Code red for sea urchins

With the nation joining the globe in recognising World Oceans Day earlier this month, and nearly 40 years after a major disease outbreak killed most of the local sea urchins, local scientists believe enough is still not being done to save the marine life and that the country could be devastated in the future if it fails to act.

In 1980, the disease outbreak killed most sea urchins in the region, resulting in an overgrowth of algae along many Caribbean coral reefs.

According to Travis Graham, executive director of the GoldenEye Foundation in Oracabessa Bay, St Mary, around 80 per cent of sea urchins in Jamaican’s territory were affected.

Decades later, in April 2022, the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) confirmed reports of a die-off of long-spined sea urchins (diadema antillarum) in Jamaica’s coastal waters. The diadema species, like the parrot fish, is one of the most important grazers/herbivores on Caribbean coral reefs, which removes algae and maintains open spaces for coral growth.

The die-off is characterised by the loss of spines and sloughing of tissue which has been observed in each reported event.

The first report received originated from the White River Fish Sanctuary in the Ocho Rios Marine Park Protected Area on March 16, 2022. Subsequent reports came from Montego Bay Marine Park, Runaway Bay, Boscobel, Oracabessa, Palisadoes and Port Royal.

Other locations impacted by the die-off included the US Virgin Islands, Saba, St Eustatius, Dominica, St Vincent, Antigua and St Lucia.

Although the waters of Jamaica’s Oracabessa Bay Fish Sanctuary remained largely unaffected by the disease, scientists there collected healthy long-spined sea urchins and started an urchin nursery in hopes of restoring the species on reefs around the island. With fewer sea urchins now in existence, scientists, environmentalists and other stakeholders such as Graham believe concerns raised on World Oceans Day 2024 were just a one-day talk and nine-day wonder.

They say with fewer sea urchins, the sicker the corals have been and will continue to be, and the health of the Caribbean’s beloved tropical waters has been deteriorating since the 1970s.

“For me, it’s code red! About 80 per cent of sea urchins, not just in Jamaica, across the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico [and] Florida Keys have died off. Now, we speak a lot about parrot fish, but sea urchins, they stay on the reef and they suck off the algae and they are critically important to our reef health here in Jamaica,” said Graham, whose foundation works towards improving the quality of life of the people within the Oracabessa community.

“Unfortunately, we don’t see how critical species like these are. The die-off has gone. We haven’t done much research. It happened in the ‘80s and it is going to significantly affect reef health across the Caribbean.”

He made his concerns first known while speaking at the recent World Oceans Day Ceremony held at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston on June 7.

World Oceans Day was recognised globally on June 8 and the local theme for the event and day was Catalysing Action for our Ocean and Climate.

According to a series titled ‘Oceans’ by conservation news service, Mongabay and published in August 2023, “Rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification, pollution, overfishing and the stony coral tissue loss disease have contributed to the general decline of coral reefs and fish stocks. Roughly 10 years into this decline, the first urchin disease outbreak began in 1983, swiftly killing off 98 per cent of the Caribbean’s long-spined sea urchins before ending in 1984, according to a 2015 paper. Yet, the identity of the pathogen responsible bewildered scientists for 40 years.”

In the Oceans series, it is also stated that, in 2022, another similarly lethal outbreak of the same disease struck, disturbing the sluggish 12 per cent recovery of the urchin’s numbers that had taken place. The first signs occurred in February in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, according to the Diadema Response Network (DRN) of the Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment, an international group of scientists that formed to track the outbreak. The disease soon appeared on other islands, including Dominica, St Vincent, Barbados and Jamaica, at least 25 jurisdictions throughout the Caribbean, according to the DRN. The group is still assessing data and it’s unclear whether the die-off has abated.

This time, however, researchers were able to discover the biological perpetrator of the disease, a species of scuticociliate, a type of single-celled marine microorganism. They described the pathogen in a paper published in April. After being infected, urchins show rapid deterioration, the paper states. They lose their long calcified spines, their tube-like feet and other essential tissue, leaving them vulnerable to predatory fish. After first showing signs of disease, they can die within days.

