Bikini bounces back from Big Bomb

William Atkins
Tuesday, 15 April 2008 18:33

Science - Energy

Under the ocean, life thrives, probably due to plants traveling into the area from atmospheric wind currents and fish from underwater currents.

The researchers commented, “… [t]he modern Bikini Atoll community may have been replenished by self-seeding from brooded larvae from surviving adults (e.g. in genera Pocillopora, Stylophora, Seriatopora and Isopora), survival of fragments of branching corals, and/or migration of new propagules from neighbouring atolls. The patchy nature of impacts may have mitigated the overall effect of disturbance at Bikini Atoll, with some patches surviving after each impact….Corals living on deep exposed reefs on Bikini Atoll may also have escaped some of the direct impacts, and thus have played an integral role in mitigating the overall effect of the disturbance event.” [Practical Fishkeeping: “Nuked coral reef recovers”]
 
Richards stated, "It is absolutely pristine for another tragic reason. It received fallout and was evacuated of people, so now underwater it's really healthy and prevailing winds have probably been seeding Bikini Atoll's recovery.”

Although the area at Bikini Atoll has been decontaminated, it is still unsafe to live by the former Bikini residents, who were evacuated to another island before the bombings in the 1940s and 1950s.

The paper (“Bikini Atoll coral biodiversity resilience five decades after nuclear testing”) written by the investigating team of Zoe T. Richards, Maria Beger, Silvia Pinca, and Carden C. Wallace appears in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin (Elsevier) No. 56, March 2008, page 5-3-1-515.

The abstract to their paper states, “Five decades after a series of nuclear tests began, we provide evidence that 70% of the Bikini Atoll zooxanthellate coral assemblage is resilient to large-scale anthropogenic disturbance. Species composition in 2002 was assessed and compared to that seen prior to nuclear testing. A total of 183 scleractinian coral species was recorded, compared to 126 species recorded in the previous study (excluding synonomies, 148 including synonomies)."

"We found that 42 coral species may be locally extinct at Bikini. Fourteen of these losses may be pseudo-losses due to inconsistent taxonomy between the two studies or insufficient sampling in the second study, however 28 species appear to represent genuine losses. Of these losses, 16 species are obligate lagoonal specialists and 12 have wider habitat compatibility. Twelve species are recorded from Bikini for the first time."

"We suggest the highly diverse Rongelap Atoll to the east of Bikini may have contributed larval propagules to facilitate the partial resilience of coral biodiversity in the absence of additional anthropogenic threats.”

Additional information is found at “Coral Reef Futures07”—a website of the ARC Center of Excellence.

[Autnor's note, first paragraph updated from "live" to "life" per reader's comment. Thanks!]