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Hi guys, Just wanted to share a blog by Alvah Simon who confesses on damaging corals in his was younger. In this article, he has shared some points which I think is very valid to us. "I can't stand it anymore. I have to come clean. I am a mass murderer. There, I said it! I didn't mean it. I was young - in the wrong place at the wrong time. But none of that mattered to my thousands of innocent victims, destroyed, dead, gone forever. It was Belize, 1976, home to the second longest barrier reef in the world. I was too anxious to see my first coral reef after reading Claire Booth Luce's description, "What fishes like flowers, what coral cathedrals that dwarf in their majesty even the grandest edifices of Man." So I came, I saw, I crushed. It wasn't wanton destruction. I just didn't think when I let slip that anchor. Nevertheless, the effect was akin to the carpet-bombing of Dresden. If I was to return to the scene of the crime today, lo these many decades later, it would look much the same, for it can take centuries if not millennia to heal such an atrocity. I have since spent uncountable days in the water, exploring one of Earth's most spectacular environments. I have read volumes regarding the formation of reefs, the amazing biodiversity they harbor, and the global threats they now encounter. In the same vein as the Blues lyrics, "Mothers, tell your children, not to do what I have done.." I thought if I could share even a small amount of that marine miracle with my fellow cruisers it might give them cause for pause before they hit the down button on their windlass. Our tropical reefs range from the equator to approximately thirty degrees north and south. Although they can grow in depths down to 300 feet, the vast majority of hard corals, soft corals and sponges do not thrive below 60 feet, coincidentally the maximum depth most boaters seek when anchoring." Full Story: - http://www.stuff.co....a-coral-crusher

On 13 July 2012 Roger Bradbury (Ecologist, Australian National University) wrote an article in New York Times titled A World Without Coral Reefs. In it he pointed out: "They (World Corals Reefs) have become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation. There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem — with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the world’s poor — will cease to be." "Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion" "The scientific evidence for this is compelling and unequivocal, but there seems to be a collective reluctance to accept the logical conclusion — that there is no hope of saving the global coral reef ecosystem." "Governments don’t want to be blamed for disasters on their watch, conservationists apparently value hope over truth, and scientists often don’t see the reefs for the corals." Source: - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-coral-reefs.html?_r=1 On 20 July 2012 Stephanie Wear (Marine Scientist, The Nature Conservancy) wrote: "Bradbury’s piece is somewhere between a surrender flag and a suicide note for conservation." "To someone not acquainted with recent coral reef science, Bradbury’s arguments appear to have a ring of truth — and he does make some superficially valid points. The threats to reefs today are severe and growing. Caribbean reefs are a shadow of what they were a few decades ago, and many other reefs globally are changing." But Bradbury is dead wrong that we should abandon hope and our work — dead wrong on the science. In fact, rapidly developing scientific research in places across the globe is showing the surprising resilience and adaptability of coral reefs to changing conditions — resilience that can be boosted with proper management techniques." "ICRS brought together 2,100 scientists from 82 different countries, and the science presented there made an overwhelming case for hope and solutions grounded in data." "The reefs of the future will still provide critically important services to the people that depend on them. We know reefs are changing and, given all that we have done to them, they will be changing for the foreseeable future." Source: - http://blog.nature.org/2012/07/coral-reefs-roger-bradbury-stephanie-wear-nature-conservancy/ What are your thoughts reefers?