Progressive Wednesday

Redoubling our coral relief efforts

August 27th, 2007 by Eric

I’m an ocean lover and an animal lover. It therefore follows that I would be rather fond of ocean animals. So when I came about across this article from MSNBC.com, I started twisting my beard, an anxious habit usually reserved for watching my favorite hockey team.

Coral reefs in much of the Pacific Ocean are dying faster than previously thought, according to a study released Wednesday, with the decline driven by climate change, disease and coastal development.

The study, which examined 6,000 surveys of more than 2,600 Indo-Pacific coral reefs done between 1968 and 2004, found the declines began earlier than previously estimated and mirror global trends. The United Nations has found close to a third of the world’s corals have disappeared, and 60 percent are expected to be lost by 2030.

That the world’s coral reefs are dying is not a surprise; we dedicated an entire Wednesday to it last March, and the statistics were staggering. But to read that those estimates were actually on the shy side, well, it motivates me to get up on my horse, literally, if need be to conserve gas, and do something about it.

But what, pray tell, can you do landlocked in Ohio or Tennessee? Well, one of the great things about the Internet is that it will allow you to travel back in time to check out our Wednesday topic: Coral Relief. It provides several great ways for you to help do your part. I know because I wrote it. Do as many as you can, because we owe it to our children leave this popsicle stand that we call “Mother Earth” in better shape than when we inherited it.

Picture taken by this coral lover