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Acid oceans demand greater reef care
It's well established that cumulative impacts on reefs destroy resiliency - the ability to recover from a perturbation. It didn't take greenhouse gases to send many reefs into a death spiral. But acidification of the oceans (as they absorb atmospheric CO2) is a major stressor. Reefs worldwide have already been weakened from land-based sources of marine pollution (nutrient and chemical runoff from agriculture, sediments, sewage, oil etc), physical disturbance, and overfishing. Not to mention coral bleaching tied to rising sea-surface temperatures.
A suite of international agreements addresses these problems, including the Jakata "mandate" of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the non-binding Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities, both from the mid-1990s (I was an observer at both negotiations working behind the scenes to promote stronger commitments). If we want to protect reefs, we must redouble our efforts to protect the marine environment as a whole. The irony is that coral reefs are critical for the resilience of many coastlines. They attenuate wave force and building beaches, and provide food and livelihoods. Localized impacts (pollution, overfishing) undermine the ability to withstand globalized impacts (high temperatures, acidified oceans). I can only conclude that resilience and "business as usual" are incompatible, both for small island developing states in the tropics and for industrialized states bearing the bulk of the responsibility for CO2 emissions. But guess who's going to feel the greatest pain?Amplify’d from www.physorg.com
Modelling by a team led by Dr Ken Anthony of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland's Global Change Institute has found that reefs already overfished and affected by land runoff are likely to be more vulnerable to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
