75% of world's coral reefs under threat,
new analysis finds
"Reefs at Risk Revisited" report presents comprehensive analysis of threats to coral reefs
Washington D.C./London, 23 February 2011 - A new comprehensive analysis finds that 75 percent of the world's coral reefs are currently threatened by local and global pressures. For the first time, the analysis includes threats from climate change, including warming seas and rising ocean acidification. The report shows that local pressures - such as overfishing, coastal development and pollution - pose the most immediate and direct risks, threatening more than 60 percent of coral reefs today.
"Reefs at Risk Revisited," the most detailed assessment of threats to coral reefs ever undertaken, is being released by the World Resources Institute, along with the Nature Conservancy, the WorldFish Center, the International Coral Reef Action Network, Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, and the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Center, along with a network of more than 25 organizations. Launches also took place in Australia, Caribbean, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, the United States and other locations around the world.
"This report serves as a wake-up call for policy-makers, business leaders, ocean managers, and others about the urgent need for greater protection for coral reefs," said Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator. "As the report makes clear, local and global threats, including climate change, are already having significant impacts on coral reefs, putting the future of these beautiful and valuable ecosystems at risk."
Local pressures - especially overfishing and destructive fishing - are causing many reefs to be degraded. Global pressures are leading to coral bleaching from rising sea temperatures and increasing ocean acidification from carbon dioxide pollution. According to the new analysis, if left unchecked, more than 90 percent of reefs will be threatened by 2030 and nearly all reefs will be at risk by 2050.
"Coral reefs are valuable resources for millions of people worldwide. Despite the dire situation for many reefs, there is reason for hope," said Lauretta Burke, senior associate at the World Resources Institute (WRI) and a lead author of the report. "Reefs are resilient, and by reducing the local pressures we can buy time as we find global solutions to preserve reefs for future generations."
The report includes multiple recommendations to better protect and manage reefs, including through marine protected areas. The analysis shows that more than one-quarter of reefs are already encompassed in a range of parks and reserves, more than any other marine habitat. However, only six percent of reefs are in protected areas that are effectively managed.
"Well managed marine protected areas are one of the best tools to safeguard reefs," said Mark Spalding, senior marine scientist at the Nature Conservancy and also a lead author of the report. "At their core, reefs are about people as well as nature: ensuring stable food supplies, promoting recovery from coral bleaching, and acting as a magnet for tourist dollars. We need to apply the knowledge we have to shore up existing protected areas, as well as to designate new sites where threats are highest, such as the populous hearts of the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Middle East," he added.
Reefs offer multiple benefits to people and the economy - providing food, sustaining livelihoods, supporting tourism, protecting coasts, and even helping to prevent disease. According the report, more than 275 million people live in the direct vicinity (30 km/18 miles) of coral reefs. In more than 100 countries and territories, coral reefs protect 150,000 km (over 93,000 miles) of shorelines, helping defend coastal communities and infrastructure against storms and erosion.
Source: United Nations Environment Programme
Vanishing secrets of the Barrier Reef
Researchers are finding new species at unexplored depths – but the coral has a terrifying new enemy
By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent - The Telegraph - 13 Nov 2012
Two years ago, the Australian state of Queensland was hit by the worst flooding in living memory. Since then homes have been rebuilt and life on shore is back to normal. But out to sea the legacy of the deluge is yet another threat to the Great Barrier Reef, one of Earth’s most important ecosystems.
The floods spewed huge quantities of agricultural fertilisers into the Pacific and as a result millions of Crown of Thorns starfish have appeared in the central reef. The huge, carnivorous echinoderms, covered in poisonous spikes and measuring half a metre across, are capable of wiping out entire reef colonies in a horrific style. By forcing their stomachs out through their mouths they can digest a section of coral the size of a cushion in one gulp.
Coupled with rising sea temperatures (a consequence of global warming), the acidification of seawater due to fossil-fuel emissions, and the increasing frequency of freak weather events washing ever greater amounts of sediment off shore, Crown of Thorns starfish are posing a growing threat to life on the Great Barrier Reef.
Now researchers have launched an urgent attempt to catalogue the flora and fauna that remain. The project, which began by Google mapping selected areas of the reef in September for web users to view online, will also provide the first detailed view of the deeper layers of the reef.
The survey could not be more timely. In an paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month, scientistswrote that more than 50 per cent of the reef’s coral has been wiped out over the past 30 years, and warned another half of the remainder could have gone by 2022 – meaning the reef will have shrunk to less than a third of its size in half a century.
