http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0818-06.htm
Published on Monday, August 18, 2003 by the Washington Post
Danger to Coral Reefs
May Outpace Discovery:
Despite Conservation Effort,
Damage to Communities Continues
by Rick Weiss
Nearly a decade after the launch of several international
initiatives to raise awareness about the declining health
of the world's coral reefs, these "rainforests of the sea"
remain in a desperate struggle for survival, with most dying
off in ever greater expanses and only a few reef systems
showing evidence of modest recovery.
The ongoing destruction, documented by scientists in recent
surveys, is largely the result of human activities, including
overfishing, pollution and sediment runoff due to deforestation,
the researchers say. If current trends continue, they warn,
the vast majority of these valuable ecosystems -- many of
which have been growing for hundreds or thousands of years
-- are likely to disappear within the next few decades.
At the same time, researchers are discovering entirely new
kinds of coral communities, including some that live at
tremendous depths, far from the sunlight and warm waters
commonly associated with coral reefs.
But these "deep sea coral" communities, too, are being
damaged
and destroyed at alarming rates, scientists say. Here the culprits
are "rock-hopping" nets and other bottom-trawling equipment
dragged by powerful fishing ships as they probe farther and
deeper from the industry's traditional, depleted haunts
in search of shrimp, cod, flounder and rockfish.
The news that tropical corals are continuing to suffer despite
conservation efforts -- and the emerging recognition that
cold-water corals are being ruined almost as quickly as they're
being discovered -- has led to a new round of efforts to preserve
these colorful, biodiverse communities.
Coral reefs occupy less than 1 percent of Earth's surface
but are home to about one-quarter of all marine fish species.
The case for conservation is economic as well as ecological:
As major magnets for tourism and other recreational activities,
coral reefs bring income to coastal communities -- including
many in developing nations that have few other resources
to bank on. And reefs provide food and breeding grounds
for one-tenth of all the fish caught for human consumption.
If there is one bit of promising news for corals it's in the
Caribbean, where the massive declines documented in the 1980s
appear to have slowed or in some cases even reversed themselves
in the 1990s, according to a report by British scientists
published in last week's issue of the journal Science.
"In places like Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico
and
Florida, the decline has nearly stopped," said Isabelle Cote,
a tropical marine ecologist, who conducted the analysis with
Toby Gardner and colleagues at the University of East Anglia
in Norwich.
It is too soon to say whether those improvements can be
credited to the past decade's conservation efforts, including
the creation of protected areas and fishing restrictions in
the region. (Some Caribbean coral losses had been traced to
overly large catches of algae-eating fish, allowing the algae
to choke the slower-growing coral species.)
But with the new survey providing the most quantitative
assessment yet of coral cover in the region, it should now
be possible for policymakers to track more precisely the impact
of their conservation efforts and, over time, tailor their
actions for the greatest effect, Cote said.
Meanwhile, Cote said, there is no time for complacency.
The 1990s saw continuing losses of coral cover in other
regions of the Caribbean, including the Netherlands Antilles
and regions off the South American coast. And even where
reefs appear to be recovering, the nature of those recoveries
has some researchers worried. The hard corals that once
thrived there are in many cases being replaced by
"opportunistic" coral species that are quick to move
in when space becomes available but which, scientists
suspect, are less likely to survive shifting temperatures,
storms and rising sea levels.
In the Pacific, where coral losses have been caused mostly
by overfishing (including the use of reef-killing dynamite
and cyanide) and a "bleaching" disease linked to global
warming, the situation is "gloomy," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
of the University of Queensland in Australia.
Indeed, a new report on 14 major tropical reef systems,
including some in the Pacific, Atlantic, Red Sea and off
Australia, also published in last week's Science, concludes
that "reefs will not survive without immediate protection
from human exploitation" across wide swaths of ocean.
The same may be true for cold-water reefs, said Michael
Hirshfield, chief scientist for Oceana, a Washington-based
oceans advocacy group that released a report on those reefs
last month. "Trawlers today are fishing down a mile or more,"
he said. "The slopes and shelves off the continental margins
are really being hammered."
Scientists are just beginning to learn about these deep-sea
counterparts to the better-known tropical corals. While
shallow-water corals live in symbiotic communion with algae
that give the corals energy through photosynthesis, deep-sea
corals live in darkness and consume organic matter settling
to the sea bottom. They exist in waters as cold as 30 degrees
Fahrenheit, from the equator to the Arctic, in some cases
forming spectacular stony mounds that can tower hundreds
of feet above the ocean bottom.
Congress is starting to take note of these mysterious
marine creatures. Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) recently
introduced the Ocean Habitat Protection Act, which would
place size limits on ground-fishing gear that damages deep
coral reefs and other seafloor life. A similar bill is being
drafted in the Senate.
Environmental activists say they will petition the secretary
of Commerce this month to declare deep-sea coral beds "habitats
of particular concern." That would replace the current patchwork
of state and regional restrictions on deep-sea coral-reef fishing
with uniform federal restrictions.
"I grew up dreaming about space exploration and the search
for life on other planets," said Hirshfield of Oceana, which
is spearheading the petition. "Well, this is a largely unknown
world right on our own planet, with life forms we're just
beginning to understand, and it would be tragic if we destroyed
it before we even knew the names of the things we're looking at."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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