This chart shows the risks that coral reefs have due to inland pollution, overexploitation, marine, and coastal development.

Coral Reefs or Rainforests

There are many problems with our environment and our ecosystem right now. There are a large amount of people who probably do not believe that coral reefs should be important enough for their attention. If people have a little extra money to donate to a charity they may choose something else other than coral reefs like, for example, to save the rainforests. The rainforest is a well-known environmental topic that needs the people’s attention. Rainforest are still very important and they need to be saved as well, but coral reefs are continuing to die off too and they are going much quicker than rainforests. According to National Geographic News coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean are shrinking up to 1% each year, which is about 600 square miles. This rate is about twice the rate of the loss of tropical rainforests. Although tropical rainforests are extremely important our environment there are also many charities that also need attention

Carbon Emissions

Another big threat to coral reefs is carbon emissions. The ocean waters absorb carbon dioxide, which makes the water very acidic. These coral reefs cannot survive in these acidic waters filled with carbon dioxide, which is causing them to die out. Many scientists say that if these conditions continue to harm the coral reefs they will be completely gone by the year 2020. In open waters there is about a third of the carbon dioxide in the air that is absorbed into the water. The coral reefs need certain minerals to survive, and a specific one being aragonite. This aragonite is in the ocean water, but once it mixes with the carbonic acid from the air it reduces the amount of aragonite. As the coral reefs slowly begin to die out we have to do something to stop it.

The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem and it is well known around the world. There are 2900 separate coral reefs and they extend over 14 degrees of longitudinal range. Being that this is such a huge amount of coral reefs and, because coral reefs are so important to our ecosystem, there are many people who watch over and protect the coral reefs. The Great Barrier Reef Ministerial has the responsibility of making sure that the coral reefs remain unharmed due to tourism, and other environmental harms. The Australian and Queensland governments are also very involved in keeping The Great Barrier Reef and the park safe and unharmed. The two governments have an agreement to work together to keep the Great Barrier Reef safe because they know how important these coral reefs are to our ecosystem.

What You Can Do

The CORAL Organization that is a non-profit organization designed to save and protect coral reefs have many things that the public can do to help the cause of protecting the coral reefs. For example, people can make donations to the CORAL organization, and become more conscious on their actions that can effect the environment. Most importantly would be to inform other people that they know about the problems that our world would encounter if coral reefs were to become extinct. Many people do not realize the danger that we have put on ourselves by harming these coral reefs, but if people became more educated it would make a great improvement.

Harmful Tourists

Coral reefs are greatly affected by careless tourism. There are many cases when tourists are not paying attention while boating, scuba diving, or fishing. When people touch coral reefs they become disturbed in their natural habitat and they could easily die. People, especially tourists most likely do not realize they are causing harm to the coral reefs, but when they touch them when they are sight seeing it can be harmful. Also, there are many cases when boats dump their waste right onto the coral reefs which are very harmful to them and it could cause them to die.

Recovery of Coral Reef

Even though there have already been many cases when coral reefs have died they can come back to life.  According to a recent study 16% of coral reefs that were destroyed due to bleaching in 2004 came back.  It is possible that 50% of destroyed coral reefs could come back to life.  It would take a lot of determination from many people across the world, but if people knew about the problems of coral reefs they would more likely to help.