Save-Nemo Save the Corals and Save the World

greatest threats

One of the greatest threats to coral reefs is human expansion and development. As development continues, the landscape changes. The amount of freshwater runoff increases. This terrigenous runoff may carry large amounts of sediment from land-clearing areas, high levels of nutrients from agricultural areas or septic systems, as well as many pollutants such as petroleum products or insecticides.
In addition to runoff, outflows from water treatment plants and large power plants are the cause of much damage to coral reefs.

Sewage treatment facilities greatly increase the nutrient levels surrounding their outflow pipes while large power plants alter water temperatures by discharging extremely hot water into the coastal waters. As with all these factors, the basis for the continued degradation of coral reefs is the increasing size of the human population.
As this population increases, so does the harvest of resources from the sea. Due to overfishing, reef fish populations have been greatly decreased in some areas of the world. The removal of large numbers of reef fish has caused the coral reef ecosystems to become unbalanced and allowed more competitive organisms, such as algae, which were once controlled by large fish populations, to become dominant on reefs in many regions.

Due to decreased yields, fishermen have been forced to change their methods in order to catch enough fish to sustain their needs. In some areas this means fish traps with small mesh diameters which catch even the small juvenile fish. In other areas of the world, the use of explosives or poisons has become quite common (Richmond 1993). Not only do these practices kill all fish in the affected areas, but they also severely damage the corals in these areas. Corals are also very popular as decorations. Often, when people vacation in tropical locations surrounded by beautiful reefs they want to take coral souvenirs home. In order to do this, they either collect pieces of coral themselves or buy pieces from a "curios" shop. These shops receive their corals from commercial collectors who select well developed colonies which will make them the most money. This is very damaging because a large amount of the healthiest corals are selected.

Coral reefs also receive much damage from both commercial and private vessels. The leakage of fuels into the water and the occurrences of spills by large tankers are extremely damaging to local corals. Boat anchors are also very damaging to reefs by breaking and destroying entire colonies.

Since most corals mass spawn and produce floating gametes, pollutants and toxins on the surface can effect coral reproduction and development for a large area.

Looking at these beautiful marine creatures I do feel bad about how much detriments we have caused to the coral reefs. I hope this piece of information from http://www.uvi.edu/coral.reefer/threats.htm has enlightened you about the seriousness of how "sick" the coral reefs are becoming.

This following book [rainbow under the sea] is by Jeffery L.Rotman,credits goes to Jeffery L. Rotman for all his beautiful photos.