Articles 3 & 4: Coral Reef Conservaton

Coral Conservation overview

When it comes to marine conservation, most people start to think about coral reefs as being the biggest ecosystem being affected by pollutants and other human made products/interaction.  Coral reefs are abundant around the world providing marine life with food, places to hide from predators, and areas for reproduction, but they are slowly dying out and it is essential for them to be conserved.  Since corals are slow developing organisms, it is beneficial that they don’t get disturbed by anything such as disease, stress, or storm damage.  Global warming has also contributed greatly to the loss of this marine species/ecosystem.  Global warming has been increasing the earths average temperature resulting in warmer oceanic water, corals are sensitive to changes in water temperature and if  the earth’s temperature increases to much in a little amount of time the coral may not have time to adapt and live in the warmer environment. These little disturbances could contribute to the decrease in abundance of coral reefs and it could take years for them to recover.

"SeaWeb - Coral Conservation." SeaWeb - Coral Conservation. SeaWeb, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. http://www.seaweb.org/markets/coral.php.

   

Article about coral conservation: Improving water quality can help save coral reefs

In this article, research conducted by the University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Center, Southampton concluded that coral reefs could be greatly affected by imbalances of nutrients in ocean waters.  Corals depend on certain algae to maintain life; these algae help the corals with photosynthetic reactions.  If these algae die off because of high toxins, the coral has no way of conducting these photosynthetic reactions resulting in the coral to become white or bleached.  Eventually the bleached coral will die off if its environment doesn’t return to its normal state.  The concluded research states that an increase in nutrient rich water could be the cause of the devastating bleaching effect on corals.  In other words, if the water surrounding the coral is richer in one nutrient than another that could make the algae growth to become unbalanced, for example the research stated that “an increased supply of dissolved nitrogen compounds in combination with a restricted availability of phosphate results in phosphate starvation of the algae. This condition is associated with a reduction in photosynthetic efficiency and increases the susceptibility of corals to temperature and light-induced bleaching” (University of Southampton).  Overall, they concluded that the results of bleached coral may be greatly affected by the deficiency of a certain group of nutrients rather than an overabundance of another.  The solution to this problem, concluded from their research, was to have more coastal management/conservation and to decrease the nutrient input into coastal waters.  The overall solution would be to decrease the warming of the ocean waters to prevent the coral bleaching all together. 

University of Southampton. "Improving water quality can help save coral reefs." ScienceDaily, 16 Aug. 2012. Web. 12 Apr. 2013 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819153617.htm

 

I think that this article is a very informational article and explains why we need to conserve the coral reefs.  Many different species of fish and sea life utilized these coral reefs as their homes and if their home disappears they might too.  Everything in life is connected somehow, if the coral reefs die out the fish that live there might die out resulting in the loss of a food source for some other species, and the domino affect will continue until eventually we might be out of one of our major food sources. Even though this is a very extreme and unrealistic idea it could occur if the conditions for it to occur became really bad.  I think that the coral reefs should also be conserved because it is a main tourist attraction for many people.  It provides a lot of recreational activities to do when one is on vacation near a coral reef, like snorkeling.  After knowing the effect that our actions are having on the oceans (global warming) it should be a red flag to a lot of people to change some of their actions.  Sadly, I think people, including me, think that this is a small problem that is occurring in the world and could be dealt with later on.  But when is later on? Later on when it’s actually a huge problem and it will be harder to restore and resolve? I think we should start making improving the situation, even if it is only by little steps we can work up to a goal.