Aggressive coral reef cleaners

While parrot fish often get credit for being the most important coral reef cleaners in the Caribbean, long-spined urchins are actually more aggressive algae grazers here. The depletion of their population has led to a slow and steady take-over of many reefs by the coral’s natural enemy, algae. According to a 2014 IUCN report, Caribbean corals have declined by 50 per cent since the 1970s, with major consequences for the region’s marine food webs.

With this knowledge in mind, Graham said that, in Oracabessa Bay, they have been playing their part in protecting the corals by creating a land-based lab with tanks.

“We set up a system, [but] when we realised it didn’t reach Oracabessa, we had to put a whole 27 urchins in a tank. We had partnered with a university in Florida to learn how to spawn, and we were relatively successful, but, to be honest, I would say we didn’t really do as much as we wanted to, and a big part of that was that, no one, as much as we tried to get the word out, it didn’t seem to be at crisis level to say this is something that we had to talk about ... but we’re really limited in terms of the resources of what we want to do,” Graham said.

He elaborated that some of the things they wanted to do were to “use sticky paper to capture larvae in the sea and bring more of the baby urchins to study their growth patterns and to look at how we can spawn them”.

Said Graham: “The die off went. We’re seeing a resurgence of sea urchins, but ultimately, what we have to get to is at a point of where we research these phenomenons to see what is the issue that caused it, so we can know how we can better protect ourselves going forward.

“We do know that when it occured in the ‘80s, that probably was the beginning of the degradation of our reef landscape in Jamaica and the Caribbean, so it is a real problem. But I will recommend to the governments, let us really put some focus on the research to see what really is causing this, because, generally, we’re really not sure at this point.”

Graham also used the opportunity to touch on coral bleaching caused by an increase in ocean temperatures.

“We have a coral reef restoration programme. We have planted over 35,000 corals over the last eight years and we had an active coral reef nursery up to 3,500 coral in them, and everything died. All of the acropora, which are the hard corals that we had in our coral nursery, died. All of our out-plant size for those hard corals, they died. And, we focus on those corals because they’re branchy and they provide great protection for juvenile fish which supports fish growth.

“We do have a lot of other species of corals that have survived, but it has really devastated the coral population and colonies across Jamaica and the Caribbean.”

Blue Growth Plan

In citing cases of improvement in another Caribbean territory, he said Grenada has a Blue Growth Master Plan which he defines as “an excellent integrated coastal zonal management framework” created for that country.

“I think something like this will really work in Jamaica, in terms of: How do we develop our coastal zoning mechanisms? How do we get the communities involved? How do we recognise all the sectors that make up the blue economy? And get some of the common people [and] entities structured and get them around the table in the board rooms.”

He also calls for strengthening of fishermen’s associations islandwide; upskilling and training fishermen with GIS technology, so when they go out, they can be a part of the objectives and hopefully become “coastal watch dogs” because they will have issues with displacement if the reefs are not saved, and they need to feel empowered.

“I think, critically, we have to get the communities involved, structured, uptooled and to be a part of that roll-out through, I would say, effective coastal management systems,” he said.

Graham also believe the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) should get more funding and return to annual assessments of coral reefs.

“Nationally, we have to treat it as a priority because it impacts our marine environment. It impacts the fisheries sector, which is so critical, and impacts the tourism sector, [as] three out of every four tourists engage with the marine space,” he said.

“[Our] tourism product is largely eco-based and marine-based, so we have to recognise how important it is and the final thing is NEPA normally does their research annually, [but] because of budgetary constraints, it has cut back from annually to every three years.

“Now, if we take three years to collect this data, and we see in one year how much it would have been devastated, what will happen if we do these reef monitoring every three years? It might be too late, so, importantly, we have to fund critical entities like NEPA with their capital budget, so they can maintain a robust monitoring system, so we know where we are, so we know how to act. We just have to put attention on the environment,” he said.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com