[Coral-List] Reassessing Coral Reefs
Peter Sale
sale at uwindsor.ca
Thu Mar 26 15:42:39 EDT 2015
Hi Steve, and list,
I fear we may be going over old ground here.
Given that Florida is now banning use of certain words (like 'climate
change') in a 1984-ish attempt to deny climate change, your concern may be
justified. (Florida has so far not gone the route of North Carolina of
legislating sea level rise out of existence -- would that the solutions
were so simple!)
I do not think there has been any substantive change among reef
scientists. We vary in how starkly we see the consequences of continued
inaction on climate -- some, like me, believing that coral reefs (i.e.
reefs with a substantial veneer of living corals that add CaCO3 as they
grow) will have largely gone by mid-century if we continue our present
inactivity, while others holding out hope that some will somehow adapt and
survive. But I think we all agree on what is required:
Most reefs near people can benefit from increased vigilance and clean-up
action to correct over-fishing, pollution, and inappropriate coastal
development that impacts reefs with burial or siltation. Taking action on
any of these fronts helps the situation if, as is likely, relief of one
source of stress helps organisms cope with other sources still present.
(I'd include action on coral disease, if I knew of any that are out there
that can help.)
Taking action on all these fronts should buy time for coral reefs, but if
we do not eventually take real action to stem CO2 emissions the reefs will
be eliminated by a combination of warming and acidification, whether or
not we have completely eliminated over-fishing, pollution and
inappropriate development. People might even listen to dive industry
spokespeople who argue for action to save coral reefs. Go for it.
And with respect to disease and perhaps to warming, I am aware that there
are efforts by some groups to cultivate corals and use breeding programs
to create organisms that can better cope with the environment that seems
to be coming. I just think that at present, these efforts have yet to
prove successful, and many of the 'reef restoration' programs out there
are small-scale, short-term, paper-over responses to the problem. These
can be useful when the small-scale short-term effort is right in front of
a tourism enterprise -- its sort of like planting a nice garden at the
hotel entrance. But that is a short-term band-aid to maintain cash-flow,
rather than a 'technological solution' to the issue of CO2 impacts on
coral reefs.
Peter Sale
sale at uwindsor.ca @PeterSale3
www.uwindsor.ca/sale www.petersalebooks.com
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