Chapter 13. Chapter 13: Marine Ecosystems

How can we reduce the threats to coral reefs...?

Interactive Study Guide

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Guiding Question 13.5

How can we reduce the threats to coral reefs and other ocean ecosystems?

Why You Should Care

Threats to coral reefs and ocean ecosystems occur at different scales, from small activities like trawling ocean bottoms when fishing to nutrient pollution from agricultural activities on land. The main threats can be grouped broadly into habitat threats (beach development and overfishing) and chemical threats (nutrient pollution and carbon dioxide emission).

Protecting coral reefs involves action at multiple levels to slow down and ultimately reverse damage to coral reefs. We can take actions personally to minimize our impact on beaches and their reefs and take actions as nations to lower our carbon dioxide production. Recovery may be slow, but it is possible.

Click on each of the following links and read about some of the strategies being implemented to reduce threats to ocean ecosystems:

Strategy	Ocean Ecosystem
Designate vulnerable areas as marine protected areas	Papahānaumokuākea National Monument is the largest MPA in United States waters and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its unique cultural and environmental value (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1326)
Reduce use of fossil fuel	New research on the pace of ocean acidification shows that this recent acidification is faster than at any time in the past 300 million years (http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/pace-of-ocean-acidification-has-no-parallel-in-300-million-years-paper-finds/)
Limit development in vulnerable areas	Protecting coral reefs with the Nature Conservancy using ecosystem services as justification (video - http://youtu.be/kEbG11F4KzY)
Prohibit bottom trawling for fish in vulnerable areas and reduce overfishing in general	A consortium of South Pacific nations prohibit bottom trawling in their waters (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6627425.stm)
Reduce pollution	List of steps anyone can take from New Zealand’s Ministry of the Environment (http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/oceans/kids/reducing-pollution.html) – my fav, “only rain goes down the drain”

Question 13.1

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Less fish harvested would make food webs more resilient to changes, especially if other strategies were slower to be implemented.

Question 13.2

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This would be helpful only in the short term. Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide that will acidify the ocean and increase ocean temperatures, and these changes will affect even marine preserves in the long term.

Question 13.3

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There are many possible problems. A few examples might be: 1) In the most threatened areas, removing existing homes and development would be unpopular and expensive to compensate owners. 2) Most marine pollution is source pollution and finding the polluters is difficult. Major sources of pollution like oil extraction and transport are easy to identify, but tracking the source of floating trash is almost impossible.

Question 13.4

Short-Answer Questions

Threats to the ocean come from various sources, and this creates complex solutions. In the Gulf of Mexico, there is a complex relationship between fishing activities and sea turtles. Sea turtles range in size from 80 lbs (Kemp’s Ridley turtle) to over 1,000 lbs (leatherback sea turtle). They are excellent fish predators, and where fish can be found, the sea turtles are nearby. This causes competition for the fish between the turtles and humans.

Fishing technology has advanced, and modern drift-net techniques employ huge nets that can trap turtles and drown them. Many of these sea-turtle species are now threatened and endangered. Turtle exclusion devices (TED) are escape “hatches” in nets that are turtle-sized. They are expensive and some fish do escape from them, but their use in the Gulf by shrimping boats was mandated in 1987.

The challenge here is that the TEDs can be bypassed, disabled with a simple rope tie, or simply not deployed. Enforcement of the use of TEDs is left to states, and some (such as Louisiana) disagree with the regulation and refuse to enforce it.

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1. If we assume that well-intentioned shrimpers only want to maximize their profits, then their choice is based on how unlikely they are to catch a turtle each day. At 10 hours a day and 7 days a week, this would be one turtle caught per month.

2. Federally listed endangered species are protected by the Endangered Species Act. One component of that law is habitat protection and recovery, and this enforcement certainly could be part of the recovery. Unfortunately, there is no direct enforcement of the Act for private lands, and this would be a great legal precedent.

3. Given that TEDs are mandatory but their use is not uniform, this strategy (if it could be assured that TEDs were being used) would be more effective than enforcement officers.