Save+the+Coral+Reefs!!!

Stakeholder #1 Dear Coral Reef Alliance , My name is Sean Pe and I am doing a project on coral reef degradation in the Philippines. So I just want to ask a few Questions. May I?  What are you doing to help prevent the degradation in the Philippines ? Although we do not have a project site in the Philippines at this time, our guides and best practices are available to help anyone in the world to improve practices around coral reefs ( @http://www.coral.org/resources/guides_best_practices ). What can be done? What can the average person do to prevent this from happening? At CORAL, we believe that effectively managed, community supported marine protected areas (MPAs) are the best solution to address the coral reef crisis. Local community members and visitors can help by supporting MPAs and respecting the rules set up to protect the marine environment. However, even if you don’t live near a coral reef, you can help by reducing your carbon dioxide emissions and fighting for stricter carbon emissions reduction legislation. Carbon dioxide emissions are threatening coral reefs by causing climate change and ocean acidification. You can also help by spreading the word about threats to coral reefs, and by supporting groups that are working to protect them. What total costs will it take to stop this degradation? How many people would it take? I couldn’t hazard a guess on how much it will cost to stop coral reef degradation, but it’s important to remember that coral reefs are actually extremely economically important—they are estimated to be worth $400 billion annually to the global economy (reefs worldwide, that is). Coral reefs provide food, coastal protection, medicines, and tourism income, all vital to local economies. The cost of not protecting reefs is certainly greater than the cost of protecting them. It will really take everyone to stop the degradation of reefs, if you consider that two of the main threats to reefs are caused by carbon dioxide emissions—climate change and ocean acidification can only be addressed adequately if everyone works to reduce carbon emissions. Is their any way to restore the reef after bleaching? If water temperatures return to normal quickly enough after a bleaching event, corals can recover by regaining the symbiotic algae (xoozanthellae) that give them their color and much of their nutrition. However, if the water remains too hot for too long, many corals will die. It is still possible for the reef to recover, but it will take a long time for new corals to grow; their growth will also be dependant on favorable conditions and a lack of other stressors. Is their anyway we could help a diseased coral reef? I’m not sure exactly what you mean by diseased (degraded might be a better word, unless you are specifically talking about coral diseases), but the best way to help reefs recover from trauma is to make sure that other stressors (such as destructive fishing, boat anchoring, pollution, etc.) are removed. That is the goal of marine protected areas, and we can help by making sure that MPAs are managed effectively to achieve real conservation and a reduction of stressors. Please answer soon, Sean Pe Stakeholder #2 

Dear Planetary Coral Reef Foundation,

My name is Sean Pe and I am doing a project on coral reef degradation in the Philippines. So I just want to ask a few Questions. May I?

What are you doing to help prevent the degradation in the Philippines?

PCRF has been studying coral reefs since its inception in 1991. In 1995 it launched an expedition to study the coral reefs of the world and to use the same methods at reefs from the Red Sea to French Polynesia to gain an understanding of their global state.

The full results of these studies can be viewed at http://www.pcrf.org/science/ index.html

During the course of this expedition, we made a study on the coral reef of Starfish Island in Palawan, Philippines in 2000.

The full results of this reef assessment are at

http://www.pcrf.org/science/ Starfish/index.html

Our work is currently concentrate next door to the Philippines in Indonesia where a very similar set of circumstances are impacting coral reefs. These include deforestation, destructive fishing practices, overfishing, poorly managed marine park areas etc.

You can see some information about this at

www.biosfirindonesia.org

We are a very small non-profit organisation and do not have the capacity of the larger NGOs like WWF and Conservation International to work in all countries. However, our hope is that our work at specific sites in Indonesia will help to build capacity for southeast Asia as a region and to inspire similar efforts, perhaps at sites in the Philippines.

Also, in our efforts to educate about global impacts on coral reefs, from climate change to overfishing, we hope to help coral reefs everywhere.

What can be done? What can the average person do to prevent this from happening?

