July 2, 2014 — Local stressors have have caused more than 50 percent of the decline in Caribbean coral cover since the 1970s.
The next time Caribbean snorkelers peer down into the water, there may not be much for them to see, new research finds.
Due to local pressures such as overfishing and excessive coastal pollution, coral cover in the Caribbean has declined by more than 50 percent since the 1970s, according to a comprehensive study released today by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
Unless governments promptly implement measures to mitigate the threats posed by fisheries, tourism and coastal development, "Caribbean coral reefs and their associated resources will virtually disappear within just a few decades," the authors write.
The report points to scientific evidence that ocean acidification is restricting coral growth over time and that coral bleaching caused by extreme heat events has already caused mass coral mortality. For instance, an intense bleaching event at St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2005 caused some reefs to lose up to 60 percent of their coral cover.
"We know that these things will be more and more critical as time goes on and humanity burns more coal and oil and puts more CO2 into the atmosphere," said Jeremy Jackson, lead author of the report and scientific director of GCRMN. "But when you look at the entire region, it's something else other than extreme heating events has been a much more important driver of the lost corals."
Read the full article at Scientific American