current events
Early in the semester, coral bleaching was touched on during the group projects, and I would like to expand upon both coral bleaching, and possible solutions for aiding these reefs and the gap their erosion leaves in ecosystems.
Coral reefs represent only 1% of marine habitats plantwide, yet serve as a habitat to 25% of total marine life. Each reef does duty as a home for millions of species of fish and other marine life, ranging from the larger and more dangerous predators, such as barracudas and sharks, to the much smaller mandarin fish, which feeds on plankton. Coral reefs have even been apraised to be worth as much as $172 billion (US) in terms of shore protection, jobs, and medicinal ingredients. Unfortunately, these fantastic and scattered habitats are dying out, leaving millions of species homeless, because of humankind. The most obvious of detrimental effects is coral bleaching. Coral reefs have a symbiotic relationship with a microscopic algae called zooxanthellae; the algae serves as the coral's main food source, while the coral gives the algae a stable base. However, when the zooxanthellae becomes stressed, they die or leaves the coral, removing its source of nutrients. Without the algae, the coral loses both its color, hence the name coral bleaching, and what amounts to its immune system, leaving behind a white, highly susceptible to disease shell of a once bright habitat.
Now, many may wonder what, exactly, can stress out the algae on a coral reef. There is no one specific culprit, but rather a series of events which cause stress to the algae.
Climate change and global warming are the largest factors of change; as the planet temperature rises so does the temperature of the ocean, leading to abrupt shifts in the environments of the algae attached to coral reefs. For coastal reefs and shallow reefs, storm runoff, pollution, and overexposure to sunlight cause the most damage. Overfishing threatens the ecological balance of the reefs by removing the fish that consume the natural predators of coral; destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling or muro-ami (the technique of banging the coral reefs with a stick to scare the fish out) physically destroy the reefs. Tourism is a large contributing factor as well; tourists with break off pieces of the reef to take home with them, or tourism boats will drop anchor on top of the reef itself. Directly destructive is coral mining, where the inner coral is take to be used as bricks, cement, or road fill. Introduction of invasive fish species cause an imbalance in the fine-tuned ecosystem of coral reefs, adding to the stress. Totaled up, all of these factors equal a stressed and highly fragile and disease-susceptible reef, making the perfect recipe for the destruction and death of coral reefs.
National Ocean Service. <http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html>
Coral Reefs. World Wildlife Foundation. <http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/coasts/coral_reefs/>
The Ocean Portal Team. Coral and Coral Reefs. Ocean Portal: ocean.si.edu <http://ocean.si.edu/corals-and-coral-reefs>
Threats to Coral Reefs. Defenders of Wildlife: www.defenders.org. <http://www.defenders.org/coral-reef/threats>
I'm pleasantly surprised at how interested we've turned out to be, in our class, in the well-being of coral. Of course we've understood implicitly that coral reefs are integrally connected with the rest of oceanic and planetary life, but lots of ordinary folk have the mistaken attitude that coral have never done anything for them, so why should they care?
ReplyDelete-etc. Not sure what you're planning for Part 2, but if you wanted to address and correct such attitudes one place to start might be with Aldo Leopold's classic "Sand County Almanac" statement of what he called the land ethic. Bioetic communities on land and in sea make a claim on our respectful and ethical concern.
Before this class, I had no idea that coral reefs could actually experience a form of stress. I appreciate the extra insight!
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