Scientists warn of global reef crisis
Coral reef within George Town Harbour (Photo by Courtney Platt)
(CNS): Coral reefs are in danger of completely disappearing from the world’s oceans before the middle of this century unless the international community embarks on an aggressive emissions reduction plan and serious conservation measures. As Cayman is currently faced with the decision to destroy over 35 acres of reef and supporting marine habitat in favour of concrete piers for cruise ships, scientists are warning that “algal-dominated, rubble-strewn, slowly eroding limestone benches” is all that will be left unless we turn the tide of destruction and address this global crisis.
Speaking to a gathering of geochemists at a conference in Prague ahead of the Climate Change Conference COP21 in Paris this December, Professor Peter Sale (University of Windsor, Canada) said even if “Paris is wildly successful, and a treaty is struck”, reefs are in desperate danger. “I see little hope for reefs unless we embark on a more aggressive emissions reduction plan.”
A press release from the European Association of Geochemistry Sale said that in addition to dramatically cutting CO2 emissions the world must “deal with our other insults to the oceans”, as he pointed to the 90% loss in commercial fish biomass since the 1940’s.
“We are polluting coastal waters, and the great majority of marine protected areas are not being protected. Either we agree limits, which means the end of the’ high seas’, or we let large parts of the seas die.”
Sale asked if humans had the ethical right to “eliminate an entire ecosystem from this planet”. He said, “It’s never been done before. But watching as our actions lead to the loss of all coral reefs on the planet is like removing all rainforests. I don’t believe we have that right.”
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, one of the writers of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, said, “We need to wake up to the idea that business as usual, even clever taxation schemes, will not act fast enough to reduce global emissions. This is a global emergency, which requires us to decarbonise within the next 20 years, or face temperatures that will eliminate ecosystems like coral reefs, and indeed many systems that humans depend on.”
He, too, indicated the need to deal with non-climate stresses and buy time to build reef resilience in Earth’s biological systems, given that even more stringent activities will still result in much warmer and more acidic oceans.
Category: Marine Environment, Science & Nature
Something that has not been said and needs attention.
When it comes to making the decision on whether or not to go ahead with this cruise facility, I hope the ministers think long and hard about how they want their legacy to be remembered.
Do they really want to be remembered as the group that killed George Town as the capital?
Do they really want to be the ones who started a raise in unemployment?
Do they want to be remembered as the ones that set crime out of control?
This project is vital to our nation and it’s capital.
I implore you please make the vote for our people.
Yes CNS, your agenda becoming quite clear. Just throw in the reference about the docks, huh? Never mind that there are reefs all around the 3 islands that make up Cayman, and the GT Harbour has already been compromised so that is actually the best place to put a dock along with implement mitigation systems, rather than compromise any other pristine site.
I would not worry about the dock now that Mr Eden has alienated a large chunk of the potential market…..
There is NO place for a dock. Your agenda is quite clear too.
Ahhhh…and so the deniers, the wisecrackers (yeah, right) and true just plain ignorant respond in their usual manner. Regardless of such superficial mind-sets, there is an international problem. As they will all discover in the not too distant future. But I guess as long as they’re making lots of money, they won’t care.
Global warming is definitely affecting the coral reefs around the world. But this has no relevance to Cayman’s dock project.
Yeah just clear out the reef just because people dont want to take a trip on a boat tender to the dock and a few stores on the berthing dock. We can barely handle 6 ships already why more? Most ppl dont get off the ship not because they cant they just dont feel like. Ive been on a cruise to alaska and stayed in my cabin sleeping for the first two days, but anyway Not that visitors arent welcome its just thats theres always a limit to certain things in life. This island is only 24 miles long, howmuch are you expecting out of us? We’re actually fine without it trust me. Just live your life and move on, im 28 and has never voted and i have a very nice job and happy life.. Nice idea guys but id focus more on spending the berthing dock money on that stinking mountain of garbage aka Mt Trashmore and get rid of it. ?
What a crock of shit! 35 acres of reef destroyed where are these gypies with their crystal balls coming from? Where are the Datas, proof and previous case studies on these assumptions?
Good to see the Kirk-bot is posting again.
in the environmental report, and it is not 35 acres of reef, read the article.
“35 acres of reef and supporting marine habitat”
35 acres in the report don’t mean shit, can someone please post a map or a diagram of where these 35 acres of reef will be destroyed? if you are assuming the surrounding corals adjacent to the dredged area will be destroyed, then you must have a crystal ball to tell the future.
Data has been taken of actual dredging in the ocean beds similar to Cayman Harbour and no adverse effect, no destruction of nearby corals were detected.
No EIA should be based on assumptions, human emotions or mini- models.
There are existing dredged projects throughout the Caribbean with the same ocean bed formations of Cayman.
We should never use Data from countries that have rivers and mud bottoms, or have continental- shelf formations, they have no way of filtering the foreign impurities. Continental shelves extends out to 40 miles before the water gets clear, due to the depth constantly the same.
Cayman sits on a mountain top with the Ocean bed slanting from shore, of zero depth, which extends out 400 yards to a dept of 90 feet then the drop off to 6000 feet, no foreign matter stays on her sea bed.
(show me a piece of drift on our west shores)
These Islands have constant tides and currant flowing mostly from an easterly to a westerly direction, these tides and currents creates a wash-away of all foreign impurities from our waters which cause our waters to always remain crystal clear, no matter what you throw in it.
When the seabed is cut to deepen our harbour, there will be some milky colour water, yes, and also some fine material called silt, and we will get pebble size stones left on the bottom right after the dredging.
Our tide and currents will cause a dissipation of the silt within weeks, the water will return crystal clear as original.
There will be storms from the Northwest and the North direction, which will take out to the deep all the loose stones, these loose materials will not stay around long enough to kill any distance corals.
Our seabed formation is made up of lime stone, when dredged, the formation will remain hard , which and will not produce any silt after dredging,as i said before, whatever residue will be cleaned by the currents always heading west.
“A good example of the above, Dive at Sunset house where an inlet /basin was dredged 35 years ago, bring me samples of the loose materials and a sample of the milky water, a sample of dead coral, and i will give you a million dollars”.
Great point. ‘Sunset House where an inlet/basin was dredged 35 years ago’! Guess the tender operators who also own Sunset House didn’t care about the reef when they needed their inlet.
Didn’t they also dredge the north sound??
Hopefully they release the cracken if they decide to mow down the reef ?
Yes, basically reefs are disappearing around the world because of people like the ones who support the George Town dock…
Not so much bobo. This is a global warming article that CNS happened t throw the dock issue into.
Earth is warming, coral dying, sky is falling…..what next?
Aliens I tell ya!
Blah! What do scientists know about? Apart from science…
More like pseudoscience