coral reefs

President Bush deserves praise from ocean lovers for his creation of three new marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean. This action protects some of the few remaining pristine coral reefs in the world by prohibiting all forms of commercial fishing and severely restricting recreational fishing.

These are among the last places on the planet where you can still see sharks and other top predators in something like a healthy state. President Bush – and the Pew Environment Group, Marine Conservation Biology Institute and Environmental Defense Fund, who worked so hard for these monuments – can be justifiably proud of the results.

It’s easy to point out that the protected areas around the 10 islands could have been 16 times larger if Bush had included the full 200 mile exclusive economic zone in the monuments.

Here's some bleak news for the new year: Australian scientists report that the Great Barrier Reef is growing slower than at any time in 400 years as a result of ocean acidification and rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change.

The report showed that coral skeletal growth slowed by 14.2 percent since 1990. As the oceans' chemistry changes, corals lose the ability to form skeletons, which is bad news for the creatures -- actually, entire food webs -- that rely on coral reefs, as well as the coastal communities who rely on reefs for tourism and coastal protection.

Happy Friday, all. This week in ocean news,

...the Bush Administration considers at least one of two proposals to create massive marine reserves. In the running are the Line islands in the central Pacific, covering a patch of ocean larger than Mexico. The other contender is an Arizona-sized section of the northern Mariana Islands.

...get your bibs on, because it's a good time to have that lobster dinner you've been craving. With the downward-spiraling economy, supply is high and demand is low. Get the cheap crustacean while it's hot.

...the IUCN says that nearly one-fifth of the world's coral reefs are gone, and the rest are on track to be destroyed by ocean acidification if climate change continues unchecked.

Corals, lobsters, and many other ocean creatures are unlikely to withstand the increasing acidity of the oceans brought on by global warming, according to a new report from Oceana.

Our new report, "Acid Test," examines the far-reaching consequences of the accumulation of heat-trapping gases, particularly carbon dioxide, in the world's oceans.

High levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in seawater deplete the carbonate that marine animals need for their shells and skeletons. Creatures that are at risk if trends continue include corals, commercial fish, including shrimp and lobster; and pteropods, or swimming sea snails, which are an important part of the base of polar and sub-polar food chains.

We are calling for a reduction of CO2 emissions in industrialized countries by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

The key findings of the report include:

Until recently, models analyzing the effects of global warming on coral bleaching have been strictly based upon thermal stress projections, but a new study highlights the added impact of ocean acidification, yielding startling results.

Through experimental research, Dr. Ken Anthony led a team of scientists who found that the productivity and calcification rates of corals and important coral reef builders, crustose coralline algae, significantly decline under higher temperatures coupled with increased CO2 and high light exposure, suggesting that high CO2 levels may exacerbate coral bleaching events in warmer waters.

The answer, according to our new report, is an overwhelming yes.

As you may have heard on NPR's Marketplace this morning, our report, Sea the Value: Quantifying the Value of Marine Life to Divers, asked scuba divers whether they would be willing to pay to help protect populations of ocean wildlife -- and a majority of divers surveyed said they would.

Before I review the good news this week, I have to review the not-so-good. Today the Washington Post reports:

"The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now."

To continue the coral reef theme of my earlier post, the AP published a story yesterday about a NOAA report docum