Earth Equity News

Coral Reefs: 'A Dire Picture'. By David Biello, SciAmerican, July 11, 2008. "A survey of 704 species of coral -- tiny polyps with hard shells, some of which form spectacular underwater reefs -- has found that nearly 33 percent of them face a greater threat of becoming extinct as the globe warms. The main culprits, according to the study published today in Science: bleaching -- when corals expel the algae that normally feed them and give them color -- as well as disease outbreaks in coral weakened by warming sea-surface temperatures. 'If we cannot manage the [carbon dioxide] in the atmosphere, there's a very good possibility that bleaching events and disease events will be occurring with greater frequency...,' says marine biologist Kent Carpenter of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who led the research. 'Add ocean acidification [also caused by rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere], which is even more insidious than ocean warming, and you've got a real dire picture.'"