Caribbean coral reefs are sending an SOS
Caribbean coral reefs have been hacked off by 80 percent in the last three decades by both natural and human causes, a scientific research study recently published by British scholars in the latest issue of Science magazine concluded.
The most affected areas stretch out from the Caribbean Basin and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula all the way to Puerto Rico, and from Venezuela’s Margarita Island up to the U.S. state of Florida, the research team of the School of Biology at the East Anglia University in Norwich pointed out.
Such natural factors as hurricanes and epidemic outbreaks hitting the structural tissues of coral reefs are two of the causes behind the downfall of this particular kind of marine life, the article indicates.
Indiscriminate fishing and the ripple effects of oil drilling on the marine ecosystem are extensively tackled on the report as factors that eat away at coral barriers.
Maritime transportation and the stockpiling of sediments in the seas as a result of deforestation are likewise doing a number on coral reefs.
The Caribbean is blessed with some 20,000 square kilometers of coral reefs, around 7 percent of the planet’s tally, according to the World Coral Reefs Yearbook issued by the World Conservation Screening Center of the United Nations Environmental Program.
“Recent reports suggest this shrinking pattern in coral reefs around many Caribbean areas is unprecedented, at least in the last millennia,” said Toby Gadner, head of the research team.
Up to now, there are no evidence pinning the blame on global warming as a factor that triggers the demise of coral reefs, Science magazine says.
Dr. Isabelle Cote from East Anglia University explained there are good and bad news as far as the conditions of Caribbean coral reefs are concerned.
On the flop side –the expert says- some coral reefs appear to be escaping from the claws of degradation. But on the flip side, the new coral colonies are different from the old ones and nobody knows for sure whether they could get by the increasingly hotter global warming.
