Survey: Coral reefs in bad shape
ANDREW BRIDGES
AP Science Writer
LOS ANGELES - Scientists say the first global survey of the health of the world's coral reefs shows they are in serious decline, with overfishing worsening a crisis situation.
Scientists and volunteers found that overfishing has affected 95 percent of the more than 1,000 coral reefs monitored since 1997. At least four species of reef fish, hunted as food or to adorn aquariums, face extinction, further threatening the biodiversity of the marine ecosystems.
The results of the five-year study are presented in report being released Monday by the Institute of the Environment's Reef Check program at the University of California, Los Angeles. More than 5,000 scientists and volunteers in about 60 countries contributed to the survey, possibly the largest ecological study ever undertaken.
"What we have seen is coral reefs have been damaged more in the last 20 years than they have in the last 1,000. Suddenly, the pressures of overfishing and damaging types of fishing - dynamiting fish and poisoning fish, particularly in Southeast Asia - have taken off," said Gregor Hodgson, a UCLA marine ecologist and founder of Reef Check.
Hodgson said plummeting populations of overfished species, including fish and
sea urchins, can allow the algae they normally keep in check to smother coral and kill entire reefs.
Reefs where fishing has been banned or restricted show signs of recovery. But virtually all the world's reefs show signs of declining health.
Hodgson said that of 1,107 reefs surveyed, just one, near Madagascar, could be considered pristine.
Pollution and increased amounts of sediments are also taking their toll. A recent study identified bacteria found in the intestines of humans and other animals as the cause of a disease killing elkhorn corals in the Caribbean Sea.
Scientists organized the first international conference to discuss the global decline in coral reef health in 1993. Since then, they have struggled with how to devise a program to monitor the world's reefs. Reefs make up just .09 percent of the area of the world's oceans and are spread around the globe, making them difficult to study without the help of volunteers.
"The volunteer component is fantastic. How else can you reach so much of the coral reefs?" said Jamie Hawkins, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service. NOAA underwrote a portion of a cost of the report.
The report's authors said the project is as much about science as it is raising the public's awareness of the coral reef situation. One contributor acknowledged the size of the survey precludes it from being as scientifically rigorous as a smaller study.
"There's always a trade-off between quantity and precision. They got a lot of quantity and not a lot of precision," said Jeremy Jackson, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who wrote the preface to the report.
NOAA intends to issue its own national state-of-the-reefs report next month.
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