Reef Resilience Review July 2011

Reef Resilience Team Returns Home from Reef Resilience Workshop in Palau

Spotlight on the Guam-CNMI-Palau Fisher Exchange

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Recent Publications and Other Resources

To join the Resilience Practitioners Network or to submit updates, contact us at resilience@tnc.org.

For more information about The Nature Conservancy's Reef Resilience Program, visit reefresilience.org.

This newsletter is brought to you through the generous support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program.

July 2011 Newsletter

Distributed by the Global Marine Initiative

Reef Resilience Team Returns Home from Reef Resilience Workshop in Palau

Participants and coaches at the Palau Reef Resilience Workshop. © TNC

We've just returned from Palau, where we hosted the Pacific Islands Reef Resilience Training of Trainers Course. After participating in a 4-month Online Reef Course, reef managers and educators came from Kosrae, New Zealand, Guam, American Samoa, Independent Samoa, Solomon Islands, Pohnpei, Saipan, Hawaii, Palau, and Fiji for this in-person training. Participants spent five days together sharing knowledge, learning new skills, and developing training and outreach plans for their respective geographies. Since returning home, some have already begun putting the wheels in motion for implementing their plans! For instance, we’ve just received news from Chris Bone from Oceanswatch about the successes of new outreach activities he has implemented in Vanuatu, with more to come. Great going Chris!

We are excited about all the great ideas and enthusiasm put forth from this group, and we look forward to learning about the progress they are making to improve the management of coral reef resources in their communities. It is always wonderful to be in Palau and was encouraging to see coral recovery happening in Palau’s reefs after being so heavily impacted by the 1998 global bleaching event. In fact, the reefs are looking fantastic! Please stay tuned-- we will be holding a similar course for coral reef managers and educators in Southeast Asia next June. If you are from the region and interested, keep an eye out for our course announcement in October.

Spotlight on the Guam-CNMI-Palau Fisher Exchange

Reef managers from the Western Pacific discuss reef resilience principles in the MPA network of Palau.
© Stephanie Wear/TNC

Taking place over the course of five days in 2010, the fisherman learning exchange was designed to provide the opportunity for practitioners and stakeholders from Guam, the Commonwealth of the Marianas Islands (CNMI), and Palau to interact directly with and learn from their peers in other islands, and share successes and lessons learned, both politically and technically in terms of marine conservation and fisheries management. In July 2010, the exchange was implemented to promote community-led conservation efforts and greater awareness of the need for community-stakeholder involvement in the design and implementation of marine conservation. This was done in order to support fisheries management, by providing fishermen from Guam and CNMI with the chance to visit a community putting this into practice in Palau.

Recent Publications and Other Resources

Publications:

Rapid Evolution of Coral Proteins Responsible for Interaction with the Environment

Global Human Footprint on the Linkage between Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Reef Fishes

Ocean Acidification and Warming Will Lower Coral Reef Resilience

How Much Time Can Herbivore Protection Buy for Coral Reefs Under Realistic Regimes of Hurricanes and Coral Bleaching?

Resources:

2012 Funding Opportunity: Regional Ecosystem Prediction Program, “From Science to Management: Improving Management of Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems in the U.S. Caribbean”

Coral Reef Targeted Research (CRTR) Program Resources

Demonstration of Coral Reef Scenario Evaluation Tool (CORSET)

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Upcoming Events

World Conference on Marine Biodiversity
September 26-30, 2011
Aberdeen, Scotland

Second International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (ICMMPA 2)
November 7-11, 2011
Fort-de-France, Martinique

1st International Marine Conservation Think Tank
November 25-28, 2011
Christchurch, New Zealand

4th International Tropical Marine Ecosystem Symposium
December 5-8, 2011
Guadeloupe