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Who Lives There?
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Location
Coral Reefs are popular tourist spots, because they are bright and beautiful--natural marvels that dot our planet’s oceans. However, many people don’t seem to realize that coral is a living organism that needs specific conditions to survive. Reef degradation is a global problem--coral reefs all around the world are dying due to pollution and rising ocean temperatures. In fact, 10% of the world’s reefs are already completely destroyed. The Philippines is an example of an extreme worst case scenario of this problem: 70% of the Philippines’ coral reefs have been destroyed, and only 5% are classified as in good standing. The world’s reefs are not quite at the level of damage facing those of the Philippines, but continue to suffer due to anthropological causes.
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The Great Barrier Reef is a very well known coral reef, and provides a smaller scale from which we can look at this issue. Larger than the Great Wall of China, it is found off the Northeast coast of Australia, and is one of the Seven Wonders of the natural world.
Specifics of the Problem
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef in the world. It stretches approximately 344,400 square kilometres and is composed of almost 3,000 individual reefs. Almost half of the Reef has been lost in the past 30 years due to pollution from mining and main land farming in Queensland, Australia. Despite the passage of legislation meant to protect the reef, water quality is still declining and the coral and its aquatic inhabitants continue to die.
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The land next to the Great Barrier Reef is primarily used for sugar cane and beef cultivation. Farm runoff sediment infiltrates the reef and are contaminated with pesticides and fertilizers which are detrimental to the health of the ecosystem. Specifically, high levels of DDT and diuron are having an even larger effect due to the loss of coastal wetlands which would have buffered the amount of toxins entering the sea. Intensive farming is fueled by the demand of consumers. This demand forces farmers to mass produce agricultural necessities such as cattle and sugar. This hasty and enormous industry continues to supply the consumer, despite the environmental effects.
Unfortunately this demand is in turn, killing coral reefs, which houses one of the most enormous concentrations of aquatic biodiversity. Coral reefs are responsible for absorbing wave energy, which protect shorelines. If they continue to degrade, the mainland, in this case Australia, will be unprotected and possibly suffer catastrophe. The GBR is also a main site of fishing. However if conservation is ignored and toxins continue to kill the reef, this source of marine harvest will be lost.
Larger Consequences of the Problem
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Coral reefs around the world are dying due to urban runoff and human pollution and is expected that by 2050, all coral reefs will be endangered. In Southeast Asia, 95% of reefs are already at high risk of dying completely. In the past 40 years, coral reefs in the Caribbean have been almost completely eradicated which is shocking when compared to their relatively healthy levels in the 1970s. 
http://www.earthtimes.org/conservation/coral-cover-deadly-decline/2172/
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Solutions
Due to the severity of the coral reef degradation that is being seen around the world, not just in the Great Barrier Reef, experts are attempting to create ways to halt and even reverse the negative effects human activity have on the reefs. For example, in the USA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association is taking steps to protect our reefs. Many US reefs have been mapped by the NOAA, one of the first steps in the process of designating them Marine Protected Areas. Marine Protected Areas can be declared “no-take,” which would protect the coral by ensuring that no one would disturb the reefs by over fishing or disrupting the habitat.
Besides protecting the reefs, measures are being taken to restore the coral. The “release of herbivorous sea urchins,” and “removal of coral predators” are two strategies that researchers are experimenting with. Scientists are also creating ways to collect coral gametes, “induce fertilization, and seed juvenile corals onto degraded reefs.”
Unfortunately since many of these approaches are new, we don’t know how effective they will be at rehabilitating the coral, especially since pollution and global warming continue to harm the reefs. Other more drastic proposed solutions to aid the coral include adding vast amounts of bicarbonate or lime to ocean waters in order to decrease acidity, erecting shade structures over the coral to reduce ocean temperature, and creating artificial reef structures for coral to grow on. One such structure, called the Lotus, is a large steel structure in the Maldives which receives an electric current. This current creates a reaction that “draws calcium carbonate out of solution in the water and it gets deposited on the cage structure,” which makes it an ideal growing environment for coral. Despite this project’s success, though, it and the other drastic measures above would be much too costly to implement widely. The only feasible way to really save the coral is to replant it and attempt to decrease our pollution and attempt to curtail global warming, especially by drastically reducing CO2 emissions.
Conclusion
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http://coralreef.noaa.gov/aboutcorals/values/
Citations
Although more awareness and concern is growing for the health of coral reef ecosystems, it remains unlikely that we will be able to fully rehabilitate the coral reefs. The extreme methods of restoring reefs would require vast funding, resources, and time. Despite reefs’ economic and aesthetic value to us as humans, our concern for their health will probably not outweigh other pressing human issues that require funding and attention. Coral reef degradation can be viewed as simply one more side effect of our human impact on the environment. We tend to view the ocean as so vast that it is somehow exempt from the strain that pollution and global warming put on the natural world, when in reality it is delicately balanced and degrading rapidly due to our actions. The death of the coral is the precursor to much more environmental destruction both on land and in the ocean if we don’t try to decrease our harmful activity.
Bellwood, D. R., et al. "Confronting the coral reef crisis." Nature 429.6994 (2004): 827-833.
Haynes, David, Jochen Müller, and Steve Carter. "Pesticide and herbicide residues in sediments and seagrasses from the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and Queensland coast." Marine Pollution Bulletin 41.7 (2000): 279-287.
Pandolfi, John M., et al. "Global trajectories of the long-term decline of coral reef ecosystems." Science 301.5635 (2003): 955-958.
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