In Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, people are taking different approaches to preserving – and in one case re-growing – coral reefs. Global warming and rising sea temperatures have been “bleaching” and killing reefs worldwide, making reef conservation an important issue.
The Coral Triangle region of the West Pacific – between Indonesia, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands – is home to more than 50 percent of the world’s coral and 75 percent of its species. It’s kind of like a coral homeland, a source of coral biodiversity for the world.
Papua New Guinea’s Kimbe Bay is at the southeast part of the triangle and is the focus of a new conservation effort, hatched by The Nature Conservancy and scientists from the region, to create 15 restricted zones in the 3,300-square-mile bay. Fishing and other activities would be banned or restricted in these zones. The Coral Triangle has adapted to pulses of warming temperatures over millions of years, so the goal of this project is to protect this coral paradise from other threats, such as overfishing, fishing by dynamiting or poisoning, erosion runoff, agricultural chemicals and coral harvesting.
Project participants face the challenge of getting local Papua New Guinea clans to agree to the proposed restricted areas.
A bit farther west, off the Indonesian island of Bali, another reef project takes a different tack. Here reefs were being bleached by warming waters and damaged by dynamite fishing and cyanide poisoning.
A scientist and an architect came up with the idea to submerge metal structures on which coral could grow. They’ve built dozens of the metal frames in Pemuteran Bay. By sending a low-voltage electric current through the frames, the team gets limestone to gather on the metal. Then the team collects pieces of coral that have broken off nearby reefs, and attachs them to the frames. The electricity apparently gets the coral to restore itself.
Coral reefs are important because they protect shores from tides and waves and provide habitat for beautiful plant and sea life. The reefs can also be important tourist attractions.
Have you seen coral in situ before? What do you think of these two ways to protect coral? Do you think one is better than the other?
Post your comments here!
(Photo by JennyHuang via Flickr)
Global warming is not killing coral reefs. Let nature worry about the coral. Man can tear up or kill coral in a limited area. But, left alone, nature wipes out all evidence of man. Coral is killed every day. New coral organisms hatch every day. The earth’s climate has oscillated between (what we call) warm and cool for eons. Some flora and Fauna dies and/or migrates. That left mutates or adapts. Rmember the axiom: mutate, migrate, adapt or die. Nature adheres to this. It is only man that vainly hopes for things to stay the same. It ain’t gonna happen.
Worry about politicians wrecking your economy, your way of life and in some cases, your life itself. Let nature do it’s thing. Keep in mind that not one of the computer models used by the smart folks in the alarmist “climate change” crowd has proven predictive in any way. No one knows what the climate is going to do. Given the recent reduction in the activity of the sun, it might be a good bet to expect cooling in the near future.
You make a lot of general statements, but you don’t provide any specific evidence to back them up.
I did some more research and found that the biggest culprit in coral bleaching is warmer sea surface temperatures. We know from observations that sea temperatures have risen, on average worldwide, about 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 F) since 1961. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that his increase could only be explained by a combination of natural and anthropogenic causes. In addition, the oceans absorb 80 percent of the heat added to the climate by warming.
So climate change is helping make the oceans warmer, which is most likely causing some coral to die (they can’t tolerate even small increases in water temperature). (See the IPCC report “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis,” http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm)
See this NOAA site for more about coral bleaching: http://www.coral.noaa.gov/cleo/coral_bleaching.shtml
As for your statement that things never stay the same, that’s true, the world — and our environment — is constantly changing. Some people argue that we should not try to
preserve the environment as it is, but protect it as best we can in the context of change. I think there is some merit to this argument.
We have to acknowledge, however, that human activity is causing a lot of environmental change. Our actions do have impacts and consequences. Some examples include building dams, redirecting rivers, cutting down forests, planting crops, strip mining and mountaintop removal mining, fishing, factory farming livestock, paving roads and parking lots, landfilling trash, burning trash — and, yes, fossil fuel use and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
When it comes to climate change, one of the most convincing pieces of evidence to me is that we can’t explain the temperature rise that we’ve observed over the past century if we only include the effects of solar activity and volcanoes. Computer simulations show that the average global temperature should be lower if there was no human impact from greenhouse gases. Only when we add human impacts to the simulations do we get a result that matches the observed rise in temperature — which has been 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850.
We’ve factored in the changes solar activity and they don’t have as much impact as long-lived greenhouse gases.
nice coral and nice view, lets go come again