What are the top threats to coral reefs?

What Are Coral Reefs?

A coral reef is an ecosystem formed of coral colonies, one coral reef can be home to thousands of diverse marine species. The rainforest of the ocean is critical to a wide variety of species.

Great Barrier Reef 6 1 scaled — Stunning Great Barrier Reef

Why Are Coral Reefs Important?

Coral Reefs provide a home to an abundance of diverse marine life. The coral provides protection to coasts as a natural sea defence from erosion and storms. Coral Reefs provide work and food to over half a billion people around the world.

Table Coral, Bamboo Island — A very large Table Coral stretching over Bamboo Island’s deeper coral reef

Top Threats

Coral Bleaching

A range of factors including warmer waters can cause coral to remove the symbiotic algae that lives within them giving the corals as a defence mechanism. The algae gives the coral energy and its vibrant colors. Bleaching can then lead to the coral dying.

Climate Change

Climate change is causing a number of factors that are negatively impacting and threatening the survival of coral reefs. These include ocean acidification, rising sea level, intense storms, and coral bleaching.

Pollution

Water pollution includes plastic/micro plastics, bacteria and pathogens from human waste, additional sediment due to human coastal activity, nutrients from fertilisers causing algae growth.

Ocean Acidification

Ocean Acidification is the decrease of PH in the ocean, this is caused by the ocean absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. This makes it harder for coral structures to build skeletons.

What dead coral can look like…

Fact Sheet

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef in the world, stretching over 1,400 miles located on the North East coast of Australia.
Belize Barrier Reef is the second largest coral reef, the largest in the Northern hemisphere.

Coral Reef Protection

The world has woken up and there is action to protect and restore coral reefs across the world. Below are the key action being taken to protect, conserve and restore coral reefs.

Artificial Reefs

Artificial Reefs create an environment for new Coral Reef formations to grow and develop, and supports the recovery of natural coral reefs.

Protected Marine Areas

Protected marine areas or national parks are a way to protect coral reefs from human factors such as overfishing and pollution.

Sustainable Fishing

Regulating fishing practices, setting catch limits, protecting fish spawning areas, and using equipment that reduces bycatch and damage to the sea floor.

Coral Restoration

There are a number of coral restoration techniques, including nurturing small fragments until they are large enough to transplanted back to the reef.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do Coral Reefs eat?

Corals have a symbiotic relationship with algae that live within their structures, providing nutrients and energy from photosynthesis. Corals also passively filter-feed on organisms in the water. Some corals have small tentacles called polyps that can capture plankton and organisms in the water column to digest.