Importance Of Coral Reefs

is important to protect the world’s coral reefs from the dangers they face because they are beneficial to the marine environment and people, they have many threats, and have few ways to help them. First off let me explain coral. Coral is most commonly known to be thought as a plant but actually made up of large groups of microscopic anemone like animals called polyps. These coral polyps create skeletons to protect their soft bodies using single-celled algae that live inside the coral. These skeletons are known as corallite. The coral polyps can reproduce two different ways including asexually by “budding” and sexually through eggs and sperm. Sexual reproducing requires the new polyps “bud” off from the parent polyps while asexually requires the same species of polyps. This means the more coral reproduce the more skeletons they create and the more skeletons they make the more coral they make until finally a coral reef is made. These coral reefs are mostly found in the tropics and semi-tropic waters. They require saline and clear water for lots of sun light. This is why most coral can be found near the shore in the sun-light zone.

There are many beneficial effects coral has on the ocean and humans too. Economically coral provides us with protection of property, jobs, and money. Coral reefs provide us with a buffer around the shores to protect property and give us an easier place to catch fish. These buffers decrease the amounts of floods, waves, and other storms affect us by life loss, property damage, and erosion. Also if you own a coral reef they could bring in a lot of money from tourists, fishermen, and other jobs. Most of these jobs combined can raise over one-hundred million dollars just to see and work with coral. Envir...

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...oral. Luckily fish eat these animals and protect the coral which is also their home. Very protected coral reefs are known to have healthier coral and more likely to recover from a monster storm. People also know that coral is important for its beauty, wealth, and importance in and for life. We must protect coral from becoming extinct.

As you can see coral has many affects to the environment, many threats, and different ways they can be helped. Most of what this paper involved was information on coral, effects on environment, threats to coral, and how we can help coral. Coral reefs are very helpful to our lives and others lives too. Any way to sum it all up corals need clean and clear waters, fish to protect the coral, and warm enough temperatures to keep it alive and not bleach. Remember just a tiny change that impact coral’s lives also can affect ours.