Word: reefs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Unfortunately, that's exactly what appears to be happening around the world. According to a comprehensive survey by the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) published Thursday in Science, one-third of the more than 700 species of reef-building corals are threatened with extinction. Compare that to a decade ago, when only 2% of corals were endangered. Using criteria established by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature - a group that publishes an annual Red List of threatened animals - that makes corals the most endangered species on the Earth. The assessment's results, presented at the annual International Coral...
...come back to one culprit: us. Overfishing - especially the kind that uses dynamite or poison to kill whole schools of fish - destroys the coral directly, while polluted runoff from agriculture simply chokes them. Development in booming coastal economies from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia further threaten the delicate reefs. Tourism - in the form of diving and snorkeling - can also cause damage. As with so many other endangered species around the world, there doesn't seem to be enough space for healthy coral reefs and unchecked human development. "It's just a litany of bad actions," says Brian Huse, the executive...
...deserves real credit. With a stroke of a pen in 2006, President George W. Bush created the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a 140,000 sq. mi. protected area northwest of Hawaii. Larger than every other national park in the U.S. combined, the monument protects 10% of the shallow coral reef habitat in U.S. territory. These kind of reserves need to be expanded, to limit the influence of human activity on delicate corals...
...temperatures rise in the ocean, bleaching events will become more and more common. According to a study published in Science late last year, if CO2 levels continue rising unabated, by 2100 coral could be utterly extinct. "If we can't contain the CO2 problem and enact strong coral reef conservation measures, we will lose them," says Carpenter. The depressing fate of the coral could be a reminder that climate change has the power to undo all the work of wildlife conservation over the past century...
...paradise. Tanned, blonde wahines - that's lady surfers, if you aren't up on the argot - navigate waist-high waves. The area is also a magnet for pro surfers, but they eschew the small stuff and charter boats out to the nearby southern fringes of the Great Barrier Reef, where perfect, empty barrels unload onto jagged coral. When it's flat, there's good fishing and diving...