Lilley: Reef has ‘coral AIDS’

PRINCEVILLE — A rapidly-spreading coral disease discovered more than a year ago on Kaua‘i’s North Shore has now been documented at more than 60 locations around the island, according to Hanalei biologist Terry Lilley.

An Eyes of the Reef volunteer, Lilley said he was the first person to alert scientists to the outbreak. He said he has shot nearly 3,800 hours of underwater footage and about 180,000 pictures documenting the disease.

“It’s occurring all over the coastline at the same time,” Lilley told approximately 100 people who attended a presentation at Princeville Public Library Wednesday evening.

While the disease persists within Kaua‘i’s coastal waters, efforts to secure research funding by scientists at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and the U.S. Geological Survey — who are involved in the study — have proven unfruitful, according to researchers.

“So far nothing has been forthcoming … We need to get students out there and we need money to do it,” Dr. Thierry Work, head of Infectious Disease for USGS, said in a phone interview Thursday.

In February, UH announced that Christina Runyon, a second-year graduate student in marine biology, had been selected to lead the university’s investigation of the outbreak. Since then, UH has applied for several grants — most recently through the state Division of Aquatic Resources — to no avail.

“We are still holding on for one more funding agency that we are waiting to hear back from,” Runyon said in a phone interview Thursday. “(If we don’t get it) we’re just going to use our own money this summer.”

“Let’s just hope these other funding sources come through,” Dr. Greta Aeby, assistant researcher for the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology at UH, said Thursday.  

A team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are scheduled to arrive on Kaua‘i late-April to begin augmenting efforts started last year by UH and USGS.

“As of now, our tentative dates are April 30 (through) May 6,” Bernardo Vargas-Angel, a coral disease specialist at NOAA, wrote in an email Thursday. “These are still in flux pending budget approvals.”

Lilley said he will be accompanying the NOAA team to a number of dive sites where he has documented the disease using a high-definition underwater video-camera.

So far, scientists at UH and USGS have only confirmed the disease using DNA testing at three North Shore locations — ‘Anini, Tunnels and Hanalei. But Lilley said the disease is widespread and not limited to those areas.

“(In) 95 percent of the photographs, I would agree with his diagnosis,” Aeby said.

During his presentation, Lilley said there are three different types of bacteria “working in unison” to kill at least two species of Montipora corals — sometimes at more than 4 inches per week.

“Something has lowered the resistance of the entire North Shore of Kaua‘i to allow this disease to take over,” he said.

Most disturbing, according to Lilley, is that even the healthy-looking corals are not healthy.

So far, scientists have collected more than 300 DNA samples from corals at ‘Anini, Tunnels and Hanalei, Lilley said.

“Every coral had stress, cracks, fractures … and all kinds of other terrible things in the tissue of the coral polyps,” he said. “So, it’s not as much of the disease we’re looking at, it’s the entire reef has weakened. Our reefs have something that I just basically label ‘coral AIDS.’”

Lilley also discussed his own theories for potential sources of the disease. He said he recently discovered that the disease appears to “break out” along most of the North Shore — from Ke‘e to Pila‘a — following heavy rains and is most prominent near underwater lava tubes.

“The hot spots for these coral diseases, this white coral disease, is at the mouth of all these lava tubes,” he said.

In Hanalei Bay, Lilley said he has documented “very little” of the disease, with the exception of one area, at the mouth of a lava tube. Using a type of sonar, Lilley said he and the team of NOAA scientists will be locating lava tubes around the island to study whether there is a correlation.

If there is, Lilley said those areas may help scientists to pinpoint a cause.

“Is it runoff from the land? … I don’t know,” he said.

Toward the end of Wednesday’s presentation, a woman in the audience asked Lilley what he believes could be causing the outbreak.  

“In order to ruin the resistance of the entire coastline of Kaua‘i at the same time, we only have two theories right now,” Lilley said.

His theories include the chemical herbicide atrazine — which Lilley said has been shown to kill coral reefs in Queensland, Australia — as well as underwater sonic microwave blasting by Navy submarines.

“Whatever is causing the problem here is unilaterally causing it along the whole North Shore at the same time. So it’s really big,” he said. “And you know what, we may be totally wrong. It may be something completely different … We don’t know at this point in time what’s causing it.”

Lilley said he and NOAA scientists will be testing for atrazine during the federal agency’s trip to Kaua‘i at the end of April.  

Aeby said having Lilley out in the water documenting the disease and developing hypotheses — which can later be studied — is important.

“He is doing exactly what biologists are doing worldwide … They are not answers, they are guesses based on observation,” she said.  

Until she is able to get to Kaua‘i this summer, Runyon said she will continue reviewing Lilley’s footage in an effort to quantify the changes being seen.

Runyon described the changing conditions at ‘Anini — including dead coral colonies and sediment buildup — documented in Lilley’s videos over the last five years as “horrific.”

“It is something you would think you would see over a lifetime, not a short period of time,” she said.

The presentation was sponsored by Friends of the North Shore Library at Princeville.