GCRA
OVERVIEW
FAQ
NEWS
ARTICLES
PHOTOS
REEF ISSUES
RESTORATION
PAPERS
LINKS
|
|
|
|
GLOBAL CHANGE, CORAL
REEF RESTORATION, SUSTAINABLE
WORLD SUMMIT ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT August 29, 2002
Thomas J. Goreau, Ph.D. The ocean is not a physical boundary that separates us but a global highway that unites all shores. Like the atmosphere it cannot be protected or wisely managed by obsolete nation states. Until we can get our so-called national leaders to understand that only global action can conserve and sustainably manage our common aquatic and atmospheric heritage, the prognosis will remain further deterioration and a slow strangling death of our life support systems. For no ecosystem is the impending catastrophe more imminent than for coral reefs, the source of most of the biodiversity, fisheries, sand, tourism, and coastal protection for over a hundred countries. No other habitat on earth is more sensitive to infinitesimal increases in global temperature, nutrients from sewage and fertilizers, agricultural and industrial chemicals, soil eroded from land following deforestation and unsustainable land use, and from raging epidemics of new emerging diseases. Ten years ago in Rio de Janeiro we were the only ones who warned the governments of the world that failure to immediately halt global warming would result in most corals dying of heat stroke in the coming decade. Instead of acting decisively to save our most precious and beautiful marine resources, they adopted a worthless Framework Convention on Climate Change to stabilize not global temperatures, but the rate of temperature increase, thereby condemning the world’s reefs to death even if they had lived up to their commitments, and violating the goal of the Convention to protect the most climatically-sensitive ecosystems. Since then most of the world’s coral has died: from heatstroke across the entire Indian Ocean and the Northwest Pacific in 1998, from heatstroke across the entire South Pacific in 2002, from heat shock, soil erosion, strangulation by algae over fertilized by sewage and fertilizers, and from diseases in the Caribbean, and from the devastating use of bombs and poisons for fishing in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia, the richest reefs of all, the underwater Amazon Jungle and Congo Rainforest rolled into one. The first global human climate change caused ecosystem extinction is now well underway. It will not be the last. It is now too late to derail or delay the disaster. While the overall dimensions of the catastrophe are already clearly evident, the details of when and where remain unpredictable. Global climate change models used to predict future scenarios must assume that ocean currents remains unchanged because these simplified models will be too mathematically complex and computationally expensive to solve even on the fastest supercomputers, just as they must avoid properly including the overwhelming bulk of the natural positive feedback mechanisms that amplify climate change way beyond what models predict, because these are too poorly understood to properly characterize even though their dominating role is clear from the polar ice core records of long term climate change. I have analyzed all the global sea surface temperature changes since the satellites capable of measuring them first went up in 1982. These data show profound shifts in ocean currents whose impacts on local temperatures dwarf global climate change. In some regions ocean circulation is stalling, allowing heat to build up to much higher levels than predicted and having devastating effects on local reefs and fisheries. In a few areas global warming has actually led to local cooling because increased temperature gradients have caused wind speeds to increase, pulling up cold deep waters. We have now worked out these unpredicted patterns from 1982 through 1997, but since then the patterns have changed again as the heat has begun to flow from the tropics into the northern Atlantic and Pacific. The future portends more unpredictability, with profound significance for the intensity of tropical storms and rainfall patterns. These alterations are cast in stone, they will continue for centuries and millennia even if we were to stop all use of greenhouse producing coal, oil, and natural gas today, and they will ultimately reach levels many times greater than forecast by standard climate change models. With increasing temperatures, corals are dying, and the reefs are no longer able to grow to match rising sea level, just as sea level rise, now several millimeters per year, is starting to accelerate. As mountain glaciers melt and as polar ice caps are lubricated from below by melt water, there could be sudden unpredictable surges as ice suddenly slides into the ocean. Tropical countries, surrounded by dead and dying reefs, have lost their ability to resist increased storm waves and flooding that will follow. Old ecosystems and fisheries will be disrupted and die before new ones can replace them. Only a few places on the coldest edges of reefs, like South Africa, will benefit as corals slowly spread away from warmer areas, but it will take thousands of years for these reefs to mature, if they are left undisturbed. If rising temperatures and sea levels were not enough, ocean life is also reeling from other human caused global changes: the over harvesting that has brought every fishery to the brink of collapse, the proliferation of exotic species, the uncontrolled flood of mud, sewage, fertilizers, garbage, and chemicals that are choking marine life, and now raging epidemics of exotic new diseases that are wiping out one population after another like marine AIDS. Some of these diseases are caused by bacteria, some by fungi, some by viruses, but most remain unknown, yet all seem from their patterns of proliferation to have origins from land, and seem to have been caused by yet unknown interactions between pollutants and mutations caused by chemicals or selected for in response to them. Coral reefs, like all ocean ecosystems, lie downstream, down current, and downwind of all of our unhealthy, unsightly, indigestible, and unsustainable practices of so-called development. Even if