I have attached a document “WHAT TO DO” to give a couple of pointers as to what each of us can do to help reefs. We can all make a difference.

What total costs will it take to stop this degradation? How many people would it take?

It’s very difficult to put a price on how much it is going to cost to stop the degradation of coral reefs. Socioeconomists have tried to put values on what this figure is, and also on how much reefs are worth if they remain intact. One estimate is that they are worth $375 billion a year in the goods and services that they provide to the world, for example in tourism, fishing, shoreline protection etc. But what is known is that the cost of keeping coral reefs alive and healthy on this planet is much lower than the cost of dealing with their loss. In other words, no matter how expensive it seems to make changes that improve the future for coral reefs, it will be a saving in the long run.

Is their any way to restore the reef after bleaching?

The most helpful thing that we can do to allow coral reefs to cope with the impending climate change, because warming seas and therefore bleaching events are a continued inevitability, is to reduce all other stresses that we are placing on the reefs: stresses such as dynamite or cyanide fishing, sedimentation from deforestation on land, pollution from land sources such as agriculture or sewage, removing essential organisms from the reef and therefore upsetting the balance of the ecosystem, and so on.

Combating any one of these threats costs a coral reef energy, which leaves less energy or resources for coral reef organisms to grow and reproduce. Without growth or reproduction, a coral reef cannot withstand the constant forces that work to erode it. Combining several of these threats at the same time, or over time, can tip a reef over the edge.

Many have predicted that climate change has the capacity to eradicate coral reefs as we know them from the planet within this century. If a coral reef is already under stress from a natural or anthropogenic threat, then it will have reduced resilience to handle increased sea surface temperature or ocean acidification.

The work that we must do now, in the face of inevitable climate change, is to reduce all other stresses as much as we possibly can, and therefore give the corals and all other organisms on the reef the chance to put all their energetic resources towards coping with bleaching events and the other effects of climate change.

Is their anyway we could help a diseased coral reef?

Factors contributing to the onset and spread of disease include: new pathogens being introduced onto the reefs through aquaculture, runoff, human sewage and ballast water; poor water quality with nutrient overloading and increased sedimentation; disturbances in the microbial fauna that live in the mucus layer which sheathes the coral polyp; and perhaps, most alarmingly, elevated sea temperatures because pathogens grow faster in higher temperatures and bleached corals are weaker than healthy corals and are therefore much more susceptible to disease.

When bleaching and disease occur together, the combination causes more harm to corals than either would on their own. It is also thought that diseased corals are more likely to bleach more severely than healthy corals, possibly because a fungus interferes with the relationship between the polyp and its zooxanthellae, increasing the chances of bleaching occurring. In 2005, a devastating 2005 warming event in the Caribbean was immediately followed by vicious outbreaks of white plague, yellow band and white patch diseases.

Just like bleaching, we can help corals cope with disease outbreaks by reducing all the other stresses on them. A coral fighting against a disease needs all the energy it can get to stay alive.

Can i make a phone call for more information? If so, what time is possible in central time. I am sorry that none of us are in the USA at this time and are all on hectic schedules rebuilding a ship (Abigail) and completing writing a book on coral reefs and travelling (me) so phone time is a little difficult right now. But email works if you need to continue the dialogue!

I wish you the best of luck with your project Sean.

Please answer soon,

    Sean Pe It doesn’t necessarily matter what we do to mitigate the effects of ‘natural’ problems and man-made problems on a local scale. Climate change might just wipe out the reefs anyway, even if we stop all the dynamiting, cyaniding, control crown-of-thorns outbreaks, restore fish populations to their ‘natural’ numbers, stop leaking oil, clean up our seas etc. But what we actually HAVE to do is do our best to reduce all the ‘natural’ and man-made factors, so that as climate change takes place, because it has become an inevitability, reefs are not so busy dealing with other threats and can use all their resources and energy to combat rising temperatures and ocean acidity. The buzz word for this is resilience. Reefs are said to be resilient when they are able to bounce back from storms, or hotspots causing bleaching events or fishermen who squirt cyanide at them. They lack resilience when they are already so stressed by human activities that they cannot recover from an anomalous event.

