Email #22: The Trouble Facing Coral Reefs (5/6/16)

It’s impossible to spend time in a place as naturally beautiful as New Zealand and not find yourself obsessed with nature. So this week’s email is staying on that theme and sadly, it’s not optimistic.

Folks, I recommend you take up scuba diving. Fast. Because soon there won’t be much to see beneath the surface of the water.

There was a New York Times piece a few weeks back with the headline, “Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists”. The piece, by Michelle Innis, opens:

“Kim Cobb, a marine scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expected the coral to be damaged when she plunged into the deep blue waters off Kiritimati Island, a remote atoll near the center of the Pacific Ocean. Still, she was stunned by what she saw as she descended some 30 feet to the rim of a coral outcropping.

“The entire reef is covered with a red-brown fuzz,” Dr. Cobb said when she returned to the surface after her recent dive. “It is otherworldly. It is algae that has grown over dead coral. It was devastating.”

If you’re like me, and I bet many of you are, you had no idea how important coral is to our vulnerable, underwater ecosystems. I’ve always just thought of it as something really cool to look at. But coral is essential! The Times piece continued:

“Coral reefs are the crucial incubators of the ocean’s ecosystem, providing food and shelter to a quarter of all marine species, and they support fish stocks that feed more than one billion people. They are made up of millions of tiny animals, called polyps, that form symbiotic relationships with algae, which in turn capture sunlight and carbon dioxide to make sugars that feed the polyps.

An estimated 30 million small-scale fishermen and women depend on reefs for their livelihoods, more than one million in the Philippines alone. In Indonesia, fish supported by the reefs provide the primary source of protein.”

A study by Herman Cesar, Lauretta Burke and Lida Pet-Soede cited the economic value of coral reef as possibly $375 billion! Tourism. Fisheries. Coastline protection. These industries depend on coral and the clock is ticking.

How is this not front page news in every paper across the country? Unless this damage is reversed – which seems highly unlikely – we are going to see permanent deterioration of our underwater ecosystems.

The final lines of the Times article are a quote from Dr. Kim Cobb, a marine scientist at the Georgia Tech. She said, “This shows how climate change and temperature stresses are affecting these reefs over the long haul. This reef may not ever be the same.”

It’s on us to stop the rampant pollution and blast fishing and coral mining that has put this resource in such danger. But how can we address the problem if 99% of people don’t know it exists?

Visit the Coral Reef Alliance’s website and learn how you can make a difference right now.
Art Gurwitz

Founder, Areena

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Author


AREENA

From New York, NY 10036

To find out more about the project, contact Executive Director Jeff Hughes
Jeff@TheAreena.com

Contact

347-642-9326

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