Hurricanes, Coral Reefs and Rainforests: Resistance, Ruin and Recovery in the Caribbean

The great naturalist Marston Bates was neither the first nor the most recent observer to recognize similarities between landscapes and seascapes (e.g., 2–4), but his extended essay on The Forest and the Sea is the most popular and poetic writing on the subject. Although our knowledge of terrestrial and marine environments has increased dramatically during the past century, and especially since Bates’ essay in 1960, there have been few attempts to compare the emerging views of how different ecosystems on land and in the sea function. As John Steele (4) put it, “Terrestrial and marine ecological research are usually carried out in different institutions, published in different journals and funded from different sources.” In spite of these obstacles and the authors’ very different areas of focus (tropical forests, coral reefs, and coastal ecology), we have been brought together by luck and circumstance numerous times. Over the years, we have found ourselves returning again and again to discussions comparing the forest and the sea, an exercise that has proven to be stimulating and rewarding regardless of whether we see differences or similarities. Our purpose in this article is to concentrate on two of the most complex and beautiful of marine and terrestrial environments, coral reefs and tropical rainforests, and to explore the paradox that such diverse and highly structured ecosystems can persist, in spite of recurring exposure to the enormous destructive energy of tropical hurricanes. (We use the term “rainforest” generically to include tropical moist and wet forests as well as the “true” rain forest with its particular rainfall and temperature regime as defined by Holdridge (5)). Because most of our experience is in the Caribbean, we have confined our attention to that region. Where rainfall is adequate, the tropical Caribbean climate is very favorable for supporting biological activity. The region lacks frost in the lowlands, its trade winds moderate air temperature, and solar radiation is abundant throughout the year. The Caribbean is thus a region of contrasting conditions: favorable for ecosystem development most of the time, but with powerful forces that may periodically disrupt the structure and functioning of its ecosystems. Article