Death of coral reefs could devastate nations
As studies predict that vital coral reefs are headed for extinction worldwide, experts say hunger, poverty, and political instability could ensue.
A researcher with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration surveys a coral reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary near Key West, Fla., in this August 2008 file photo. Numerous studies predict corals are headed toward extinction worldwide. Some 50 percent of the Caribbean's corals are already dead, largely because of climate change, overfishing and pollution.
Wilfredo Lee/AP/FILE
West Palm Beach (AP)
Coral reefs are dying, and scientists and governments around the world are contemplating what will happen if they disappear altogether.
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The idea positively scares them.
Coral reefs are part of the foundation of the ocean food chain. Nearly half the fish the world eats make their homes around them. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide — by some estimates, 1 billion across Asia alone — depend on them for their food and their livelihoods.
If the reefs vanished, experts say, hunger, poverty and political instability could ensue.
"Whole nations will be threatened in terms of their existence," said Carl Gustaf Lundin of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Numerous studies predict coral reefs are headed for extinction worldwide, largely because of global warming, pollution and coastal development, but also because of damage from bottom-dragging fishing boats and the international trade in jewelry and souvenirs made of coral.
At least 19 percent of the world's coral reefs are already gone, including some 50 percent of those in the Caribbean. An additional 15 percent could be dead within 20 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Old Dominion University professor Kent Carpenter, director of a worldwide census of marine species, warned that if global warming continues unchecked, all corals could be extinct within 100 years.
"You could argue that a complete collapse of the marine ecosystem would be one of the consequences of losing corals," Carpenter said. "You're going to have a tremendous cascade effect for all life in the oceans."
Exotic and colorful, coral reefs aren't lifeless rocks; they are made up of living creatures that excrete a hard calcium carbonate exoskeleton. Once the animals die, the rocky structures erode, depriving fish of vital spawning and feeding grounds.
Experts say cutting back on carbon emissions to arrest rising sea temperatures and acidification of the water, declaring some reefs off limits to fishing and diving, and controlling coastal development and pollution could help reverse, or at least stall, the tide.
Florida, for instance, has the largest unbroken "no-take" zone in the continental U.S. — about 140 square miles off limits to fishing in and around Dry Tortugas National Park, a cluster of islands and reefs teeming with marine life about 70 miles off Key West.
