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Search Result: 1 records
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1.
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Goldberg, J. and C. Wilkinson,
2004
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Global Threats to Coral Reefs: Coral Bleaching, Global Climate Change, Disease, Predator Plagues, and Invasive Species.
p: 67-92. in C. Wilkinson (ed.). Status of coral reefs of the world: 2004. Volume 1. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. 301 p.
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Ref ID
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23041
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Author
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Goldberg, J. and C. Wilkinson
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Year
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2004
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Title
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Global Threats to Coral Reefs: Coral Bleaching, Global Climate Change, Disease, Predator Plagues, and Invasive Species.
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Source
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p: 67-92. in C. Wilkinson (ed.). Status of coral reefs of the world: 2004. Volume 1. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. 301 p.
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Keywords
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coral reef monitoring, management, status reports
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Caption
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Abstract
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A series of new and emerging threats to coral reefs has become a focus of attention in recent
decades with clear evidence of widespread and even global damage. This chapter focuses on
these threats:
❚❘ coral bleaching and global climate change;
❚❘ diseases of corals and other reef organisms;
❚❘ plagues of predators like the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS – Acanthaster planci)
and other damaging organisms such as the sea urchin Echinometra mathei; and
❚❘ invasive species which have been introduced onto new coral reefs.
These threats are in addition to natural stresses that have always existed on coral reefs such as
storms, freshwater inundation and seismic and volcanic events. Direct human pressures on
reefs have, until recently, been the dominant factors damaging coral reefs through a range of
stresses, many of the which can co-occur:
❚❘ the delivery of ‘pollution’ from unsustainable land-based human activities such as
deforestation, poorly regulated agriculture, and urban and industrial development
resulting in the release of excess amounts of sediments and nutrients. This is
exacerbated by the release of nutrients and other pollutants from untreated or poorly
treated sewage and industrial and agricultural wastes;
❚❘ over-fishing and over-exploitation of coral reef fisheries and coral rock and sand
resources. Within the last 2 decades there has been an alarming increase in damaging
fishing activities involving the use of home made bombs, cyanide and damaging
practices such as muro ami that involves dropping weighted rocks onto corals to
drive fish into set nets; and
❚❘ modification and engineering practices such as building of ports, airports and groynes
on coral reefs, including the practice of ‘reclamation’, which pours sediments onto
shallow areas, displacing sea area in exchange for increased terrestrial amenity.
Coral reefs managers and scientists now suspect that these apparently newer global threats
(bleaching, disease and predators) are increasing rapidly in frequency and severity, coincidentally
with direct human disturbances. Predator plagues like COTS are increasingly reported around
areas of human activities with 2 strong hypotheses advanced: the plagues may be initiated
and certainly exacerbated by either over-fishing of key starfish predators; and/or increases in
nutrient runoff from the land favours the planktonic stages of the starfish. Coral disease has
caused major disruptions to coral reefs in the Caribbean with a range of human disturbances
potentially implicated, and there are now increasing reports of similar disturbances from the
Indo-Pacific region. Evidence linking severe coral bleaching and mortality to increasing rates
of global climate change attributed to rising levels of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions is
growing stronger.
Coral reef managers and policy makers urgently need guidance from the research community
on appropriate responses to these mounting levels of global stresses. Management has largely
been based on controlling the direct pressures of pollution and over-exploitation. There are
now urgent questions for researchers: are there linkages between human activities and the
increasing reports of global stresses on reefs and if so, how are they manifested and how can
they be controlled or at least minimised?
In the 3 previous reports (Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 1998, 2000 and 2002), there was
a chapter on the major coral bleaching and mortality event of 1998. In the following section
we examine the fate of reefs that were severely damaged in that event and examine subsequent
coral bleaching events.
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