Science Flash: Protection for Coral Reefs

When I was in second grade, we spent an enormous amount of time on the ocean (half a year with a teacher that actually appreciates science is a lot of info to soak in) and a large amount of that was spent on coral reefs. Therefore, it was very gratifying to see this particular headline at sciencedaily.

Coral Reefs Inspire Rare Consensus -- Just Save Them

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105143821.htm

The basic point of this entire article is that people want to save the coral reefs for the sake of saving them even if it means that people will be kept out for a while. For some basic info on coral, coral are little polyps with skeleton (that's the coral that shows up on beaches) and live with algae inside them, which provides the coral with food and their colors. The coral have to live with certain conditions to keep the algae alive: a warm temperature and clear waters so sunlight can reach the algae. Many creatures live in the coral reef (which is basically a whole lot of coral polyps all together), including but not limited to tropical fishes, eels, starfish, rays, and a lot of colorful critters. Here is a picture (I've given up trying to add more):

From: http://openphoto.net//volumes/dkeats/20050705/openphotonet_clownfish_fiji.jpg

The thing about coral reefs is: they're delicate, easy to kill, and take a long (millions of years) time to grow. If the temperature is a little higher or lower, or you accidently step on them, spill some chemicals, and a whole lot of other things, then a piece of coral can die as a result. They are incredibly diverse and beautiful, and having studied them for so long in second grade, I have a bit of an attachment to them. Anyway, they did some surveys, and found that the attitude of people towards coral reefs is that the reef comes first, and we should preserve them even if that means less revenue from the coral reefs. This is just amazing, but consider this: we can barely conserve our forests because we need the paper and timber. The equivalent of "paper and timber" for the coral reefs would be the large amount of money from the tourist industry. However, people agree that coral reefs are something to preserve, and say that if they can't visit it anymore, then they'd be fine with that. I am very, very happy about that, and that's about all I can say. (I know this is brief compared to what I usually do, but it's a simple article with a lot of meaning that's hard to express.) Perhaps our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may be able to witness the stunning beauty of the coral reefs after all.