Assignment 16- Sheridan Wagner

          Colors are fascinating. Colors captivate people. If you want to grab someone’s attention, add more color. If you want to make something more interesting, add more color. This is probably the reason coral reefs are so compelling. Bright and buzzing with life, they have always seemed like lively places with sea turtles, hundreds of brightly colored fish, and crystal blue water. A place to go snorkeling on vacation. But the reef in this picture isn’t a place I would enjoy venturing into. It looks dead, drained of life, of color. The water is murky and everything is still. Not exactly the image that first comes to mind when you think of reefs. It’s actually a picture of the Great Barrier Reef. Over 90% of this reef, over 1,300 miles of this reef is experiencing coral bleaching. Coral depends on algae that lives inside of it. This is the coral’s main food source and it’s what give it its vibrant color. Corals are very easy to stress out, changes in light, temperature, and nutrients will cause them to expel these algae. Without it they lose their major food source, become more susceptible to disease, and turn white and bleaching occurs. They can recover, but if the bleaching is severe they die. This event may not seem important to many, but I’ll explain the extent of this problem, how it affects us, and how it may be prevented.

          A main cause of the widespread bleaching lies with the global increase of temperature. Coral bleaching before 1998 was rare, on a much smaller scale, and the reefs were able to recover. Since then, high sea temperatures caused by El Nino have led to global bleaching. And this is only getting worse. These two maps created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show the predicted coral bleaching for Feb-May 2015 and the predicted bleaching for Feb-May 2016. It clearly shows a drastic increase in practically every area. Also to blame is the increase in ocean acidity as it is absorbing higher levels of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This acidity makes it more difficult for corals to build their calcium carbonate skeletons. Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have found that neither the temperature nor the acidification on their own had a large effect on the survival rate of the corals, but when you combined the two the corals were twice as likely to die.

          While corals may seem unimportant to some, they are incredibly important to the countries around them. Aside from being pretty and colorful, they provide an economic benefit to the areas they inhabit. Creating billions of dollars, they bring in recreational and commercial fishing. They also serve as a level of defense against tropical storms and floods. And even though they make up less than 1% of the ocean floor, they contain more than 25% of marine life. There are millions of species that depend on reefs for their survival and millions of people who depend on the reefs for their resources.

          There are solutions to this expanding problem. First and foremost, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but, attempting to taking a more specified approach, an answer might be to treat our coral reefs like we treat our agriculture. We need to work on finding more sturdy types and variations of coral, ones that can tolerate higher temperatures and higher acidity. We are also capable of creating steel cages which stimulate coral growth through electrical currents. However, these are pricey and are not likely be able to extend beyond the local scale. There also was the proposed strategy to reduce ocean acidity by adding bicarbonate to the water. But this would take 9,000 million tons annually and we only produce 300 million tons annually, so that is not possible. The only way we would be able to save the corals on a global scale would be to decrease our carbon dioxide emissions. Without this happening the coral will die and leave us with an ocean without color.

         

Bibliography

An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Prod. Laurie David, Lawrence

 Bender, and Scott Z. Burns. Paramount Pictures Corp., 2006.

"Satellites & Bleaching." NOAA Coral Reef Watch Tutorial. N.p., n.d. Web. 11

          Dec. 2016.

Holthaus, Eric. Coral bleaching near Heron Island. Digital image. Slate. N.p., 29

Mar. 2016. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

NOAA four-month bleaching outlook for 2015. Digital image. National Oceanic

 and Atmospheric Administration. N.p., 17 Feb. 2015. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

February-May 2016 bleaching outlook. Digital image. National Oceanic and

 Atmospheric Administration. N.p., 8 Oct. 2015. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Vince, Gaia. "How Can We save Our Dying Coral Reefs?" BBC - Future. N.p., 6

 Sept. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.