Courtesy of CanadaGood
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 coast was very healthy and strong, with a good, clean environment. According to an article from The Durango Herald though, about 75-80% of the coral was already dead or dying coral before the tsunamis even hit. All of this dead coral was due mainly to human imposed stresses and it is believed that only about 70% of unhealthy coral has a chance of ever returning.
The good news is that the 15-20% of reefs that have healthy coral are expected to grow back completely within the next three or four years. This really shows the resilience of coral, but only when it is healthy. Just think, ALL of the coral off of the coast of American Samoa would have had the chance to grow back in only a few years if it had a better environment to start with. This also shows that nature was created to respond to nature’s worst, but when humans get involved we end up altering nature, often for the worst.
Although American Samoa’s coral has been temporarily destroyed by tsunamis, the coral is being permanently destroyed by us…
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Mike, great article here. It is really interesting to see that although nature has the ability to destroy it can recover so easily from natural disasters…but not from humans. Although humans are natural beings, we are much more destructive than any natural disaster.
I feel like I’ve been seeing and hearing about this so often recently: how humans are ruining the earth and all of its contents. It’s obviously really getting that bad that it’s even coming up in casual conversations with friends. And we’re the only ones who can do anything about it as well, so it does appear to have a great confliction. Maybe we can have a hand in turning this around?