Coral Reefs Are Dying - Not a Good Omen for the Rest of Us

[Danascot]

"Scientists estimate about a quarter of the world's coral has been permanently lost and another 30% could disappear over the next 30 years."

I believe it's much worse than that. I think most coral reefs will be gone in 30 years. If the reefs and the oceans go, we won't be far behind.

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1917116.htm

[woodsprite]

1. Today I'm feeling like the big question for us is whether

it's the environment, poisoned food that will kill us, or if numbnuts is gonna blow us all up, or if we'll all expire in concentration-like camps. I'm thinking the longer this administration runs things, the chances of death by old age for us or our children is becoming slimmer by the day.

Feeling totally depressed today. Can't ya tell?

[Divernan]

2. Speaking as a scuba diver, patches of dead coral are a tragic thing to see.

The waters around the Bahamas are the dead canary in the mine known as the Caribbean Sea. At some places, our dive computers were registering water temps of 89 degrees and we saw large, circular patches of dead coral, with no fish life at all in the areas. This was 4 years ago. And last year, doing shore dives off the coast of Roatan Island, Honduras, the water temps were over 90 degrees for several hundred feet off shore.

[Danascot]

3. I'm a long time diver too

and it makes me crazy that these exquisite reef systems that have been around for 30 million years may be gone in my son's lifetime ... because of us.

Water temps of 90 are very scary. Coral won't last more than a year or two of that.

I'm happy to report that we dove off Saba near St. Martin this spring and it looked quite healthy. On the other hand, we dove in Palau and Yap 2 years ago and there were large areas of die-off. In some places the only living thing was crown-of-thorns.

[Divernan]

4. Saba is my idea of diving heaven.

If I could only dive one place the rest of my life it would be Saba. It's so great because the entire surrounding sea is a marine sanctuary, and there are no big cruise ships stopping or resorts sending pollution into the sea. Nothing like the thrill of taking off from the Saba airport - like going off an aircraft carrier. My personal depth record - 134 feet (very briefly) at Eye of the Needle. Had a fantastic drift dive there too. We dove off the Cuan Law. Did you stay on island and use a local dive shop? If so, which one and would you recommend it?

I haven't been to Palau or Yap, but dove the wrecks of Truk Lagoon - and that lagoon was very healthy and crammed with fish .

Last year we dove Montserrat - magnificent island with great people - and very interesting diving, but lousy viz because of ash in the water. The Bat Cave dive was a unique experience.

[philb]

5. While current reefs are definately in trouble, there are still new areas where coral can establish

But its a slow process and the changing temperature pattern doesn't allow rapid re-establishment of new colonies
and then continuing that process again as warming continues. Current reefs took long periods to establish.

Some are trying to find ways to establish new areas faster- but this seems likely to be of limited usefulness