Earthsky Interviews
Private: Satellite survey gives coral reef big picture
10-21-2007 - Earth
Only 18% of the world’s reefs are in what are called “marine protected areas.” They’re meant to safeguard the reefs. But the recent satellite survey found that Marine Protected Areas provide only limited security to coral reefs.
Earth & Sky spoke with Camilo Mora of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. He said the problem is that most of these areas are in developing countries. And in developing countries you have poverty and the people need to use the resources from the reefs – for example, fish.
Mora said that over-fishing near coral reefs is a problem because fish eat the algae that grow on coral. With fewer fish, the algae can overwhelm and kill entire reefs. And there are other threats as well, such as global warming.
Camilo Mora: _Increases of only 1 or 2 degrees above the average ocean temperatures cause massive bleaching of coral reefs throughout the ocean._
Mora said protecting coral reefs is important because they’re home to as many as 9 million species of aquatic life and contribute billions of dollars in tourism to many countries around the world.
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Mora also told Earth & Sky, “On a global scale there are about half a million square kilometers of coral reefs and only 18% of those corals are in MPAs, or marine protected areas. But when you look at the effectiveness of this protection you’ll find that fewer than 2% of the world’s corals are within MPAs that are fully effective. That’s one of the uses of these databases. For the first time we were able to see how much of the world’s corals are protected.”
He added, “Coral reefs also affected by things like pollution and coastal development. In the Caribbean, there are 2 billion people living on the coasts, and you can imagine the amount of pollution produced and how that impacts reefs. So that’s a factor we analyze.”
“Threats are happening at global scales,” he said, “so when you want to look at a global scale you need to have maps of reefs also at the global scale. I spent almost a year compiling very basic data on maps on 400 countries. Getting this info on the actual area of reefs would be impossible to do by hand, going country by country characterizing reefs. It would just be impossible to do.”
“With satellite images we can have access to all that information, and for first time ever we were able to know exactly where coral reefs are located and the exact position of these coral reefs anywhere on this planet.”
“Basically, the value of these images is that we know where the coral reefs are and that’s something we did not know before.”
For more information:
“NASA Coral Reef Images Key to New Global Survey”:http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/coral_assessment.html
“World’s coral reef left vulnerable by paper parks”:http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/potn-wcr062006.php
*Our thanks to:*
Camilo Mora
Department of Biological Sciences
Dalhousie University