The Seas, It Turns Out, Can Indeed Be Fouled and Blighted

by Sylvia Earle

Originally published in the International Herald Tribune on 5/27/97.

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In the past 20 years about 10 percent of coral reefs worldwide have become dysfunctional. Another 30 percent are significantly stressed.

Some call coral reefs the rain forests of the sea, a tribute to the enormous richness of life and imperiled nature of both. To call attention to the plight of the reefs, the U.S. Department of State has declared 1997 International Year of the Coral Reef.

Around the world, the story of coral reefs is a story of human actions causing dire consequences often long distances from the scene.

It is popular to say that we live on a small planet. Just how small can be seen in the Caribbean Sea, where the World's End Reef is in peril because mountainsides are eroding hundreds of miles away in Venezuela. Loose soil from road cuts and farms in the mountains comes down the Orinoco River and spills into the sea, where it smothers once thriving coral reefs and feeds a long green plume of toxic algae.

In Florida, some yacht owners carelessly flush their toilets into port waters; many golf course managers dump onto the fairways tons of excess nitrogen fertilizers, including a large percentage that will ultimately wash into the oceans; developers of inland properties let silt loose into tributary waters. As a consequence, reefs suffer.

The much admired corals in John Pennekamp Marine Park, off Key Largo, are often now draped with hunks of fast-growing algae. The algae and sediment deprive the corals of light and oxygen may be linked to recent outbreaks of diseases such as "black band" and "white plague II."

The U.S. Commerce Department looks at this ugly picture and sees tourist dollars disappearing. Far more important, though, is the disappearance of the reefs themselves.

What the situation really calls for is a basic reorientation, a sea change of attitude, about how landlubbers and ocean-going people alike treat the vital natural systems beneath the surface of the oceans.

Living coral reefs are composed of millions of tiny, tentacled animals and calcareous plants that secrete a bulwark of calcium carbonate. When healthy, these stony structures are a natural sheltering habitat for fish, crabs, lobsters and thousands of other marine species. They also shelter all members of the human species who live near the oceanfront, taking the brunt of storm-whipped waves.

The state of Florida recently adopted a management plan for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary imposing water controls and zoning restrictions on some on-land activities, including some restriction on the now common use of cesspools. This is a good plan for both economic and environmental reasons, but some oppose it.

The fight over the plan is just one example of the growing conflicts arising from pressures that humankind is putting on natural systems. The list of activities that threaten the oceans is long developers who dam rivers, destroy mangrove tree lines or fill in sea grass beds, shipowners who dump chemicals and oil, marina managers who discharge sewage into the sea, fishermen who take too much wildlife from the sea, farm operators who allow excess agri-chemicals to flow in.

Only a generation ago, a marine scientist described the oceans as "the great matrix that man can hardly sully and cannot appreciably despoil." Back then it was not imaginable that humankind would put holes in the stratospheric ozone layer, letting through radiation that damages fish eggs and larvae and kills plankton. It was not imaginable that pollution-caused global climate changes could lead to an accelerated rise in sea level.

The comforting notion that the sea can withstand any and all assaults is losing out to growing awareness that we are stressing the ancient ocean systems that support us.

The sea shapes climate and weather, stabilizes temperatures, generates oxygen and provides more than 95 percent of the planet's living space the biosphere. It is in our interest to stop doing harm to life in the seas, and this is the message that governments hope to convey with their 1997 campaign for reefs and a planned follow-up campaign for 1998, International Year of the Oceans.

Finally, a cautionary tale:

Some years ago, construction companies in Sri Lanka dredged up hard calcium reefs as building material for resort hotels on the beaches. Each year since then, more of the beachfront is eroded by storms that come roaring through gaps in the reef bulwark. The way things are going, the hotels made of corals will someday fall into the ocean.

Sylvia Earle is the former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.