Lessons from the coral reefs of the Line Islands

The results from a comprehensive survey of the coral reefs of the Northern Line Islands - a chain of atolls south of Hawaii including several Kiribati islands - were published this week in PLOS-One. A companion essay by Jeremy Jackson and Nancy Knowlton appears in PLOS-Biology.

The surveys revealed startling differences in macro- (Sandin et al) and micro-biology (Dinsdale et al.) of the Line Islands coral reefs along a gradient of human disturbance, from the more polluted and fished reefs of equatorial Kiritimati, pronounced "Christmas" (the 'ti' sounds like an 's' in i-Kiribati), and more or less pristine Kingman Reef several hundred kilometres to the north. Taken together, the results also seem to suggest that more pristine reefs are more resilient to coral bleaching events.