Environmental Effects On Coral Reef

Coral Reefs are important to our society because they support bustling diverse ecosystems that provide shelter to a fourth of all identified marine species and act as natural barriers, which protect the coastline from the ocean’s pounding waves. Coral reef ecosystems help to benefit economies by providing protection against erosion, cultivating fisheries, creating and sustaining tourism activities, offering substances for medical uses, and providing a diversity of culture and aesthetics to communities. We are hurting the coral reefs by over fishing, destructive fishing methods, unsustainable tourism, coastal development, pollution, and global aquarium trade. Corals are also being affected by climate change as well; because of coral bleaching,

Destructive fishing methods cause harm to the reefs because the dynamite and cyanide or other methods used because they break up the fragile coral reef are highly unsustainable. Unsustainable tourism generates a lot of income for the host countries, the tourists damage the coral reefs by careless swimmers and divers, and poorly placed boat anchors. Then there is also the problem with the hotels and resorts have a tendency to discharge untreated sewage and waste water into the ocean, which pollutes the water and helps the growth of algae, which makes it harder for the coral reefs to grow and expand. The growth of coastal cities and towns that generate multiple threats to the coral reefs that are nearby because with the expansion of the cities or towns there is limited space airports and other constructions projects are taking up the space that the reefs need to survive. “Coral reefs are biological assemblages adapted to waters with low nutrient content, and the addition of nutrients favours species that disrupt the balance of the reef communities” ( The International Coral Reef Initiative). With all of the pollution there is not any clean water for the reefs to thrive; the

Scientist’s observations in 1961 shows that the temperature of the global ocean has on average increased even at three thousand meters, as well as the observation that the ocean has been absorbing more than eighty percent of heat that is added in to the climate system which causes the sea levels to rise and creates an issue for the islands that are at sea level. The name ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in the pH level of the earth’s oceans which causes their uptake of human activity carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, the oceans natural absorption of carbon dioxide helps decrease the climate effect of human activity with the carbon dioxide emissions which is believed in the decreasing pH level which makes the water acidic, then later has a negative effect on the oceans creatures which kills the coral reefs. “Coral bleaching occurs when the symbiosis between corals and their symbiotic zooxanthellae breaks down, resulting in the loss of the symbionts and a rapid whitening of the coral host (thus the term "bleaching")” (The International Coral Reef Initiative). Coral bleaching is a stress response by the coral reefs which is caused by many reasons, but the most important and frequent cases is the rising sea