The Aquarium is honored to be hosting Pew Marine Fellows and grantees of our Marine Conservation Action Fund Gill Braulik, Ph.D., and Rohan Arthur, Ph.D., for guest lectures at 7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 4, 2014.

Dr. Braulik will tell the story of her 12 years working against the odds and often in hostile environments studying endangered Indus River dolphins that are subject to a myriad of threats, from construction of mega-dams to intensive fishing to heavily polluted waters.

To read about Gill Braulik’s MCAF-supported study, click here.



Dr. Arthur focuses his research on coral reefs and the uncertain future they face due to threats such as overfishing and climate change. He will string together narratives from Indian Ocean reefs to build a case for incidental conservation where the goals of reef resilience emerge as happy accidents of apparently unrelated community or economic processes.


To read about Rohan Arthur’s MCAF supported coral reef resilience study, click here.

To register for the lecture go to www.neaq.org/AquariumLectures

This is a report on a project led by the Nature Conservation Foundation and supported with a grant from the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF) in 2010. MCAF supports the Aquarium’s commitment to ocean conservation by funding small-scale, high-impact projects across the globe. Since its founding in 1999, MCAF has funded more than 100 conservation projects in 36 countries and has disbursed more than $600,000 to protect highly vulnerable species and habitats and to conserve marine biodiversity. 


Among the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, coral reefs support life for thousands of known species, and perhaps millions more that have yet to be discovered. They are also critically important to humans, providing food, livelihoods and protection from the damage of coastal storms. These vital ecosystems are faced with an increasing number of threats, including global warming. Higher than normal ocean temperatures stress a coral, often causing it to bleach white from the loss of its zooxanthellae, the microscopic algae that live in the coral, give it its color and help it to grow. If the coral is able to recoup these losses, it may recover, if not, it will die. Given that bleaching events are likely to become more frequent with global warming, scientists want to learn more about the factors that determine which reefs are most susceptible to bleaching and which are most resilient.

In 2010, MCAF awarded a grant to the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) in India to study coral reef resilience in the Lakshadweep Archipelago, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean. The reefs of this archipelago were severely impacted by coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2010. The goal of NCF’s project was to assess the reefs’ responses (both resistance and recovery) in the wake of these bleaching events, in hopes of understanding how they might weather the effects of climate change over the long term.

Some species of coral like this Acropora are particularly susceptible to bleaching. When young individuals like this one are bleached it affects the population dynamics and recovery potential of the entire reef.  Photo: Rohan Arthur, Nature Conservation Foundation

The NCF team, lead by Rohan Arthur, Ph.D., surveyed 42 sites in the archipelago, measuring 30 different ecological and environmental characteristics to calculate a resilience score for each reef. Dr. Arthur’s team has been monitoring changes in these reefs since 1998, allowing them to relate these environmental characteristics with known patterns of resilience responses. The team has identified that reefs across the archipelago vary considerably in their responses to the stress of higher ocean temperatures. So, while some reefs are very susceptible to bleaching, others are highly resilient and still others are highly dynamic—bleaching, dying and then recovering very quickly after ocean warming events. The team is now trying to understand what factors drive these different responses.

During the survey, the research team measured 30 environmental and ecological parameters at each site, including the presence of bleached coral, as well the number of fish and invertebrate species. Photo: Rohan Arthur, Nature Conservation Foundation

Although this research is at an early stage, these findings could one day help guide management decisions. Reefs identified as having the greatest potential to survive long-term climate change could be strategically protected from human influences such as overfishing. In the meantime, Dr. Arthur and his team will continue studying the Lakshadweep Archipelago to better understand what the future may hold for these endangered ecosystems.

Belize Expedition 2012

We are in Belize again, at the remote Carrie Bow Cay research station run by the Smithsonian Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems Program. The main purpose of this trip is to conduct out biannual monitoring of the CBC reef to check on the status of the corals, fishes, and other reef denizens. Of course, we never have just one project going on, so stay tuned for updates on other projects coming soon to this blog! :-) [Read posts from the 2010 and 2011 Belize Expeditions]

One of the things that we check for is growth and for the size of various organisms--size is, for most reef organisms, proportional to age. Of course we all like to see large, thriving corals that have been growing for decades. We also love to see large fishes--a mark of a healthy and and reproductive population. But we also love to see babies! Babies indicate new life--new growth--and the future of reef health. Plus, babies are just darn cute, as everyone knows.

Here are a few of our favorite babies from this trip so far:





We wonder, what will these young ones be when they grow up? What will their homes look like? Will they rise to their fullest potential? These little ones have already come so far. They've survived their larval stage, and have successfully recruited to the reef. They have avoided predation and competition in order to get as large as we see them. But, they will have a long way to go. Stay tuned for adult versions of these organisms, which we will post later on, to show you what these babies will hopefully become.

-Randi