Coral Reefs Dying Faster Than Expected
Pastor Dale Morgan
Aug 7, 9:31 PM EDT
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Coral Reefs Dying Faster Than Expected
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By MICHAEL CASEY
AP Environmental Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Coral reefs in much of the Pacific Ocean are
dying faster than previously thought, according to a study released
Wednesday, with the decline driven by climate change, disease and
coastal development.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill found
that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific - an area stretching from
Indonesia's Sumatra island to French Polynesia - dropped 20 percent in
the past two decades.
About 600 square miles of reefs have disappeared since the 1960s, the
study found, and the losses were just as bad in Australia's
well-protected Great Barrier Reef as they were in poorly managed marine
reserves in the Philippines.
"We found the loss of reef building corals was much more widespread and
severe than previously thought," said John Bruno, who conducted the
study along with Elizabeth Selig. "Even the best managed reefs in the
Indo-Pacific suffered significant coral loss over the past 20 years."
The study, which examined 6,000 surveys of more than 2,600 Indo-Pacific
coral reefs done between 1968 and 2004, found the declines began earlier
than previously estimated and mirror global trends. The United Nations
has found close to a third of the world's corals have disappeared, and
60 percent are expected to be lost by 2030.
The Indo-Pacific contains 75 percent of the world's coral reefs and
provide a home for a wide range of marine plants and animals. They
provide shelter for island communities and are key source of income,
mostly from the benefits of fishing and tourism.
"Indo-Pacific reefs have played an important economic and cultural role
in the region for hundreds of years and their continued decline could
mean the loss of millions of dollars in fisheries and tourism," Selig
said in a statement. "It's like when everything in the forest is gone
except for little twigs."
While the study didn't examine the cause of the decline, Bruno said he
believed it was driven by a range of factors including warming waters
due to climate change. He also blamed storm damage, runoff from
agriculture and industry, predators like fast-spreading crown-of-thorn
starfish and diseases like White syndrome.
Bruno said the study demonstrated the need to better manage reefs and
prevent threats such as overfishing, but acknowledged local measures
would have little impact without a reduction of greenhouse gases.
"It is just one more example of the striking, far reaching effects of
climate change and our behavior," Bruno said of the link between climate
change and reef destruction. "It is the folks in North Carolina driving
their SUVs. It is their behavior that is having an effect way out in the
Indo-Pacific."
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Center for Marine Studies at The
University of Queensland in Australia, said the study should put to rest
any suggestion that reefs like the Great Barrier Reef are untouched by
"human pressures."
"This is a solid study that produces mounds of evidence that suggests
reefs are changing counter to the untested and ungrounded claims that it
isn't happening," Hoegh-Guldberg, who was not involved in the study,
said in an e-mail interview."
---- On the Net:
Bruno's homepage: http://www.unc.edu/brunoj