Coral reefs 'will be gone by end of the century' The end of the line!

[sce56]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/coral-reefs-will-be-gone-by-end-of-the-century-2352742.html



Coral reefs 'will be gone by end of the century'

They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist

By Andrew Marszal

Sunday, 11 September 2011


Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the planet's largest reef system and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but it may not survive the century

Reuters

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the planet's largest reef system and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but it may not survive the century

Photos enlarge

Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.



The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be "a new first for mankind – the 'extinction' of an entire ecosystem". Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that "we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years".

"We're creating a situation where the organisms that make coral reefs are becoming so compromised by what we're doing that many of them are going to be extinct, and the others are going to be very, very rare," Professor Sale says. "Because of that, they aren't going to be able to do the construction which leads to the phenomenon we call a reef. We've wiped out a lot of species over the years. This will be the first time we've actually eliminated an entire ecosystem." Coral reefs are important for the immense biodiversity of their ecosystems. They contain a quarter of all marine species, despite covering only 0.1 per cent of the world's oceans by area, and are more diverse even than the rainforests in terms of diversity per acre, or types of different phyla present.

Carbon emissions generated by human activity, especially our heavy use of fossils fuels, are the biggest cause of the anticipated rapid decline, impacting on coral reefs in two main ways. Climate change increases ocean surface temperatures, which have already risen by 0.67C in the past century. This puts corals under enormous stress and leads to coral bleaching, where the photosynthesising algae on which the reef-building creatures depend for energy disappear. Deprived of these for even a few weeks, the corals die. On top of this comes ocean acidification. Roughly one-third of the extra carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere is absorbed through the ocean surface, acidifying shallower waters. A more recently recognised problem in tropical reef systems, the imbalance created makes it harder for reef organisms to retrieve the minerals needed to build their carbonaceous skeletons. "If they can't build their skeletons – or they have to put a lot more energy into building them relative to all the other things they need to do, like reproduce – it has a detrimental effect on the coral reefs," says Paul Johnston of the University of Exeter, and founder of the UK's Greenpeace Research Laboratories.

So if you have never had the opportunity to snorkel or scuba a reef you and your grand kids will never experience the magic a coral reef can show you I most particularly love the night dives since the deeper you go the more bland the colors get except when you are using your flash light at night then the colors jump out at you!

[FirstLight]

1. that's so messed up

I myself have never been anywhere tropical, so i haven't even seen a coral reef... *sigh* wonder if they can be saved?
shit, none of us can save anything at this point... so much destruction we humans bring..
---wonder if 100 years is even correct, since all the other models are so much faster than expected.
and once one ecosystem goes, how many more will go like dominoes?

:banghead: I hate my species sometimes

[provis99]

2. I think global thermonuclear war could help things quite a bit.

Wipe out about 5 or 6 billion humans, and the ecosystem will be protected from further damage.

[tex-wyo-dem]

3. I've had the honor of snorkeling in the Caribbean and Hawaii...

I say "honor" because that's exactly how I felt floating above something so beautiful that it's hard to describe...one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

I can't tell you how much it pains me to know we are actively destroying these unbelievable worlds.

[sce56]

4. I learned how to snorkel in 1990 on the reefs of Guam beautiful I have since snorkeled and scuba

in Okinawa Hawaii Florida and the Caribbean. I have also noted the disintegration of those reefs especially Cancun & Florida. Once I have my ducky's in line I'll be heading out to see how many more reef I can explore on my Sailboat.