The DIVER Travel Planner

WORLD WIDE CORAL BLEACHING

REEF HEALTH
Global warming, El Niño and human disturbance have all been taking their toll on the world's reef systems.
The highly-publicised visit by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to the Maldives in March brought attention to damage caused to the region's reefs. The damage was caused by an increase in temperature in 1998, thought to be largely a result of the El Niño phenomenon which wrought so much global weather havoc during the year.
Climate change is also being blamed for the bleaching which has damaged as much as 95 per cent of shallow-water hard corals in some areas. Last year was the hottest since records began in 1860.
According to the Global Reef Monitoring Network, damage to coral, particularly in the Indian Ocean, has been "spectacular". The damage is also said to have spread to the Great Barrier Reef, most parts of South-east Asia, some parts of the Pacific and, more recently, parts of the Caribbean.
The 1998 Reef Check survey, in which hundreds of voluntary divers and marine biologists from almost 40 countries participated, produced alarming results.
Most reefs are severely over-fished, the survey found. Lobster were missing from 85 per cent of reefs surveyed; no grouper were found on 63 per cent of reefs; and in the Indo-Pacific there were no sea cucumbers at 62 per cent of reefs and giant clams were absent from 53 per cent. All these absences showed a big increase on 1997 results.
Reef corals showed a decrease in the percentage of living cover of more than 10 per cent, much due to unprecedented bleaching, with the worst impact in the Indo-Pacific.
Bleaching began in January 1998 in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, and then followed the sun. In July, bleaching affected South-east Asia, the Arabian Gulf and the northern Caribbean.
Corals up to 1000 years old were killed in several parts of the world, and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority reported that the reef had experienced "widespread inshore bleaching with up to 88 per cent of near shore corals affected".
According to CORAL - the Coral Reef Alliance - reefs off 93 countries have been damaged by human activity, and it warns that at the present rate of destruction 70 per cent of the world's coral reefs will be killed within our lifetimes. Make sure that you don't contribute to the process, treat the reefs with respect.

Appeared in DIVER - June 1999