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Date:    Mon, 19 Oct 1998 13:07:24 EDT
From:    C 
Subject: GL:  Climate and coral bleaching

 Interesting (and disturbing) story from USA Today on coral reef bleaching and
 the possible connection to global warming.




 October 19, 1998

 Coral in peril as reefs suffer worldwide
 Kathryn Winiarski

 Coral reefs worldwide are bleaching and dying in record numbers,
 experts say, because of warmer-than-normal water temperatures.

 Severe coral bleaching, which occurs when the limestone skeleton
 turns white and the tiny coral animals die, was recorded this
 year in at least 50 countries.

 Marine biologists say that hardly a reef ecosystem on the globe
 was unscathed -- from Australia's Great Barrier Reef to the Seychelles
 in the Indian Ocean and from Belize in the Caribbean to the U.S.
 Virgin Islands.

 A continuing, large-scale decline of reefs could mean economic
 trouble for millions of people who rely on the beautiful limestone
 formations to support fishing grounds, attract tourists and protect
 shorelines from waves and storms.

 "These corals are dying from heatstroke," says Thomas Goreau,
 president of the New York-based Global Coral Reef Alliance.

 While most people have little concept of the problem because the
 coral is under water and out of sight, the U.S. Coral Reef Task
 Force, established by President Clinton in June, is expected to
 present plans for preserving coral reefs at a meeting this week
 in Key Biscayne, Fla.

 The administration has requested about $ 6 million through 2002
 to help restore damaged reefs overseen by the United States in
 the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific.

 "It is estimated that two-thirds of the world's coral reefs are
 dying, and that is why this meeting and initiative are so important,"
 says D. James Baker, administrator of the National Oceanic and
 Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

 Corals that have thrived for hundreds of years suddenly died in
 1998, according to a report to be released Nov. 19 by Reef Check,
 an international coral assessment program. Divers surveying reefs
 throughout the tropics found that up to 90% of some species of
 coral were dead. Before the 1980s, wide-scale bleaching was not
 even observed.

 The world's reefs have faced plenty of threats before. They are
 besieged by overfishing, destroyed by boat anchors and killed
 by dynamite and cyanide used to capture fish for aquarium hobbyists.
 Reefs also are routinely battered by storms and by divers, and
 subjected to disease, pollution and predation.

 But high ocean temperatures inflict damage on a more global scale.
 They cause the microscopic plants that live in coral tissue to
 stop functioning. The zooxanthellae provide corals with color,
 food and most of their ability to rapidly grow skeleton. Without
 them, corals can die.

 "The analogy I use is, you keep a starving individual without
 food for a long enough time, they're going to die," says Raymond
 Hayes, an anatomy professor at Howard University and vice president
 of the Association of Marine Laboratories of the Caribbean.

 This year brought the hottest sea-surface temperatures since 1982,
 according to NOAA satellite data.

 At first glance, severe El Nino warming events, which took place
 both years, appear to bear some blame. But bleaching also took
 place in regions not affected by El Nino.

 Scientists such as Goreau and Hayes blame global warming. They
 say reefs will rebound only through dramatic reduction of fuel
 consumption.

 In global warming -- a phenomenon that remains doubted in some
 scientific camps -- the burning of fossil fuels emits excessive
 carbon dioxide, trapping heat around Earth like a thick blanket.
 Representatives from more than 150 countries will meet in Buenos
 Aires, Argentina, next month to continue work on an emissions
 reduction treaty that was begun in Japan in 1997.

 Other scientists say that warming of ocean waters could just be
 the result of nature's unpredictable flux.

 "We all hope that this is a severe one-time event," says Gregor
 Hodgson, founder of Reef Watch and a coral ecologist at the Hong
 Kong University of Science and Technology. "If global warming
 is involved and the bleaching will be repeated, then we are in
 very serious trouble."

 Corals recover from bleaching only if the waters do not stay too
 hot for too long.

 Alina Szmant of the Coral Reef Research Group at the University
 of Miami says she is encouraged that some Florida reefs showed
 early signs of recovery in September.

 Meanwhile, the coral reef task force is expected to pursue simpler
 solutions to reef troubles: reducing the numbers of vessels that
 slam into reefs, educating divers against touching coral and creating
 reef patrols that would be strategically stationed in U.S. waters.

 But "it will all come to naught, unless we get a firm grip on
 the global warming problem," Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
 says. "Every nation in the world has a stake in getting it done."

 Time may be running out.

 NOAA says that at least 10% of the world's coral reefs already
 are destroyed, and some experts say the number is much higher.

 Reefs also are increasingly subjected to emerging diseases that
 kill corals at rates not thought possible, says marine biologist
 James Cervino of the University of South Carolina.

 Under current conditions, death could claim 40% of the world's
 coral reefs by 2028.

 "Scientists are now waking us up to the threat," Babbitt says.
 "There is a crisis."