Coral Reef Threats

photo credit: http://www.unknownworld.co/content/great-barrier-reef/

Coral reefs are a very important habitat in marine ecology and support thousands of organisms by creating homes, protection, and more. Coral reefs support increased biodiversity in our ocean. Many coral reefs have collapsed to a point of no return. Coral reefs have an extended number of factors that threaten its success. For my presentation, I will be discussing these threats and what is going on in research and politically to study and change the affects of them on coral reefs. 

Some of the threats on coral reefs have to do with ocean acidification, predators such as the Crown of Thorns starfish, pollution, over-fishing, invasive species, oil, gas, mineral exploration and extraction, and more. There is a long list of threats on coral reefs which makes it even harder to protect them because they can get targeted in multiple ways. Long term solutions are very tough to find for some of these threats. 

One reason why it is difficult to find solutions to coral reef threats are because of the continual change in the ecosystem due to acidification. For example, while trying to take care of an invasive species, we may not be able to help organisms who are also being affected by the pH changes in the water. 

I will be discussing as many threats as I can and what solutions are being proposed, are being used, and what we can do to help with this effort. Coral reefs bring a lot of good to marine life and also to our economy through fisheries and tourism. I will also touch on policies that may be in our near political future on CO2 emission and clean energy.

http://proxy.ashland.edu:2318/ehost/detail/detail?vid=17&sid=6330e763-5339-41e4-bf3d-ab624a4b152f%40sessionmgr4005&hid=4214&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=103381605&db=a9h

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http://www.divetioman.com/download/COT%20Best%20Practice%20for%20Clean%20ups.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-1338.2007.00265.x/full

http://coralreef.noaa.gov/threats/