Life on Earth: coral reefs

One-third of all marine life is found in, on and is dependent on coral reefs. However, coral reefs only occupy 1 percent of the seabed, or less than 0.7 percent of the surface of the earth. Think about it, one-third of all life in a vast ocean area covering two-thirds of the planet is crammed in right there on those tiny coral reefs. Put another way, just over 20 percent of all the life on planet Earth resides in, on and around coral reefs, stuffed into an area less than 1 percent of the earth’s surface.Think about it this way as well: If we lose the coral reefs it is the equivalent of you taking a 20 percent pay cut. Can you survive on that? Certainly not as well, and with coral reefs the story gets even more complicated.Coral reefs are one of the only living organism structures on earth that can directly convert the sun’s rays into energy. The little coral animals share their habitat and calcium carbonate skeletons with little plant-like organisms called dinoflagellates that trap sunlight and share it with the coral animals. And are all corals the same? Nope. Currently, with discoveries being made every day, they estimate there are at least a million species on the coral reefs, a million different animals as diverse as an elephant to your pet cat, only a lot smaller.u u uFor thousands of years, perhaps as many as a million years, coral reefs have had a steady, fairly constant environment. There have been upheavals in the past, volcanoes and such, but overall seawater is a blanket existence, keeping conditions even and predictable. Now, however, three big changes brought about by man are threatening large areas of underwater reef life: fishing (including aquarium collection), acidification and warming. You see, humans live near coasts, as do corals. What we wash out to sea and what we pump into the atmosphere directly affects the reefs. And what is worse, none of what we are doing to their environment has been experienced by them in the past. In other words, they have no genetic evolutionary characteristics to employ to overcome our sudden change to their world.In the Caribbean, there is something called mass coral bleaching, which is triggered by a 1 degree rise in water temperature. That is all, 1 degree in the summer temperature and whole reefs die off and bleach in the sun. Added to that there are tourism and fishing impacts. After all, it is easier to fish and sightsee near shore. And how much change has there been? Comparing studies done in the 1960s to today, the coral reefs in the Caribbean, Australia and the South Pacific have lost about 40 percent of the primary reef building corals.u u uIt is a disaster, not only to sea life and earth’s biodiversity but there is one other critical factor here: The coral reefs feed one in 10 people, every day. Imagine if, in your lifetime, another 660,000,000 million people — twice the population of America — face starvation. And the runoffs from the land, from farming and increasing storm activity brought about by global climate change, increase sedimentation, water temperature and acidity, further killing the coral animals.In 1998 about 16 percent of the world’s coral reefs died, according to the University of Essex coral study group. However, that was a significant anomaly event that has fortunately lead to some optimism: The coral reefs that “died” bleached out and slowly, over time, the organisms have started to recover and, latterly, have shown increased vitality, giving hope they can recover fully in a few decades.Of course, as one scientist pointed out, once the bleached reefs were abandoned by fishermen, aquarium collectors and tourists, they stood a chance. And there are signs that some species of coral are adapting to warmer climates, especially in the Arabian Sea. Of course, as soon as they recover, they will be under human attack once again. Our job, if we want to protect this huge biodiversity environment, is to limit local pollution and declare huge underwater parks off limits to human intervention. How huge will these parks be? Less than the percentage of national parks in the United States will save half the world’s reefs from extinction. Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.