A common “old world” tree, European beech can be found across Europe — from southern Scandinavia and Spain to Sicily and northwest Turkey.

A new study by an international team of researchers has found that the summer solstice triggers synchronized beech tree reproduction all over the continent, influencing ecosystem functions.

“We got inspired by a recent Science paper where researchers from Switzerland found that the effects of temperature on leaf senescence switch at the summer solstice. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and happens at the same time anywhere in the Hemisphere,” said Dr. Valentin Journé, lead author of the analysis and a postdoctoral researcher at Poland’s Adam Mickiewcz University, in a press release from University of Liverpool.

The researchers examined the relationships between the seed production of perennials like the European beech and weather patterns, as well as looked at how trees synchronize their reproduction across thousands of miles.

Earlier research by the team had revealed that an external factor like weather triggered the synchrony, but the mystery remained as to how the beech — which grows in highly diverse climates —  carried this out.

The team looked at small changes in the beech trees’ temperature responses and concluded that the summer solstice was the trigger.

“A celestial cue that occurs simultaneously across the entire hemisphere is the longest day (the summer solstice),” the authors wrote in the study. “European beech abruptly opens its temperature-sensing window on the solstice, and hence widely separated populations all start responding to weather signals in the same week. This celestial ‘starting gun’ generates ecological events with high spatial synchrony across the continent.”

The study, “Summer solstice orchestrates the subcontinental-scale synchrony of mast seeding,” was published in the journal Nature Plants.

“The sharp response of beech trees is just remarkable. Once the day starts to shorten after the summer solstice, the temperature sensing-window opens simultaneously, all across Europe,” said Jessie Foest, co-author of the study and a Ph.D. researcher in the Department of Geography at University of Liverpool, in the press release. “What’s truly jaw-dropping is that the change in day length that the trees are able to detect is really small – we are talking about a few minutes over a week. Apparently, trees are able to recognise the difference.”

Many perennials only reproduce every few years in order to build up resources and produce an abundance of seed. Ecosystems are greatly affected by the European beech’s wide-ranging, coordinated annual seed production.

“Such large-scale regional synchronisation of seed production by trees has important consequences for ecosystems. Large-seeding years result in a pulse of resources for wildlife, while reproductive failures result in famines for seed-eating animals. When this variation is synchronised at sub-continental scales the consequences include far-reaching disruptions in food webs, including rodent outbreaks, migration of ungulates and birds, and spikes in wildlife-borne human diseases,” the press release said.

The post Summer Solstice Triggers Mass, Synchronized European Beech Tree Reproduction, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

People living near plants that use ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment have for years pressured regulators to crack down on their toxic emissions. Residents in communities from Laredo, Texas, to Willowbrook, Illinois have tried to shut these facilities down, challenged them in court, and fought for air sampling studies to measure their exposure to the carcinogen. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has finally taken notice.

Today the agency finalized new regulations that will require dozens of medical sterilization companies to adopt procedures and technologies that it claims will reduce emissions of the toxic chemical by 90 percent. The rule will take effect within two to three years, a longer timeline than advocates of the change hoped for. Still, regulators and community advocates alike hailed the change.

“We have followed the science and listened to communities to fulfill our responsibility to safeguard public health from this pollution – including the health of children, who are particularly vulnerable to carcinogens early in life,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a press release.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, more than 50 percent of the nation’s medical equipment is sterilized using ethylene oxide. The nondescript buildings where this fumigation occurs came under scrutiny in 2016, after the EPA revised its risk assessment of the chemical, finding it 30 percent more toxic to adults and 60 percent more toxic to children than previously known. Over the years, studies have linked exposure to the chemical to cancers of the lungs, breasts, and lymph nodes.

The medical sterilization industry has recently warned that too-stringent regulations risk disrupting the supply of medical equipment.

“The industry supports updated standards while ensuring the technology patients rely on around the clock is sterile and well-supplied,” wrote the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a trade group, in a February press release.

After the agency published a 2019 analysis indicating unusually high levels of cancer risk near sterilizers, people around the country rallied against the facilities in their communities, with a Chicago suburb even managing to shut one down. Federal data indicate that more than 96 of these businesses operate in 32 states and Puerto Rico and are concentrated near Latino communities. 

