CoralPlanet
AWARENESS & PROTECTIONS
Chasing Coral
In July 2017, producers Jeff Orlowski and Larissa Rhodes came out with a documentary called Chasing Coral. Inspired by another documentary by Orlowski, titled Chasing Ice, the film follows a team of scientists trying to investigate the dramaticaly dissapearing coral reefs and raise awareness of corals dying. The team journeys to several different reefs around the world, and photographs all of them regularly from the same angle, same location, and creates a time-lapse of the reefs' death. Some corals, when the sun bleaches them, create a pigment that acts as a bit of a sunscreen. The pigments are bright and colorful, almost like the coral wants to be remembered and is trying to be beautiful.The term for this is fluorescing.
The movie breakes down the biology of coral, and reveals that one of the causes for the dissapearence of the coral is global warming - when greenhouse gasses are trapped in the atmosphere. "The film is particularly compelling when following Zack Rago, a self-proclaimed coral nerd whose love is palpable and infectious. The work takes a toll on his spirits, never more so than when after weeks of dives, he encounters what has essentially become a grave site, barely resembling what was once a fertile haven." says a New York Times review of the film. Because the team was aiming to spread the word and help the coral, "setting up time-lapse camera rigs deep underwater...proved problematic. At one point, the assembled team of researchers has to document the deadly transformation of the Great Barrier Reef manually: diving with special cameras to meticulously record the day-to-day changes on the ocean floor. Once-thriving marine metropolises, teeming with sting rays, turtles, little yellow fish and big-eyed predators, gradually wither away into a wasteland of muck." The team succeed in capturing time-lapse photographs of the reef and show them at a talk, where they speak of their work recording the corals and how hard it was. This endangerment, the film says, is of our own making, and only we can stop it.
Marine Protected Areas
Marine Protected Areas, or MPAs, are parts of a coast and water designated to pretect the ecosystems there and the wildlife. MPAs also make a "framework for sustainable use and resource management that is designed to sustain coral reef health [and] provide sites that allow for the preservation of biodiversity and the restocking of fish and shellfish populations." Also, MPAs can improve water quality by including adjacent watersheds as a means to control the impacts of sedimentation and pollution. Effective MPAs must be part of an integrated approach where coral reef communities are protected from multiple stresses, so they can recover faster from any single disturbance", says the Internationl Coral Reef Initiative.There are over 1,700 MPAs, most of which are fishery MPAs. In the US, they (MPAs) cover 41% of the oceans. Most of the MPAs are in the Pacific Islands, says NOAA.
Hawaii Bill
On May 1st, 2018, Hawaiian lawmakers approved a bill banning the use of sunscreens containing the chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate. These chemicals, the bill states, when they are released into the ocean, increase the amount of coral bleaching and "degrade corals' resiliency and ability to adjust to climate change factors and inhibit recruitment of new corals". The amount of those chemicals in the water remains the same because of all the swimmers and beach-goers that visit the beaches wearing sunscreen. Mike Gabbard, a state senator, says this is a "first-in-the-world law". "Hawaii is definitely on the cutting edge by banning these dangerous chemicals in sunscreens," he told the Honolulu Star Advertiser. "When you think about it, our island paradise, surrounded by coral reefs, is the perfect place to set the gold standard for the world to follow....this will make a huge difference in protecting our coral reefs, marine life, and human health". The Washington Post was told by Craig Downs in 2015 "that any small effort to reduce oxybenzone pollution could mean that a coral reef survives a long, hot summer, or that a degraded area recovers". Mr Downs' study was published in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology journal. He estimated that 12,000 metric tonnes, or 26,455,471 pounds, of sunscreen end up washing into coral reefs. Jorg Wiedenmann told the journal Nature about his concerns. He says that even with the ban on octinoxate and oxybenzone, many problems will remain unsolved. Coastal runnoffs that lead to the ocean and pollute, unnatural temperatures, overfishing, and the coral predators are just some of the problems that will go unsolved, he says. The bill will take effect on January 1st, 2021.
CITES
CITES stands for the Confederation on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and it is an agreement between the governments of multiple countries to prevent certain animals and plants from going extinct due to internationa trade. CITES has placed quotas only on the kind of coral called Scleractinians, because they are the only corals that actually make the foundation for the reef. Sclaractinians are listed as Appendix II animals. Animals in Appendix II are not threatened with extinction, but they need protection in order to stay non-threatened. It doesn't matter if the coral is live or dead for CITES to protect it, as long as it is a Scleractinian. Export countries such as Indonesia, Australia, and Fiji enforce the quotas, and corals must be inspected when they leave the country they were aquired in, and when they arrive in the country of their destination.