While the Great Barrier Reef’s shallows are familiar to scientists and the estimated 1.5 million divers and snorkellers who visit every year, the vast majority of the reef lies deeper than 30 metres, putting it out of range of all but professional deep-sea divers and submarines. As such, very little is known about life on the deep reef and it is this hidden world that researchers from the Catlin Seaview Survey, the new Australian-led coral reef research project hopes to unveil over the coming months.
Down at 30 metres, Catlin researchers will visit 20 separate sub-reefs that make up a section of the Great Barrier, using aquatic scooters to propel them through the coral jungle and a high-resolution panoramic camera to take 50,000 images, providing the most detailed picture of the reef ever produced.
Below that, remote-controlled robot submarines will plunge to 100 metres to provide the first clear views of life in the reef’s “twilight zone”, where trial dives have unveiled a host of new species and ecosystems quite different to those just a few metres above.
Dozens of specimens have been handed over to taxonomists for investigation, including the branched coral Acropora tenella which has been identified for the first time in Australian waters.
By returning to the same spots year after year, and expanding the project to other reefs around the world, the scientists hope to understand how climate change and other threats are affecting the millions of different corals and marine species that live on them.
For Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the project’s chief scientist, who began snorkelling on the reef as a 10-year-old in 1969, the survey offers the first chance to observe life at such a depth. “Over 90 per cent [of the Great Barrier Reef] was pretty much unexplored, which is an amazing fact,” he says. “Now with these deep-diving robots and some of the technology we are developing, the potential is there for unlocking those secrets.
“In a pilot dive last year we discovered four new species of coral for the Australian region and a new pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus denise) and that was just in six days. It is like going to the Amazon rainforest; there is a lot that is going to be discovered.”
During the first stage of the project, which began in September, researchers visited some of the Great Barrier Reef’s most remote spots which lie up to 250km from the mainland, far away from the tourist dive sites.
Prof Hoegh-Guldberg’s team found themselves surrounded by fishes such as groupers – giant, pouting animals measuring more than a metre in length – as well as bright-red coral trout and several shark species which have been driven away from the coastline by tourism.
Such is the diversity of life on the reefs, and the unchartered nature of their deeper waters, virtually every dive in the initial two-week phase turned up a new species, or at least a species new to Australian waters.
But for all the excitement of new finds, there is the growing fear among researchers that their photographic records may soon be all that remain of the species they discover.
Dr Pim Bongaerts, head of the deep-reef research team, says: “That does go into your head when you are photographing and filming the reefs. Pretty much every time we go out we find either new species or new species records – species we did not know Australia had. But I always have in my mind what my professors told me: that when they were my age and dived these reefs 20 or 30 years ago, they looked completely different. That is a pretty scary thought – that when you go down there you might be the first person to see these things, but also one of the last.”
The influx of Crown of Thorns starfish is only the latest threat to life on the reef. Climate change has led to rising sea temperatures (up by 0.5C in 25 years in parts of the reef) which in turn has triggered ''bleaching’’, where the sea becomes too warm for coral to survive; this can wipe out entire colonies.
Burning of fossil fuels is also having a dramatic impact, with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolving into the ocean and making the water more acidic. This limits the ability of corals to grow limestone skeletons.
Rising ocean acidity has even been linked to “mad fish syndrome”, where fish appear to mistake predators for members of their shoal. Experts believe the drop in pH level is interfering with their sense of smell, making it hard to distinguish one fish from another. The combined threats pose a bleak future for the Great Barrier Reef, and the predicted increase in extreme weather means the damage to ecosystems such as the reef is forecast to become more severe.
Hoegh-Guldberg says: “When you look at a coral reef, there are over a million species estimated to live in there and we don’t know half of them. We know they are out there because we keep discovering them – every year there are multiple species discovered for the first time. But as reefs disappear we get to what we call the 'Joni Mitchell moment’, where you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. At this rate we won’t even have a Joni Mitchell moment for some of these species, because they will remain undiscovered and just disappear.”
• Mapping the Great Barrier Reef: picture special
Source: The Telegraph
Two years ago, the Australian state of Queensland was hit by the worst flooding in living memory. Since then homes have been rebuilt and life on shore is back to normal. But out to sea the legacy of the deluge is yet another threat to the Great Barrier Reef, one of Earth’s most important ecosystems.
The floods spewed huge quantities of agricultural fertilisers into the Pacific and as a result millions of Crown of Thorns starfish have appeared in the central reef. The huge, carnivorous echinoderms, covered in poisonous spikes and measuring half a metre across, are capable of wiping out entire reef colonies in a horrific style. By forcing their stomachs out through their mouths they can digest a section of coral the size of a cushion in one gulp.