Marvin Brown, an attorney at Earthjustice who advocated for stronger oversight of toxic emissions from commercial sterilizers, applauded the new rule, noting that EPA regulations were last revised in 1994, long before the agency was aware of the true risk of ethylene oxide.

“Overall it’s definitely a victory for our clients in terms of getting EPA to finally revise and increase regulations on an industry that’s really been operating with a lack of controls for the past 30 years,” he told Grist in an interview.

The rule will rely upon several measures to achieve an estimated 90 percent reduction in toxic emissions. It requires companies to install air monitors inside their facilities to continuously track the level of ethylene oxide, and report their results to the EPA on a quarterly basis. Brown considers these continuous monitoring systems important because they capture pollutants escaping through leaks and cracks in the sterilization chambers, providing a more comprehensive assessment of the facility’s emissions.

The rule also requires both large and small sterilizers to install “permanent total enclosures,” which creates negative pressure in a building, preventing air from escaping. Instead of being released into the atmosphere and putting nearby residents at risk, any emissions are routed to a device that burns them.

But for all its benefits, Brown said, the new regulation leaves out several important protections residents and advocates fought for. The EPA pushed back the rule’s implementation from 18 months for all sterilizers to 2 years for large facilities and 3 years for smaller ones, a change Brown attributed to industry pressure. The decision will come as a disappointment, he said, to residents who hoped for more immediate relief. 

Notably, the new regulations do not require companies to monitor the air near their facilities, making it difficult for communities to assess the concentrations of ethylene oxide near their homes. The agency has argued that such a provision is excessive given the new monitoring requirements inside of facilities, but advocates of the change note that internal monitors don’t capture leaks that happen outdoors, such as from trucks carrying newly sterilized equipment. 

Ethylene oxide emissions from the warehouses where medical equipment is stored after sterilization are a growing concern. After fumigation, these items can carry traces of the chemical that evaporate for days or weeks afterwards. Officials in Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division found that this “offgassing” can create substantial concentrations of the chemical in the air, and a recent Grist investigation revealed that dozens of workers at one warehouse in Lithia Springs experienced nausea, headaches, rashes, and seizures after being exposed to these fumes on the job. The EPA’s new regulations do not cover such emissions, an omission Brown called “unfortunate.” 

“There’s still a lot more work to be done,” he said of the new rule. “But this is a good step in terms of stricter emission controls, and new emission controls that did not exist before.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline EPA finally cracks down on the carcinogen used to sterilize medical equipment on Mar 14, 2024.

According to a new report by European scientists, plastics — from food packaging to furniture, clothing and medical equipment — contain thousands more chemicals than environmental agencies had previously estimated, raising concerns about consumer safety and pollution, reported Reuters.

More than 13,000 plastic chemicals had been identified by the United Nations Environment Programme, but the new report by PlastChem revealed more than 16,000 — more than 4,200 of which are “of concern” because they have been found to be hazardous to the environment and human health. According to the report, less than one percent may be categorized as “non-hazardous.”

“Chemicals are a central aspect of the plastics issue. Although there is a wealth of scientific information on plastic chemicals and polymers to inform policymakers, implementing this evidence is challenging because information is scattered and not easily accessible,” PlastChem said.

The report comes as governments work on the world’s first global plastics pollution treaty to tackle the 440.9 million tons of plastic waste produced annually, Reuters reported.

“To robustly solve plastic pollution, you actually have to look at the full life cycle of plastics and you have to address the chemicals issue,” said co-author of the report Jane Muncke, who is managing director of Switzerland’s Food Packaging Forum, as reported by Reuters.

One of the biggest concerns with the many toxic chemicals found in plastics is that they can leach into food and water, potentially causing health problems like heart disease and fertility issues.

“It is now well established that many phthalates are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Some phthalates have been banned in Europe and other regions. Further, UV-328, due to its persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic properties has been added to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2023,” the report said. “At the dawn of the plastic age, scientists were unaware of the toxicological and environmental impacts of using additives in plastics. Their work to make plastic durable is essentially what made plastics highly useful, but also persistent and toxic.”

The report’s authors pointed out that attempting to tackle plastic waste through reuse and recycling isn’t enough — there needs to be more transparency when it comes to chemicals like processing aids, additives and impurities, Reuters reported.

Contributing to the issue is that the fundamental chemical identity of a quarter of plastics is unknown, the report said.

