Hurricanes and coral bleaching linked to changes in coral recruitment in Tobago

Abstract

Knowledge of coral recruitment patterns helps us understand how reefs react following major disturbances and provides us with an early warning system for predicting future reef health problems. The authors have reconstructed and interpreted historical and modern-day recruitment patterns, using a combination of growth modelling and in situ recruitment experiments, in order to understand how hurricanes, storms and bleaching events have influenced coral recruitment on the Caribbean coastline of Tobago. Whilst Tobago does not lie within the main hurricane belt results indicate that regional hurricane events negatively impact coral recruitment patterns in the Southern Caribbean. The results indicate that despite multiple large-scale disturbances corals are still recruiting on Tobago’s marginal reef systems, albeit in low numbers.