Word: coral
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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More than 30 years later, some of those dive bums have grown up to become full-fledged coral ecologists, and what they are seeing today is probably making them long for the halcyon days of the '60s. Rising ocean temperatures, compounded by other man-made factors, like pollution and overfishing, have been catastrophic for the earth's coral. "I grew up diving and snorkeling all over the world," says Gregor Hodgson, executive director of the coral monitoring organization Reef Check Foundation. "Those reefs are all gone...
...August 7, researchers at the University of North Carolina released the world's first comprehensive study on coral in the Indo-Pacific region, which stretches from Japan to Australia and east to Hawaii, and is home to 75% of the world's coral reefs. The outlook is grim. Between 1968 and 2003, more than 600 sq. mi. of reef disappeared in the region - that's 1% a year, twice the pace of rainforest decline - and the losses are hitting well-protected areas like the Great Barrier Reef just as hard as the stressed, overfished reefs that surround crowded countries like...
...report coincides with separate accounts of another widespread scourge: in July, coral reefs in the South China Sea and around the Florida Keys and Caribbean started to bleach - a result of warming waters. Healthy reefs live symbiotically with algae, which takes shelter inside the coral and, in return, passes nutrients to its host. When waters reach an uncomfortably high temperature, coral gets stressed and kicks the algae out, which turns the coral white and essentially starves it to death. Local reef watchers have contacted the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) from the northern Philippines to southern Japan, some...
Like the busily receding glaciers in the Arctic, coral reefs are a canary in the global warming coal mine. "They are a sensitive species that are affected first," says C. Mark Eakin, coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, which warns scientists when their part of the world is at risk for bleaching. And though climate change awareness is up, and embattled reefs do get moments of compassion, the public has a short attention span when it comes to ecosystems it can't see. So do policy makers. Bruno says more coral data is being gathered today...
...enlisting people who were naturally interested: divers. In 1997 he created a global network of volunteer snorkelers and divers, specially trained by scientists to monitor reefs using a standardized checklist. Over the last 10 years, Reef Check's volunteers have amassed a bounty of data on the world's coral. "In the beginning, people were looking down on us, saying 'Oh, you guys are just volunteers,'" Hodgson recalls. Now, Reef Check has become one of the primary sources of scientific information about coral health...