“At the core of the problem is the chemical complexity of plastics,” Wagner said, as reported by Reuters. “Often producers don’t really know which kind of chemicals they have in their products and that comes from very complex value chains.”

International regulations are in place for just six percent of plastics chemicals, something that could be addressed in a plastics treaty. Next month, negotiations will resume in Ottawa, Canada, with the goal of having a finalized treaty in December.

“Addressing plastic chemicals and polymers of concern comprehensively is expected to result in substantial benefits for the environment and human health, promote innovation into safer plastic chemicals, material, and products as well as support a transition to a non-toxic, circular economy,” the report said. “Since no country has the capacity to address the transboundary issue of plastic chemicals and polymers individually, the state of the science implies that a collective global response is most appropriate to mitigate environmental and health impacts. Adopting evidence-based policies that prioritize chemical safety and sustainability will provide a pathway towards a safe and sustainable future.”

The post Plastics Contain Thousands More Chemicals Than Previously Thought, Report Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

With demand for fossil fuels expected to decline as the world shifts toward electric vehicles and renewable energy, Big Oil is in the midst of an enormous pivot to plastic production. And taxpayers are helping them.

Petrochemical companies like Shell and Exxon Mobil have received nearly $9 billion in state and local tax breaks since 2012 to build or expand 50 plastics manufacturing facilities, according to a report the Environmental Integrity Project, or EIP, released today. Much of that activity occurred along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, often alongside marginalized communities. What’s more, 84 percent of the operations released more air pollutants than allowed during the past three years, despite their promises to protect public health and the environment, the nonprofit found.  

“Taxpayer subsidies are helping to fund dangerous and often illegal air pollution in communities of color,” Alexandra Shaykevich, EIP’s research manager and a co-author of the report, told Grist. She said the manufacturers should be held accountable for their environmental impact and those public funds redirected to beneficial projects like improving public schools. “If a company is breaking the law” she added, “it shouldn’t get taxpayer money.”

EIP examined 50 of the country’s 108 plastics plants, focusing only on those that have been built or expanded their production capacity since 2012. These facilities make the basic building blocks of all plastic — fossil fuel-derived substances like ethylene and propylene — that can be combined with other chemicals to create common polymers: polyethylene, for example, used in shampoo bottles and milk jugs, or polyvinyl chloride, used in pipes and window frames.

Demand for these substances is expected to surge in the coming years. The world produced 460 million metric tons of plastic in 2023, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development expects that number to reach more than 1.2 billion tons by midcentury if current growth trends continue. Recycling is unlikely to keep pace — to date, less than 10 percent of goods made with plastic has been turned into new products; the rest has been dumped into landfills, littered into the environment, or burned.

So why subsidize making more? In many cases, local and state officials offer tax breaks with the idea that new or expanded manufacturing will foster economic development. For example, a Louisiana program highlighted by EIP exempted manufacturers from 80 to 100 percent of all local taxes for 10 years and favored industrial applicants that promised to create or retain jobs. Since 2013, the program has subsidized a Dow petrochemical facility in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, with at least $230 million in tax breaks. A program in Texas discounted property taxes for petrochemical companies if they employed at least 10 people in rural areas or 25 in other areas.

It’s not clear whether the communities have seen any economic benefits — analyses from environmental groups suggest that new jobs have not materialized, or have come at a huge expense to local taxpayers by siphoning funds from schools, parks, roads, and other infrastructure. According to the nonprofit Together Louisiana, for example, every job the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program created cost the public more than half a million dollars. Another report, published last year by the nonprofit Ohio River Valley Institute, found that a Shell-owned plastics plant in Beaver County had virtually no impact on job growth and poverty reduction. 

“The truth of the matter is we don’t benefit from these industries. They don’t hire local people. And they don’t pay taxes,” Roishetta Ozane, a resident of southwest Louisiana, told EIP. 

What is clear, however, is that inviting new and bigger petrochemical facilities into an area brings significant health and environmental consequences. 

As part of their routine operations, the plastic plants EIP analyzed release tens of millions of pounds of ozone-producing nitrogen oxide, respiratory irritants called volatile organic compounds, and carcinogens like benzene and vinyl chloride every year. That’s only the start, because facilities often do not report emissions from equipment failures, chronic leaks, and accidents — all of which are disturbingly common.

