Coral reef protection and conservation: dynamite and Cyanide fishing, pollution,, sedimentation. When people grab, kick, walk on, or collect coral, they also contribute to coral reef destruction. Careless boating, diving, fishing, and other recreational uses of coral reef areas can cause damage to them. On some islands the resorts use dynamite to create a passage for their boats. If here are no buoys, anchors are dropped which crush or break corals. Good meaning tourists feed reef fishes, but this results in changing their feeding behavior and don't graze on algaes anymore which can choke the corals.
Polished shells, clams and Nautilus shells, jewelry made from shell or tortoiseshell, pictures with dried seahorses, ashtrays made from clams - don't buy these souvenirs! These animals are specially caught with nets or bait and not just found on the beach - they are much too pretty and clean! Some animals such are the giant clam (Tridacna) or marine turtles are protected by law and you can't import them into your country! Coral Grief: Warming Climate Threatens Reef Destruction. A survey of 704 species of coral—tiny polyps with hard shells, some of which form spectacular underwater reefs—has found that nearly 33 percent of them face a greater threat of becoming extinct as the globe warms.
The main culprits, according to the study published today in Science: bleaching—when corals expel the algae that normally feeds them and gives them color—as well as disease outbreaks in coral weakened by warming sea-surface temperatures. "If we cannot manage the [carbon dioxide] in the atmosphere, there's a very good possibility that bleaching events and disease events will be occurring with greater frequency and, if that occurs, there is a good chance that some species are not going to be able to replenish themselves fast enough," says marine biologist Kent Carpenter of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who led the research. "Corals are the backbone of the ecosystem," Carpenter notes, and reefs harbor roughly one quarter of all known marine species—from fish to algae.
CORAL REEF DESTRUCTION AND CONSERVATION - Coral Reefs - Ocean World. CORAL REEF DESTRUCTION and CONSERVATION Ten percent of the world's reefs have been completely destroyed. In the Philippines, where coral reef destruction is the worst, over 70% have been destroyed and only 5% can be said to be in good condition. What has happened to destroy so many reefs? Human population has become very large, and earth is warming. There are two different ways in which humans have contributed to the degradation of the Earth's coral reefs, indirectly and directly. Warming of the ocean causes corals to sicken and die. This mountainous star coral, Montastraeaa faveolata, from Panama has started to bleach. The direct way in which humans destroy coral reefs is by physically killing them. Dynamite not only kills the fish that live in the reef, but the reef as well.
Another way that divers catch coral reef fish is with cyanide. The map below shows the areas in the world where coral reefs are in danger. Coral Bands (Photo courtesy Jennifer M. Questions that come to mind are: