Are You Sure You Want to Kill Our Coral Reefs?
The Great Barrier Reef is one of the natural wonders of the world, but climate change is on a rampant path to make it obsolete. It has gone from the infamous vibrant reds, blues, yellows to bleached, and colorless. As a society, we will take significant losses without healthy coral reefs.
Coral reefs take up a small fraction of our earth but are among the most valuable ecosystems because they host more species per unit than other marine environments. If they are unhealthy, they cannot provide the same resources to marine life, earth’s infrastructure, and humans.
What Are Coral Reefs?
Coral reefs are built up by tiny animals called coral polyps that secrete calcium carbonate (a chemical compound), to create the base of a reef. Algae, sponge, and seaweed also contribute to the structure of the reef. When they all die, they become part of the reef base.
Coral reefs are part of the Benthic Community, the organisms living at the bottom of the water.
Statistics!
Typically, coral reefs are associated with being nature’s attraction, not an economic contributor. Even though coral reefs cover a tiny percentage of the earth’s surface, they play significant roles.
Statistics provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):
- Coral reefs provide about 500 million people with resources such as food, income, and coastal protection.
- The estimated cost of flood damage prevented by coral reefs is $94 million every year.
- Healthy coral reefs can protect lives and damage to property by buffering shorelines from waves, currents, or storms. They do this by absorbing 97% of a wave’s energy.
“Coral reefs provide an economic value of $3.4 billion through services such as fisheries, tourism, and coastal protection.”
A Medical Future
Do you know what medical advancements coral reefs can contribute? Coral reefs have developed chemical weapons as a self-defense mechanism, and these chemicals provide the potential for essential drug discovery.
Treatments that currently use reef organisms:
- Certain cancers (including leukemia)
- Ulcers
- Cardiovascular diseases
- HIV
Since the coral skeleton has a close similarity to our bones, doctors can use it as material for bone graft surgery.
What treatments they are developing:
- Other cancers
- Human bacterial infections
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Heart disease
- Viruses
Human Impacts on Coral Reefs:
- Sedimentation
Sedimentation is a result of clear-cutting, coastal construction, and development. Clear-cutting is a tree removal method that cuts most or all trees in an area. When the trees get cut, they no longer grip the soil, allowing it to erode the water. Clear-cutting is a part of coastal construction that creates more sedimentation suffocating the reefs and ultimately blocking light necessary for coral survival.
- Overfishing
Coral reefs have species in their ecosystem that are essential to biodiversity, and overfishing can diminish that.
Taking too many large fish causes the most damage. Large fish are likely to produce more young fish, so catching too many large fish will depreciate the population.
It is highly encouraged to educate yourself on fishing rules and regulations for the area you are fishing in.
- Coral Bleaching (a stress condition from climate change)
Coral is similar to humans; they get stressed by changes in their surrounding environment. When the climate changes, the algae they depend on leave their tissue. Condition changes include temperature, light, or nutrients. With stress, coral slowly goes from vibrant colors to a bleached white.
- Mining Corals for Building Materials
Humans mine corals via dynamite or a manual retrieval, neither are environmentally friendly. The purpose of mining coral is to transform it into materials such as limestone or a cement substitute. Mining the reef significantly depletes the biodiversity. Breaking up the coral will cause disturbances to the seafloor as well as an increase in sedimentation. Partial reefs also make shorelines more vulnerable to storms or natural disasters.
- Runoff and Sewage Pollution
Runoff is when the land cannot absorb excess water, so it flows to nearby bodies of water. Human activities and natural processes produce runoff.
Why is this bad for coral reefs? Typically, along the way, the runoff will carry sediment, agricultural nutrients, sewage discharges, and pollutants like pesticides. Surplus nutrients creating poor quality water will cause a chain reaction that decreases the oxygen, increases algae growth, and crowds out corals.
- Ocean Acidification
Ocean acidification refers to the changing chemistry of our oceans due to burning fossil fuels. When the carbon dioxide of fossil fuels reacts with seawater, it forms carbonic acid.
Many marine organisms are negatively impacted physically by the decreasing pH and increasing CO2 levels.
This acidity erodes coral at a rapid pace that may be irreversible. Ultimately, this will compromise the ecosystem for all the species that depend on it.
Most people are not well informed on which human impacts are obliterating the coral reefs and to what degree. The highly advertised sustainable steps to reverse climate change, like recycling correctly or biking, can be applied to most environmental issues. However, it takes humanity together, learning to live sustainably regularly to see real change.
Here are a few more things you can do for the coral reefs and most likely other parts of the environment too:
· Volunteer in the local beach or reef cleanups.
· Do not give coral as a present.
· If you dive to see a coral reef, do not touch it.
· Conserve your water (less water used means less runoff).
· If you buy an aquarium fish, do not purchase living coral.
· Minimize the use of lawn fertilizers (they make their way into runoff).
Check out the excellent documentary called “Chasing Coral” by Jeff Orlowski on Netflix if you would enjoy learning more in-depth on this topic. My Sustainable Environment professor had us watch this in class, and it made me more aware of the importance of coral reefs and what we are doing to them. The visuals are breathtaking, and the scientific facts will provoke you to take action in some way.
Don’t forget to stay informed and inform others!
