Word: coral
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...headed out into the warm waters of the South Pacific, tanks of air strapped to their backs and syringes at the ready. Their mission, one lethal injection at a time, was to put a stop to an outbreak of crown-of-thorns starfish, a voracious predator of fragile tropical coral reefs. Those early efforts - along with a big printing of "Save the Barrier Reef" bumper stickers - helped establish what has since been considered one of the world's best-protected coral reefs...
...need to monitor coral so closely? Coral reefs constitute a complex and vast global ecosystem, home to millions of species of plants and fish that people depend on for food and tourist revenue; in some areas, healthy reefs help protect the shore from potentially destructive waves. But arguments about the preservation of biodiversity make eyes glaze over, so Hodgson, who's trying to get coral on the World Conservation Union's red and endangered species lists, likes to point out that several anticancer drugs are derived from reef species. "Maybe one day a coral will save your life," Hodgson tells...
Perhaps the single best advocate for the preservation of coral reefs is the reefs themselves. In many parts of the world, conservationists are letting the natural beauty and allure of the reefs - which generate about $1.6 billion annually in tourist dollars - do the talking for them. In one area of the Philippines, for instance, local leaders asked fishermen who had been making a living by blast-fishing, which destroys reefs, to trade in their trawlers for dive boats. They did, the fish came back to the reefs, the local economy flourished and everybody - tourists, residents, and coral ecologists alike...
...remains to be seen whether local solutions, like ecotourism or the establishment of marine parks, will create lasting changes. No one knows when the warm waters causing the current bleaching epidemic will recede, and once coral starts dying in warm currents, there isn't a lot that scientists can do but sit back and watch. Some reefs may recover, but others won't, and researchers are still trying to figure out why. "I don't think there's any way you can manage for a global effect locally," says Bruno, the author of the UNC report. He thinks the root...
...anxious symptoms. Sufferers feel depression, hopelessness and insomnia, and go through sudden, uncontrollable bouts of sobbing. They're overwrought about where the polar bears will live if they lose their habitat. They fret about the Earth running out of fossil fuels and about the slow disappearance of the oceans' coral reefs. Sometimes, the worry is closer to home, about the loss of songbirds in the backyard or the fate of the squirrels after a neighborhood park was bulldozed for condominiums...