If you are interested in not just studying reefs but actually doing something positive to increase their chances of surviving well into the future, then the most constructive thing you can do is get involved in the fight to change climate change. This is the biggest threat facing coral reefs today and within this century, may overwhelm the reefs altogether. There is no country left on this planet that is not somehow involved, so find out what’s going on in yours and use your voice, your email, your cell phone and your legs to galvanise, mobilise, activate and make a difference. Community gatherings, grassroots organisations, art competitions, dance parties. Without changing our crash course on climate change, there may be no hope for coral reefs. So yes, follow through on all the rest, but if you choose to take one positive step forward for the reefs, move towards changing climate change.

Below are just some of the actions you could take that would make a difference to the future of the reefs, but this list is just the beginning……

· information, spread the word, don’t be shy to let people know – if they’re going diving, be careful with the reefs, chose eco friendly hotels not polluting water, support policy, be up on effective changes that can happen

· get involved in grassroots campaigns

· pick up your garbage, stop using plastic, use your own bags, pick up trash when you see it, collect garbage in your village, don’t throw your trash in the sea

· stop eating shark fins

· be aware that shrimp are caught by bottom trawls which destroy entire ecosystems and then contemplate if you want to continue eating them and that for every kilogramme of shrimp caught, there are 8 kg of bycatch that gets dumped

· aquarium trade – if you absolutely insist on keeping an aquarium, make sure you’re working with a retailer doing it right

· following solid waste helps to understand the concept of catchment areas which will help to make the connection between what we do on the land and what ends up on the reefs. We all live in a catchment area, and when rain falls it gathers everything in the same catchment area, brings it down to the river, then on to the sea. All of our wastewater, domestic, sewage systems, industrial, goes through this catchment system to the oceans and therefore potentially to the reefs. therefore what you put down the drain or the toilet will end up on the sea, what you use in your garden will too

· go electronic – don’t print what you don’t need, teach yourself to read electronically if you have a computer

· most of our problems come from overpopulation of the planet! earth just wasn’t meant to cope with this many people

· stop buying what you don’t need – try it for a day, a week

· take public transport, stop using your car – emissions from automobiles are the second largest source of greenhouse gases.

· stop eating meat – most of the world’s deforestation occurs so cows can eat grass and cows eating grass has contributed hugely to the effects of global warming

· recycle your wastewater – research the natural technologies that exist, like Wastewater Gardens

· Southeast Asia is home to half the world’s coral reefs. Demand that dynamite and cyanide fishing are stopped there.

· Evidence suggests that coral reefs in protected ocean reserves are less affected by global warming and ocean acidification. If you’re in an MPA, find out how it’s doing. There are 1,000 MPAs in the Philippines. Only about 250 of them are actually functioning like one(Gomez, 2009). Get involved in the campaign for marine protected areas. If enough intention is put into them functioning well, they do actually work.

· Make the long-term investments in your home. Insulate it well, reduce your use of heating, line-dry your clothes, fill your washing machines before you switch them on, all those smart and sensible things we are constantly told to do. A study claim’s that such simple actions in the US would reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by an amount greater than the total emissions of France. This WILL make a difference. About 8% of the world’s carbon emissions come from US households.

Above all, don’t’ give up – there is so much we don’t know – for example, in the 1960s and 1970s, it was common belief that the entire Great Barrier Reef would be consumed by crown of thorns and that, subsequently, northern Queensland would be ravaged by cyclones without the protection of the reef. This hasn’t happened and looks increasingly unlikely so we cannot assume we are on a one-way train to coral reef devastation.

We must also hope that because there is still so much we don’t know that some of that is actually positive. For crying out loud, they have just discovered a new species of giant manta ray on the reefs off Africa – that’s a new species that is 8 metres wide – hardly a secret to nature, yet science and the world didn’t know about it until now.