Hope for Coral Reefs?
¿ Hay esperanza para los arrecifes de coral?
Ifirst saw coral reefs and the abundance of life they generate as a teenager on a trip to Key West in 1967. Tropical reefs cover less than 1 percent of the ocean, but are home and nursery to 25 percent of all marine species; billions of fish, mollusks, and other creatures rely on reefs for food and shelter. Their vast beauty is generated by tiny living coral polyps, whose calcium carbonate skeletons build up bedrock structures over millennia.
Today, reefs generate huge tourism revenues for warm water nations and regions fringed by them. Their unique productivity also assures food security for hundreds of millions of people. Plus they act as storm barriers providing protection to coastal populations from South Florida to Indonesia at a time of rising sea levels and intensified hurricanes.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living thing visible from space. Stretching 1,400 miles along Australia’s northeast coast, it covers only one-tenth of 1 percent of the world’s ocean surface yet supports 8 percent of the world’s known fish species, about