Coupled with rising sea temperatures (a consequence of global warming), the acidification of seawater due to fossil-fuel emissions, and the increasing frequency of freak weather events washing ever greater amounts of sediment off shore, Crown of Thorns starfish are posing a growing threat to life on the Great Barrier Reef.
Now researchers have launched an urgent attempt to catalogue the flora and fauna that remain. The project, which began by Google mapping selected areas of the reef in September for web users to view online, will also provide the first detailed view of the deeper layers of the reef.
The survey could not be more timely. In an paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month, scientistswrote that more than 50 per cent of the reef’s coral has been wiped out over the past 30 years, and warned another half of the remainder could have gone by 2022 – meaning the reef will have shrunk to less than a third of its size in half a century.
While the Great Barrier Reef’s shallows are familiar to scientists and the estimated 1.5 million divers and snorkellers who visit every year, the vast majority of the reef lies deeper than 30 metres, putting it out of range of all but professional deep-sea divers and submarines. As such, very little is known about life on the deep reef and it is this hidden world that researchers from the Catlin Seaview Survey, the new Australian-led coral reef research project hopes to unveil over the coming months.
Down at 30 metres, Catlin researchers will visit 20 separate sub-reefs that make up a section of the Great Barrier, using aquatic scooters to propel them through the coral jungle and a high-resolution panoramic camera to take 50,000 images, providing the most detailed picture of the reef ever produced.
Below that, remote-controlled robot submarines will plunge to 100 metres to provide the first clear views of life in the reef’s “twilight zone”, where trial dives have unveiled a host of new species and ecosystems quite different to those just a few metres above.
Dozens of specimens have been handed over to taxonomists for investigation, including the branched coral Acropora tenella which has been identified for the first time in Australian waters.
By returning to the same spots year after year, and expanding the project to other reefs around the world, the scientists hope to understand how climate change and other threats are affecting the millions of different corals and marine species that live on them.
For Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the project’s chief scientist, who began snorkelling on the reef as a 10-year-old in 1969, the survey offers the first chance to observe life at such a depth. “Over 90 per cent [of the Great Barrier Reef] was pretty much unexplored, which is an amazing fact,” he says. “Now with these deep-diving robots and some of the technology we are developing, the potential is there for unlocking those secrets.
“In a pilot dive last year we discovered four new species of coral for the Australian region and a new pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus denise) and that was just in six days. It is like going to the Amazon rainforest; there is a lot that is going to be discovered.”
During the first stage of the project, which began in September, researchers visited some of the Great Barrier Reef’s most remote spots which lie up to 250km from the mainland, far away from the tourist dive sites.
Prof Hoegh-Guldberg’s team found themselves surrounded by fishes such as groupers – giant, pouting animals measuring more than a metre in length – as well as bright-red coral trout and several shark species which have been driven away from the coastline by tourism.
Such is the diversity of life on the reefs, and the unchartered nature of their deeper waters, virtually every dive in the initial two-week phase turned up a new species, or at least a species new to Australian waters.
But for all the excitement of new finds, there is the growing fear among researchers that their photographic records may soon be all that remain of the species they discover.
Dr Pim Bongaerts, head of the deep-reef research team, says: “That does go into your head when you are photographing and filming the reefs. Pretty much every time we go out we find either new species or new species records – species we did not know Australia had. But I always have in my mind what my professors told me: that when they were my age and dived these reefs 20 or 30 years ago, they looked completely different. That is a pretty scary thought – that when you go down there you might be the first person to see these things, but also one of the last.”
The influx of Crown of Thorns starfish is only the latest threat to life on the reef. Climate change has led to rising sea temperatures (up by 0.5C in 25 years in parts of the reef) which in turn has triggered ''bleaching’’, where the sea becomes too warm for coral to survive; this can wipe out entire colonies.
Burning of fossil fuels is also having a dramatic impact, with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolving into the ocean and making the water more acidic. This limits the ability of corals to grow limestone skeletons.
Rising ocean acidity has even been linked to “mad fish syndrome”, where fish appear to mistake predators for members of their shoal. Experts believe the drop in pH level is interfering with their sense of smell, making it hard to distinguish one fish from another. The combined threats pose a bleak future for the Great Barrier Reef, and the predicted increase in extreme weather means the damage to ecosystems such as the reef is forecast to become more severe.
Hoegh-Guldberg says: “When you look at a coral reef, there are over a million species estimated to live in there and we don’t know half of them. We know they are out there because we keep discovering them – every year there are multiple species discovered for the first time. But as reefs disappear we get to what we call the 'Joni Mitchell moment’, where you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. At this rate we won’t even have a Joni Mitchell moment for some of these species, because they will remain undiscovered and just disappear.”
• Mapping the Great Barrier Reef: picture special
Source: The Telegraph