Indeed, EIP found evidence of more than 1,200 breakdowns, fires, explosions, and other accidents over the past five years at 94 percent of the facilities it analyzed. These events frequently released more air pollution than allowed under the facilities’ permits — and lax reporting requirements often kept nearby communities from finding out until days or weeks later. 

Rather than heavily fining these facilities, EIP found that regulators often treated them gently — either by issuing warning letters or by granting higher pollution permits. State environmental agencies have since 2012 bumped up those limits for one-third of the 50 plants that EIP analyzed.

“It’s outrageous, and it’s been going on for the 25 years that I’ve been doing this work,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the nonprofit Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “There’s this well-worn path toward petrochemicals in our state, and we’re so deep in those tracks that our elected officials aren’t even trying to drive out of them.” 

As EIP notes, the plastics plants in question are often alongside schools, playgrounds, athletic fields, homes, and other public places. They tend to be sited near marginalized communities with underfunded schools and services. Of the nearly 600,000 people living within three miles of the plastic plants analyzed by EIP, more than two-thirds are people of color. Many of these people, like those in the industrialized corridor of southwest Louisiana known as Cancer Alley, face far greater risks of cancer and other diseases than the national average.

The EIP report includes several examples of plastic plants falling short of their promises to be ”a positive influence” and to “meet or exceed all environmental regulations,” as chemical company Indorama put it in a 2016 brochure. Between 2016 and 2022, state and local regulators approved at least $73 million in tax breaks for Indorama to restart a decommissioned plastics plant in southwest Louisiana. Once running, the plant violated its state pollution permit and failed to hire the workers it promised to. Several accidents released tens of thousands of pounds of hazardous emissions and injuries to two employees. The state environmental agency sent Indorama 13 warning letters.

Indorama declined to comment, as did 14 of the 17 other companies Grist contacted. The others — Exxon Mobil, Chevron Phillips Chemical, and Westlake Corporation — would not respond to EIP’s findings but said they strive to protect public health and the environment.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality also did not respond to a request for comment. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said it would not comment because it had not yet reviewed the report. A spokesperson for Louisiana’s economic development agency said that “double-counting of some financial data” from its industrial tax exemption program by EIP “suggests a lack of academic rigor and discredits the entire analysis.” The agency did not elaborate on what data it believed was double-counted.

To mitigate pollution from plastics facilities, EIP is calling for stricter air emissions standards and better enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act. Rather than telling communities about “emission events” after they’ve happened, Shaykevich said, pollution data should be shared publicly in real time. “It does folks very little good to be notified two weeks after” an incident, she told Grist.

Some of these reforms could be coming. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering rules that would reduce hazardous air pollution from chemical plants, including ethylene oxide, benzene, 1,3-butadiene, and vinyl chloride. Under the proposal, industrial facilities would have to monitor concentrations of these pollutants “at the fenceline,” meaning at their property lines, and the EPA would make the monitoring data available online. Pollution levels above a certain threshold would require facility operators to fix the problem.

The EPA is expected to finalize the rules later this year. EIP estimates they would affect about half of the facilities studied in its report.

EIP is also calling for a dramatic reduction in public funding for plastics manufacturers. While some plastic items — like medical devices or contact lenses — are clearly useful, the organization says subsidies to produce them should be tied to environmental performance. “If companies can’t comply” with their permits, “they should be forced to reimburse taxpayers,” Shaykevich told reporters during a press conference on Thursday. 

Other types of plastic production, she added, aren’t worth the trouble they cause. Nonessential, single-use items including bags, bottles, utensils, and packaging make up some 40 percent  of plastic production and are virtually impossible to recycle. “We don’t think it’s OK to offer taxpayer support for single-use plastics,” Shaykevich told Grist. Such things, like the money that subsidizes them, are too often just thrown away.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your tax dollars may be funding the expansion of the plastics industry on Mar 14, 2024.

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Amid a difficult year for North Atlantic right whales, a proposed rule to help protect them is one step closer to reality. 

Earlier this month, a proposal to expand speed limits for boats — one of the leading causes of death for the endangered whales — took a key step forward: It’s now under review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the last stage of federal review.

