Coral Reefs

Imagine the very thing which keeps you alive is drained from you. This is what coral reefs around the world endure each day. Due to both human and environmental factors, coral reefs are dying out at an alarming rate but just because they have become bleached, that does not mean an absolute death sentence to the reed. If you have ever been on a beach trip, you have more than likely seen and/or explored a coral reef. You have seen the beauty that they are capable of holding and all of the life that they support. There are many different things that can be done to keep these amazing and complex ecosystems from no longer being able to support sea life.

Coral reefs are created over time by calcium deposits building up on the seafloor which create

Many people tend to believe that solving problems like global reef bleaching is a problem for the government agencies to take care of and pay to fix but it is actually the responsibility of us all as inhabitants of this earth. Many organizations will accept money and volunteers to help clean the reefs and work to bring them back to their prior states. A major event that many people have contributed towards are coral reef cleanups. A state that heavily participates in these cleanups is Florida. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection hosts many reef cleanups in various counties and even offer giveaways for participating. The only downfall is that you have to be a certified diver in order to participate in the cleanup. I think that the practice that will have the greatest impact on the problem would be for the human population to focus on making changes that will help decrease global warming affects. If we began to lower the amount of energy we use, the amount of waste we produce, and the amount of pollution we allow to go into the oceans the algae would not be forced to leave the coral due to the conditions of the water. This would allow the relationship between the algae and the coral to remain mutual and would also allow for the damaged coral to allow new algae to attach to its

One scientist goes on to state, “To replant the Great Barrier Reef by planting fragments that cost $5 a piece to grow in the aquaculture facilities across 40,000km² of the Great Barrier Reef would cost $200 billion. And if we then decided that we would want at least 20 different species within those communities, the cost would be $4 trillion. The numbers are quickly astronomical and impossible.” (Hoegh-Guldberg, 2012) There is now no way for us to quickly save the coral population from dying out. We either do not have the money to pay for the methods or simply do not have enough time to reverse what has already happened. At this point in time, we can only make the changes that we can to help slow global warming and hope that these actions carry a large enough impact to help revive what corals are damaged but not destroyed, and work to keep the healthy corals in the condition that they are currently