Incidence of lesions on Fungiidae corals in the eastern Red Sea is related to water temperature and coastal pollution

• Published in: Marine Environmental Research
• Main Authors: Furby, K.A., Apprill, A., Cervino, J.M., Ossolinski, J.E., Hughen, K.A.
• Other Authors: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, United States, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, United States
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier BV 2014
• Subjects: Climate change; Marine ecology; Microbes; Nutrients; Saudi Arabia; Scleractinia; Dream Island
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10754/598606; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marenvres.2014.04.002

As sea surface temperatures rise and the global human population increases, large-scale field observations of marine organism health and water quality are increasingly necessary. We investigated the health of corals from the family Fungiidae using visual observations in relation to water quality and microbial biogeochemistry parameters along 1300 km of the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. At large scales, incidence of lesions caused by unidentified etiology showed consistent signs, increasing significantly from the northern to southern coast and positively correlated to annual mean seawater temperatures. Lesion abundance also increased to a maximum of 96% near the populous city of Jeddah. The presence of lesioned corals in the region surrounding Jeddah was strongly correlated with elevated concentrations of ammonium and changes in microbial communities that are linked to decreased water quality. This study suggests that both high seawater temperatures and nutrient pollution may play an indirect role in the formation of lesions on corals. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This research was supported by Award No. USA 00002 to K. Hughen by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and a WHOI Ocean Life Institute postdoctoral scholar fellowship to A. Apprill. The authors thank J. Kneeland, W. Bernstein for field assistance and the crew of M/V Dream Island. We thank K. Selph of the UH SOEST flow cytometry facility for cell enumeration. J. Jennings and Oregon State University for inorganic nutrient analysis and S. Sandin, M. Berumen, G. Williams, B. Willis, Y. Sato and three anonymous reviewers for advice on the manuscript.