Fewer than 360 of the whales remain; only about 70 of them are females of reproductive age. Every individual whale is considered vital to the species’ survival, but since 2017 right whales have been experiencing what scientists call an “unusual mortality event,” during which 39 whales have died. 

Human actions — including climate change — are killing them.

When the cause of a right whale’s death can be determined, it is most often a strike by a boat or entanglement in fishing gear. Three young whales have been found dead this year, two of them with wounds from boat strikes and the third entangled in gear. One of the whales killed by a boat was a calf just a few months old. 

Climate change, meanwhile, has disrupted their food supply, driving down right whale birth rates and pushing them into territories without rules in place to protect them. 

“Our impacts are so great right now that the risk of extinction is very real,” said Jessica Redfern, associate vice president of ocean conservation at the New England Aquarium. “To be able to save the species, we have to stop our direct human-caused impacts on the population.”

This is not the first time humans have driven North Atlantic right whales to the brink of extinction.

Their name comes from whaling: They were known as the “right” whale to hunt because they spend time relatively close to coastlines, often swimming slowly and near the surface, and they float when dead. They also yielded large amounts of the oil and baleen whalers were after. So humans hunted them to near extinction until it was banned in 1935.

Many of those same characteristics are what make right whales so vulnerable to human-caused dangers today. Because they’re often near the surface in the same waters frequented by fishing boats, harbor pilots, and shipping vessels headed into port, it’s easy for boats to collide with them.

“They’ve been called an urban whale,” said Redfern. “They swim in waters that humans are using; they have high overlap with humans.”

To reduce the risk of vessel strikes, ships over 65 feet long have to slow down during set times of year when the whales are likely to be around. In the southeastern U.S., the speed limits are in force during the winter when the whales are calving; off the New England coast, the restrictions are in place in the spring and summer when they’re feeding. Regulators can also declare voluntary speed restrictions in localized spots if whales are seen, known as dynamic management areas.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, in 2022 proposed expanding those restrictions in three ways. 

First, the new rule would cover larger geographical areas. The protection zones would extend down the coast from Massachusetts to Florida at various times of year, instead of only applying in certain distinct areas. 

Second, the change would apply the speed limits to smaller craft like fishing boats, rather than only ships over 65 feet.

Third, the new rule would make the speed restrictions — the temporary speed limits where whales have been spotted — in dynamic management areas mandatory.

Since NOAA published and gathered feedback on the proposed rule in 2022, whale advocates have been clamoring for the agency to implement it. Those calls have increased in recent months as dead right whales have washed up on beaches.

“There have been three deaths, and that has been really devastating this year, and two of them are related to vessel strikes,” said Redfern. “It’s just highlighted that absolute urgency, the necessity of getting this rule out.”

A leading boating industry group is speaking out against the expanded speed restrictions, arguing they could hurt small businesses in the recreational boating industry.

“We are extremely disappointed and alarmed to see this economically catastrophic and deeply flawed rule proceed to these final stages,” said Frank Hugelmeyer, president and CEO of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, in a statement. “The proposed rule is based on incorrect assumptions and questionable data, and fails to distinguish between large, ocean-crossing vessels and small recreational boats.”

Right whale scientists have documented in recent years that small, recreational boats can injure and kill right whales. At least four of the lethal vessel strikes since the current restrictions began in 2008 have involved boats smaller than 65 feet and thus not subject to that speed limit, according to Redfern.

NOAA estimated that, based on the size and placement of the propeller wounds, the boat that killed the months-old calf this year was between 35 and 57 feet in length — too small to fall under the existing speed restrictions, but subject to the new rule if it were to be implemented. 

In his statement, Hugelmeyer also pointed to new marine technologies aimed at detecting right whales in the water to reduce vessel strikes without expanding the speed rules. 

Scientists like Redfern remain skeptical, though. 

The tech “offers a lot of promise,” she said, but the speed limits are proven.

“It’s really important, I think, that we rigorously evaluate the technology that’s proposed to make sure that it is going to achieve the same type of risk reduction that we see with the slowdowns in expanded areas,” she said.

Many groups, meanwhile, have raised concerns that offshore wind turbines could harm whales. There is no evidence of that, according to NOAA. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change and boat strikes are killing right whales. Stronger speed limits could save them. on Mar 14, 2024.

