Mexico isn’t the first place to come up with an underwater museum, but their reasoning for doing so is a rather noble one: they’re trying to protect the reefs that are being damaged by hurricanes and humans. The museum is set to be located in the Caribbean waters, off the Yucatan Peninsula in the state of Quintana Roo, in the area’s national park. The park’s director hopes that by luring tourists away from the reefs to the museums, the coral can regenerate, giving it a better chance to survive against hurricanes.
Sculptures in Grenada
The first four sculptures were scheduled to be submerged in the Caribbean waters yesterday, November 19th. These are the first of hundreds that will soon join them courtesy of artist Jason deCaires Taylor. The sculptures are designed to be durable and have no detrimental effect on the local ecosystem. They’re made of PH- neutral concrete, and hopefully, will attract algae and marine life and boost the ecosystem. Green algae is expected to start growing within two weeks and juvenile algae within a matter of months.
I’ve heard of underwater museums before but I’ve never really seen a visual of one until now. It looks really cool, actually, and I definitely want to put that on my to-do list. Especially one thats so well thought out and for a good cause. I love art, as many do, and it’s really clever of them to find a creative and interesting way to boost the ecosystem and distract attention away from coral reefs. Major kudos.
Just about everything made today can or should be recycled. Recycling allows previously used materials to be processed and reused for something new and productive, while reducing waste at the same time. My great-grandfather owned a rag shop in Philadelphia during the early 1900’s. This was a primitive form of recycling that involved taking fabrics that would have previously been thrown away and breaking them down into usable rags for auto shops, homes, etc. Although my great-grandfather’s idea was a form of recycling, recycling as we know it today did not evolve until the past couple of decades. It took humans a long time to figure out how to recycle efficiently and we are still figuring out new ways to take waste and make it into something more productive. Maybe we should have taken cues from our coral reefs.
The Journal of Experimental Biology has recently been studying coral reefs in the Netherlands. The waters are very poor in nutrients and can be thought of as the underwater equivalent of a desert. The researchers were interested in how the reefs were able to not only survive, but strive. The answer: Recycling. It turns out that one of the sponges, Halisarca caerulea for you bio majors, was the key recycler. The sponge absorbs water, filled with organic carbon, which is harmful to the reef and turns it into a byproduct which is shed by the sponge. By shedding these old cells, the sponge stays about the same size and also provides food for the Plankton that live in the reef. This research allowed scientists to further understand the importance of sponges in coral reefs and they plan on using them in artificial reefs to help the overall ecosystem.
This just shows that our coral reefs are more than capable of surviving, just about anything. Whether it be rebuilding after a tsunami, or recycling in a desert-like underwater atmosphere, the reef will survive. The real danger occurs when you add the human element to the equation; only our destructive practices can eliminate the coral reefs, which also means that we must be the ones to save them.
So if you have been following the blog you have heard us talk about the main causes of coral reef destruction that is taking place. One of the things we have failed to really touch on though is how interconnected our lives as humans are with our coral reefs. We are all part of something much greater and we both have substantial effects on one another. Recently I have been checking out ReefBase and Reefutures which are incredible websites that are really taking the idea of “Save Our Coral” to heart and have stepped it up to another level.
ReefBase
Maybe they stepped it up a few more levels – to a more scientific approach, much of which I could only wish to understand. In essence, these people are amazingly smart, educated, passionate and dedicated to really figuring out what is wrong with our coral reefs and more importantly, what can be done to save them. Their site is filled with databases, photos, and maps, which I found the most interesting.
ReefGIS Screen Shot
These are more than maps, and you have to check it out! They call it their online Geographic Information System or ReefGIS, which is an interactive map of the coral reefs of the entire world! The map shows all coral reefs in gray and then you can narrow the your search by:
location
coral disease
coral bleaching
marine protected
many more
This interactive map is really amazing and I found myself spending a lot of time checking it out because there is so much to learn from it – and its all visual learning, which I prefer, as opposed to reading.
Reefuture
Along with ReefBase, I also want to urge you to check out Reefutures, which is a group of equally smart and tech savvy individuals who are part of the Modeling and Decision Support group for the Coral Reef Targeted Research program, or CRTR MDS for short ! This group is composed of international scientists who specialize in math, economics, computer science, and social sciences. What they found when studying the reefs is that:
Every reef impacts another
Every human community impacts another
Every reef impacts human communities
Every human community impacts a reef
While this may seem trivial, it is important because our fates are linked to each other. By destroying one reef, another reef is impacted. Then the communities who’s economies depend on the reefs suffer, furthering the neglect which ends of impacting more reefs and more people. It is another vicious cycle. Reefutures says we must:
Attack all problems simultaneously
Understand how local problems affect global problems and vice versa
Understand how social and economic problems affect biological and physical problems and vice versa
Explore the effects of different management strategies on all problems
Allow managers to learn and adapt
In order to do this, Reefutures has created a program, available at www.gefcoral.org, which breaks down the reefs and the interaction they have with humans and how they are related.
Ultimately, although it may seem a bit technical, I really urge you to check out ReefBase’s ReefGIS, and the information behind Reefutures CRTR MDS because it is really amazing work!
We know that ocean acidification is the main cause in the destruction of coral reefs. We know that coral bleaching plays a main part, and that the rising temperature of the water is also causing damage to reefs. But the blatancy of this practice just shocks me to the bone: blast fishing, otherwise known as dynamite fishing. This mostly illegal practice involves using explosives to either stun or kill schools of fish in order to collect them easier. You think this sounds ridiculous, wait till you see the footage of this. This video pretty much spells it all out for you so I don’t have to say much. (Not that I have much to say after being shaken by that.) Equipped with shocking footage and a pretty cool sountrack, this video provides superb details about blast fishing. Just look at how massive the explosions are. I don’t care how much money they’re being paid for this (though it isn’t much at all), it’s wrong, careless, irresponsible, and just plain stupid. Seriously, people!
Well, glad I could vent about the insanity of this monstrosity. Please, feel free to share your thoughts as well. Happy hump day!
As the owner of an ocean-friendly apparel and jewelry company I get solicitations from various manufacturers and suppliers trying to sell me something ocean-related on a regular basis. Most of them try selling me illegal or endangered animal parts such as sea turtle shell, abalone, and coral. Maybe they don’t realize that “ocean-friendly” means that [...]
It’s not all doom and gloom for our coral reefs. And it’s about time. Today, David McFadden with the Associated Press reports in his article “Caribbean, Gulf spared widespread coral damage” that the temperatures in the Caribbean did not go as high as feared and the coral didn’t suffer as much bleaching as it has [...]
It seems that in a world where it has become the “in” thing to go green, more and more people are seeing the importance in going blue. After all, most of the earth is made up of water, and the condition of our waters is going to affect us directly.
While I was reading one of [...]
Hope and help is here for are coral reefs!
The coral reefs all around the world are being threatened right now and many off the coast of the United States are in really poor condition. This is important for our oceans but also for our economy, with coral reef’s generating an estimated $375 billion around the [...]
The images in this video really got to me after I saw the effects of human interference on coral reefs. Just look at the side by side comparisons of the pristine, flourishing reef and the one that’s had human disturbances. It’s an easy to understand video and if your attention span is disturbingly short like mine, it’s [...]
The recent tsunamis of September 29th were devastating to American Samoa, Samoa, and Tonga where nearly 200 lives were lost and many more were left without their homes. Although secondary to this horrible loss of life, American Samoa’s coral reefs also received what could be a deadly blow.
Some of the coral off of the islands [...]
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! This group is composed of international scientists who specialize in math, economics, computer science, and social sciences. What they found when studying the reefs is that:
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