Protect Coral Reef Quotes

The moon rose up that evening and shot her silver arrows at the house under the artu tree. The house was empty. Then the moon came across the sea and across the reef. She lit the lagoon to it's dark, dim heart. She lit the coral brains and sand spaces, and the fish casting their shadows on the sand and the coral. The keeper of the lagoon rose to greet her, and the fin of him broke her reflection on the mirror-like surface into a thousand glittering ripples. She saw the white staring ribs of the form on the reef. Then, peeping over the trees, she looked down into the valley, where the great stone idol had kept it's solitary vigil for five thousand years, perhaps, and more. At this base, in his shadow, looking as if under his protection, lay two human beings, naked, clasped in each other's arms and fast asleep. One could scarcely pity his vigil, had it been marked sometimes through the years by such an incident as this. The thing had been conducted just as the birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural, absolutely blameless and without sin. A marriage according to Nature, without feasts or guests, consummated with accidental cynicism under the shadow of a religion a thousand years dead.

One aspect of fish physiology is crucially important to replenishment of many fish species: the larger an adult female fish is, the more eggs it will produce. This is possibly an obvious point, but, importantly, the increase in egg production is not linear. To use a hypothetical example, a single 10kg female might produce many millions of eggs per year, while even ten 1kg females combined of the same species would produce only a few thousand per year. If we remember that the larger fish are the most prized in the fishing industry, we can immediately see that the damage done to the ecosystem by removing the largest fish is exponentially greater. I would stress here that no blame should be attached to those fishing at subsistence level for collecting what they can; for these people, it is usually a matter of survival. Leaving this consideration to one side, it is nevertheless a salutary point to note that even a very modest level of fishing intensity can cause much ecosystem distortion very quickly. In areas that were once protected but which then permitted fishing, ecosystem collapse happened in only a very few weeks.

Coral reefs provide food for hundreds of millions of people, with reef fish species comprising about one-quarter of the total fish catch in less developed countries. They serve as natural protective barriers, sheltering coastal communities from the waves generated by hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones. They are also the basis of employment through tourism for millions of people in the many regions with reefs in their coastal waters. Apart from these ecosystem services, valued in many billions of dollars, coral reefs have tremendous intrinsic value that is impossible to quantify as anyone who has snorkelled or dived on a healthy reef can attest—without coral reefs our planet and human society would be infinitely poorer.

Coe’s expansive boundaries encompassed more than two million acres of the southern Everglades, Florida Bay, Ten Thousand Islands, Big Cypress, and the upper Keys, stretching as far north as fifteen miles above the Tamiami Trail highway and as far east as the barrier reefs in the Atlantic. The primary goa was the preserve the ecosystems’ vast diversity of habitats in their primitive condition- pinelands and marshlands, estuaries and sloughs, dwarf cypress and elk horn coral. A secondary goal was half a million annual visitors, buts the botanist David Fairchild explained at a congresisonal hearing, the Everglades was not Yosemite, and its entertainment value would be only part of its appeal. It would also educate children, provide a unique laboratory for scientists, protect rare flora and fauna from extinction, and “Startle Americans out of the runs which an exclusive association with he human animal produces in the mind of man.