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Healthy coral reefs are complex ecosystems that serve as the feeding and spawning habitat for thousands of fish, molluscs, crustaceans and many other marine species. Reefs are not only colorful, but full of sounds, and it is this vast array of noises that is the focus of a new study by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

The research team found that using underwater speakers to play soundscapes made by thriving corals could help damaged and degraded reefs by encouraging coral larvae to make their homes there.

“A healthy coral reef is noisy, full of the croaks, purrs, and grunts of various fishes and the crackling of snapping shrimp. Research suggests that larval animals use this symphony of sounds to help them determine where they should live and grow,” a press release from WHOI said.

A reef that has experienced coral bleaching or been degraded by human impacts or disease is unable to support as many species, resulting in a quieter and less diverse soundscape. The researchers demonstrated that coral larvae responded to the broadcasting of healthy reef noises at degraded reefs by settling them at much higher rates.

“What we’re showing is that you can actively induce coral settlement by playing sounds,” said first author of the study Nadège Aoki, a WHOI doctoral candidate, in the press release. “You can go to a reef that is degraded in some way and add in the sounds of biological activity from a healthy reef, potentially helping this really important step in the coral life cycle.”

Since corals become immobile as adults, the larval stage is the only time they are able to choose their habitat. Coral larvae follow the currents, drifting or swimming in search of suitable conditions where they can affix themselves to the seafloor. Earlier research had demonstrated that light and chemical cues have the ability to influence their decisions, but the new study adds sounds to the combination of factors.

“We’re hoping this may be something we can combine with other efforts to put the good stuff back on the reef,” Aoki said, as The Guardian reported. “You could leave a speaker out for a certain amount of time and it could be attracting not just coral larvae but fish back to the reef.”

The study involved a single experiment that was conducted twice in the United States Virgin Islands in June and July of 2022. The researchers collected a species of coral larvae known as “mustard hill coral” due to its yellow color and cauliflower-like bumps, distributing them at three reefs on the coast of the island of St. John.

Tektite, one of the reefs selected, was relatively healthy, while Salt Pond and Cocoloba had a lower fish population and sparse coral cover.

After installing an underwater speaker system at Salt Pond, the scientists placed larvae cups in four locations from 3.28 feet to 98.4 feet away from the speakers. For three nights, healthy reef sounds that had been recorded at Tektite nine years earlier were broadcast. Similar installations were set up at the other reefs without any sounds.

After collecting the cups, the team discovered that much more larvae had settled at Salt Pond. Coral larvae had settled at an average rate from 1.7 to seven times more often in the sound-filled environment.

“The fact that settlement is consistently decreasing with distance from the speaker, when all else is kept constant, is particularly important because it shows that these changes are due to the added sound and not other factors,” said Aran Mooney, lead author of the study and a marine biologist with WHOI, in the press release. “This gives us a new tool in the toolbox for potentially rebuilding a reef.”

The Tektite and Cocoloba reefs had similar settlement rates to each other. A 2017 study showed higher rates at Tektite, which had experienced a major bleaching event, coral disease and several hurricanes in recent years.

“We seem to have lost some of the complexity of Tektite’s soundscape over the last decade,” Aoki said in the press release. “It could be that conditions there are not as good as we thought they were, but we don’t know for sure.”

The researchers pointed out that Tektite’s reduction in settlement rates is an example of the many threats facing coral reefs, as well as the necessity of scalable and timely solutions.

The study, “Soundscape enrichment increases larval settlement rates for the brooding coral Porites astreoides,” was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

More than a quarter of the planet’s marine animals are supported by coral reefs. They also provide tourism and food for millions of people and protect coastlines from storms and powerful waves.

It has been estimated by scientists that half of Earth’s coral reefs have been destroyed in the past three decades.

The research team has hope that their work could be used to aid coral restoration. For example, coral reef soundscapes could help increase larvae settlement rates in nurseries, or be broadcast at wild reefs to improve or maintain existing populations of corals.

“Replicating an acoustic environment is actually quite easy compared to replicating the reef chemical and microbial cues which also play a role in where corals choose to settle,” said Amy Apprill, a study co-author and WHOI microbial ecologist, in the press release. “It appears to be one of the most scalable tools that can be applied to rebuild reefs, so we’re really excited about that potential.”

The post Playing Healthy Reef Sounds Underwater Could Help Save Corals, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.