the system in which the capitalistic society operates.8 Though the financial framework is a difficult barrier in developing countries, funds can be better allocated. Long-term damage to the environment and human health needs to be addressed prior to satisfaction of short-term monetary fulfillment. Industry is often prioritized before ecology, as there is often being a dominance of economic growth over resource preservation.11 In recognizing this downfall through utilizing ecological research, it is apparent that tropical ecosystems are diminishing exponentially and this impacts the Panamanian economy that is nearly 15% dependent on ecotourism operating in these environments.1 In the interests of economics, stakeholders come to weigh that the benefits of improving wastewater management systems and connecting more people to centralized wastewater treatment plants would likely outweigh the costs associated with human health, ecotourism loss, and ecosystem degradation. Environmental injustices are very present, such as vast procedural justice instances, as previously discussed, given the lack of transparency and that indigenous people are not a part of the decision-making process regarding the infrastructure placement and management strategies. Resources and infrastructure are not implemented fairly or equally distributed, as poor communities are particularly vulnerable to the wastewater pollution, given their lack of connection to the treatment plants, and dependence on the mangroves for their entire livelihood.9  This peak realization is necessary to address the climate crisis and abundant health issues, and the rising history of intersectional and injustices being faced are due to capitalism. 

The link between culture and the environment among Indigenous people is evident and it is apparent that they share a spiritual, cultural, social, and economic relationship with their traditional lands. Some ecologists attribute sheer population growth as being the source of ecological consumption.10 However, local people have preserved this historical tie to nature for hundreds of years of living on these islands without an issue. Consumption of resources at this rate is not inevitable given population size. There are possibilities for natural treatment methods, as well as sustainable infrastructure to have increased connectivity to sources of waste, which would in turn, decrease the influx of harmful toxins into the waters. There are management strategies to deal with human growth that could be maintained and deconstruct the overconsumption of ecological resources. Improvement of wastewater infrastructure, with the purpose to treat and return this water back to the surrounding environment is gaining more traction, but a paradigm shift is vital to influence technology and management practices, from treatment and disposal of wastewater to water resource recovery, recycling, and utilizing wastewater as part of the solution. Consideration of wastewater as a water resource is necessary, instead of hazardous waste to dispose of, which inevitably leads to vast amounts of contaminants into the environment. There is a need for incentives to redefine how wastewater is managed toward a more sustainable way and increased monitoring of water quality across ecosystems in coastal areas, especially where there are communities living on the water. Governments need to be driven to support the development of services, which can collect and transport sanitation waste for safe treatment, and raise awareness of the issue among residents, to stimulate customer demand. As demonstrated throughout this review, it is seen that the origin of these problems are embedded in a lagging sociological and environmentalist perspective and in utilizing both of these lenses, it aids in formulating powerful solutions, in therefore creating a more sustainable system. 

References

1. Gray, E., Burke, L., Lambert, L.J., Altamirano, J.C., Mehrhof, W., 2015. Valuing the costs and benefits of improved wastewater management: An economic valuation resource guide for the Wider Caribbean Region. GEF CReW and UNEP CAR/RCU.

2. Ujang, Z., & Henze, M. (2006). Municipal wastewater management in developing countries principles and engineering. IWA Publishing. 

3. Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation - SDG tracker. Our World in Data. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2021, from https://sdg-tracker.org/water-and-sanitation. 

4. Yana Bagbi, Arvind Pandey, Pratima R. Solanki, Chapter 10 - Electrospun Nanofibrous Filtration Membranes for Heavy Metals and Dye Removal, Editor(s): Sabu Thomas, Daniel Pasquini, Shao-Yuan Leu, Deepu A. Gopakumar, In Micro and Nano Technologies, Nanoscale Materials in Water Purification, Elsevier, 2019, Pages 275-288.

5. Mumby et al. 2004. Mangroves enhance the biomass of coral reef fish communities in the Caribbean. Nature. 427, pages 533–536.

6.  Megan D. Barnes, Whitney Goodell, Robert Whittier, Kim A. Falinski, Tova Callender, Hla Htun, Cecilia LeViol, Hudson Slay, Kirsten L.L. Oleson, Decision analysis to support wastewater management in coral reef priority area, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 148, 2019, Pages 16-29, ISSN 0025-326X.

7. Flora, Gloria. “Remapping Relationships: Humans in Nature.” Pp. 184-193.

8.  Raymond, Robert. “Humans Aren’t Inherently Destroying the Planet- Capitalism is.” Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/humans-arent-inherently-destroying-the-planet-capitalism-is

9.  Bullard, Robert D. “Environmental Justice in the 21st Century.” Pp. 19-42.

10.  Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Pp. 185-198.

11. Schnaiberg, Allan and Kenneth Alan Gould. “Treadmill Predispositions and Social Responses.” Pp. 51-60.