all overexploitation of the oceans were to end today, fisheries will not recover to historic levels because the very habitats have been degraded and can no longer maintain the fish populations of the past. Natural restoration will not work where the water quality is too badly degraded from increasing human populations. So not only must we stop global climate change, stop overexploitation of living marine resources, end the bleeding of soil, nutrients, and chemicals into the seas, reforest our watersheds, and treat all our sewage to tertiary level, all at once, but we must also actively restore our our sick marine habitats that cannot recover without help. No number of marine protected areas, no-fishing zones, or restrictions of amounts and seasons of fishing will allow our fish, lobsters, clams, oysters, conch, scallops, and shrimp to recover to the levels our grandfathers knew for our grandchildren to eat if we do not speed up the restoration of their habitats. Of course managing catches to levels within the growth rate of target species is essential, but it is not sufficient. We must also protect the seed stocks in international waters beyond our 200 mile EEZs from whoever can afford to rape them. Shallow seagrass and coral reef areas in international waters must be strictly protected, especially the Saya de Malha Banks between Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar, and Chagos in the Indian Ocean, the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, and the banks of the Western Caribbean, in order to re-seed the reef fisheries of surrounding nations. Enough of the problems: I’d like now to focus on some of the potential solutions using revolutionary new technologies needed to restore our damaged coastal ecosystems, increase populations of sustainably harvestable species, and protect our coastlines using untapped sources of renewable energy. This is how we do it: Around 30 years ago an architect, Wolf Hilbertz, discovered how to use safe low voltage electrical currents to grow solid limestone structures of any size or shape in the sea. Applying a negative charge to a steel structure causes chemical changes on its surface that completely protects it from rusting, and causes dissolved limestone to crystallize out of seawater. Typically we grow the rock at a few centimeters per year. Corals, clams, oysters and other forms of marine life grow on these structures several times faster than normal because we provide them with the energy to grow their shells and skeletons for free, leaving them with more energy for growth and reproduction, and allowing them to resist stresses that would normally kill them, such as excessive temperatures and pollutants. In addition, fishes, lobsters, and other forms of marine life are attracted to these structures in large numbers, and we can select for different species by building structures in the sizes and shapes that they prefer for habitat. Thus we have invented a system, which we call Biorock™, that can produce living, growing, self-repairing reefs and breakwaters, swarming with life, that are unrivalled attractions for ecotourism, the best technique for restoring degraded coastal ecosystems, the most cost-effective method for protecting coastlines from erosion, and a new tool for fishermen to increase the numbers of high valued species. At the moment we have projects running with local partners in eight countries around the world. In the Maldives, one of the countries most threatened to disappear from global sea level rise, we have turned an eroding beach into a growing one and grown structures with the highest abundance and diversity of corals and fish remaining, saving species that have disappeared from surrounding reefs after the high temperatures of 1998. In Indonesia, the country with the world’s greatest and most threatened marine diversity, we are working with fishermen, dive shops, and hotels to grow corals and fish habitat to replace bombed out and poisoned reefs. In Panama and Mexico we work with parks and indigenous peoples to grow lobster habitat and restore their reef fisheries. Smaller projects are underway in Thailand, Seychelles, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere. We are starting projects to save species from extinction, grow artificial islands, and produce construction materials to replace coral mining. The new techniques are easily learned by any capable village welder and electrician. In many places we can do this using only solar and wind power, using less electricity than resorts use for beach lighting. We are now working with Dr. Alex Gorlov, inventor of the world’s most efficient, stable, low-speed helical turbine to power such structures using only tidal and ocean currents. Unlike winds and waves, tides are absolutely reliable. Until now it has not been possible to tap this huge renewable energy resource, but along with solar panels, it is the only renewable energy resource with the capacity to replace coal and oil and end global warming and sea level rise. We envision a future in which countries with strong tidal currents, especially the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, will become energy exporters in the form of non-polluting hydrogen, while they grow reefs to keep pace with rising sea levels, increase their fisheries, and preserve their marine species from extinction. No large funding agency has yet been willing to support these efforts, and all this work has been done by volunteers with small scale, mostly local, contributions, while vast resources are wasted making marine parks that are full of dead and dying corals, and shipping clueless “experts” from rich countries to spread worthless disinformation around the globe. But if governments would insist on training their own people to solve their problems, and funding agencies would support them to invest in growing marine resources instead of hastening their depletion, we can transform fishermen from hunters wiping out the last animals into farmers who grow reefs and sustainably harvest the species they selectively enhance. A more sustainable future for our coastal waters lies in our grasp, if we but have the wit to seize it. Biorock™ is a trademark of Biorock, Inc.
|
|