The Importance Of Coral Reef Restoration

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Reef Restoration has been around for the past 30-40 years. It has been key in recovery towards the world’s coral reefs. The characterization of a reef restoration is that it is an act of returning the ecosystem to its original condition. Some elements of that include, rescuing a species, returning the reef to its original state, and increasing diversity within the ecosystem. Coral reefs are called home to a profuse variety of living creatures such as fish, lobster, clams, sea turtles, sharks, eels, crabs, shrimps, urchins, sponges, and algae, and those are some of the many species that live there. Coral reefs are located all across the globe and ones that are located in the Pacific islands represent the highest and most biodiverse reefs in …show more content…

Coral reefs play an extremely important role in our everyday life. Our coral reefs provide us food and resources; but not only in America, as well as over 500 million people all across the globe, bringing in an outstanding annual economic value of $375 billion dollars. In today’s society, many of these main environments are endangered because of human activities. Unfortunately, many if not most of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed or in the process of being destroyed. Some are being severely damaged by the existing water pollution, overfishing as well as destructive fishing practices, diseases, global climate change, and ship groundings. Coral reefs are also presently endangered by natural phenomena’s such as hurricanes, El Nino, coastal development, pollution, and careless tourism. The global effects of climate changes that are happening now is the increasing temperature of the ocean and the increasing levels of CO2 present in the atmosphere which is hurting and damaging the coral …show more content…

The upmost main concern for a coral reef restoration associated along with coral transplantation is only if the affected or damaged area would generally fail to recover naturally, which is usually indicated by the absence of a coral recruitment. Coral reef restoration in regards to a coral transplantation can possible be associated with some potential benefits. Some benefits of a transplantation can include: instantaneous growth of coral cover and diversity, improved recruitment of coral larvae as a result of the existence of transplants, survival of nearby rare and endangered species when their main habitation has been demolished, restoration of corals to where resources are limited, and an instant growth in topographic complexity, and a shelter for a wide range of organisms. Secondly, with those benefits there is also potential setbacks such as: a loss of colonies, a high mortality rates of transplanted corals, a reduced growth rate, a failed attachment of transplants, and a consequent loss due to wave action. That is to say, these drawbacks are typically associated due to technical aspects. After all, the main reasoning behind a coral transplantation approach would be the attractiveness towards a fast and prominent accomplishment in converting a bare reef into a lively and highly covered

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