coral (Page 2)

Human beings are rapidly killing off the world’s coral, just like we’ve been doing since prehistoric times. Paleoecologist John Pandolfi says, “No coral reef system in the world is pristine, and they haven’t been for a long time.”

“It didn’t matter if we were looking at the Red Sea, Australia or the Caribbean,” says researcher Karen Bjorndal. “As soon as human exploitation began, whether in the 1600s in Bermuda or tens of thousands of years ago in the Red Sea, the same scenarios were put into play.”
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Alex Kirby writes in bbcnews.com that Caribbean coral reefs have declined 80% in the last 30 years. All the coral seems to have been struck at about the same time. Some causes for the destruction are hurricanes and disease, overfishing and pollution. While coral is beginning to grow back, it’s not the same kind as the coral that’s been lost.
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An epidemic of coral bleaching is effecting the world?s largest coral reef: the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. An extensive survey of the Great Barrier Reef carried out over the last month has revealed “widespread bleaching”, says Terry Done, chief conservation scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. This is happening here for second time in four years and is also spreading through the coral islands of the South Pacific.

Coral bleaching occurs when high sea temperatures force the algae that give coral its red color out of the coral polyps. Usually, bleached coral recovers in the next cool season, but if all the algae are lost, the coral will die and the reefs will crumble.
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