Coral Reefs Rebound Nicely With a Little Help

Coral reefs are among the most beautiful and diverse ecosystems to be found on our planet, and much of the news involving them over the past several years has been a discouraging review of habitat damage due to changes taking place with climate and with the oceans themselves.

A surprising and encouraging research study performed by scientists at the University of Exeter and announced in a press release published at EurekAlert indicates that coral reefs may be far more resilient and capable of bouncing back than we had previously believed.

Highly sensitive to changes in their surroundings, coral reef systems have been documented over the past several years to have succumbed to bleaching resulting from increases in ocean temperature as well as to a simple inability of the corals to grow in increasingly acidic water. The conventional wisdom has held that damaged reefs are irretrievable.

Peter Mumby, however, has concluded that management of human activities in damaged reefs, especially with regard to limits on fishing activity, can make a huge and beneficial difference for a damaged reef. Mumby found that bleached coral reefs were able to regenerate significant new coral life within a relatively short 2.5 year period with the benefit of management techniques that limited human activity within them.

The speed at which coral regrew following a program of protection has been welcomed as quite surprising and quite contrary to the broad-based expectation of the permanence of coral reef ecosystem damage.

Photo courtesy of Sam and Ian, via Flickr