Bermuda Reef Explorer, Hamilton

Once in Bermuda, whether it be for work or vacations, one of the must-do activities is to explore the amazing reefs that surround the island.
One of the best ways to do so is without doubts to take a tour on the BERMUDA Reef Explorer, Hamilton. It is Bermuda’s largest glass-bottom boat with a length of 70 feet and and a beam of 20 feet.
Owned by Captain Michael Gladwin who bought it from Bermuda Island Cruises and has over 25 years of marine experience, the boat can hold up to 150 passengers in two large open deck and a lower deck where you will find the glass-bottom. Since she was given a major refit in 2007, the Reef Explorer has a new dive platform at the rear.
There are different cruises available, from a glass-bottom tour to a snorkel adventure, a fun tour of Bermuda and a pirate party adventure.
If you ever wanted to discover what lays beneath the ocean surface without getting wet, then the glass-bottom adventure is definitely for you. The two-hour tour takes you Turtle Cove to see Atlantic Green Turtles living on the sand flats. As the boat dwells above them, you can observe them by the glass-bottom as well as seeing them really close when they surface next to it.
On the way, you will stop by the Vixen, a nearly-submerged shipwreck where you can feed hundreds of fish. One arrived to destination, the lower floor hatches are removed to reveal the glass-bottom and the wonderful and coloured coral reefs and many species of fish.
During the whole trip, Captain Michael Gladwin will share with you his knowledge and provide you with commentaries and many interesting facts about Bermuda. The Captain is for many passengers the plus of the Reef Explorer tours.

How tourism—even green tourism!—is killing the world’s reefs

Coral reef off the Egyptian coast

All over the planet—from the Caribbean to Australia’s coasts—coral reefs are withering from the stress swimmers and tourism-related chemicals impose on them. According to WarmIslands.com, during the last 10 years alone the Caribbean’s reefs have been under strenuous attack.

The culprits:

• Snorkeling and diving – swimmers astonished by the reefs’ beauty touch the fragile corals, causing serious damage. SOLUTION: stay away from those reefs! And if for whatever reason you find yourself down there, hands off, kids!
• Sunscreen – chemicals in the sunscreen dissolving off swimmers’ skins intensifies the decline of coral populations. SOLUTION: choose biodegradable sunscreen or wear a t-shirt.
• Disturbed sediment – unnaturally strong currents (caused by swimmers, yachts, motorboats, and so on) can alter sediment and provoke the diaspora of animal life as the animals lose their home. Another consequence is sand settling onto coral formations. SOLUTION: stay off those boats!
• Anchors of motorboats, yachts, etc. – these can destroy corals and thereby their entire ecosystem, which results in animals losing their homes. SOLUTION: just say no!
• The collection of specimens – despite the seemingly infinite abundance of marine life, the removal of species is not only detrimental to the ecosystem, but may also result in the accidental removal of rare and endangered species. SOLUTION: refrain from collecting any specimens and do your best to discourage others from doing so.
• Increase in sedimentation – as tourism grows, so does the construction of hotels and other developments used to accommodate travelers. With construction comes pollution in the form of noise, contaminated air and water, and copious sedimentation both natural and synthetic. Higher amounts of sedimentation close to the shore encourage ocean species to move farther offshore, where lower levels of nutrients are available for their consumption and they are more vulnerable to the pernicious attacks of motorboats, etc. SOLUTION: consider going somewhere else for the holidays, or remain strictly green and encourage others to follow your lead – which should be a perpetual tactic for us eco travelers anyway!
• Waste – more people equals more waste. While proper waste disposal methods are usually available, many tourists are ignorant of environmentally friendly ways to dispose of their waste. Another problem is the myriad tourists who just don’t care about the environment enough to change their destructive habits. Their garbage then winds up floating on the water and sticking to coral reefs. SOLUTION: speak up when you see someone littering and kindly point them in the right direction.
• Pollution – While some vacation spots aren’t located within industrialized areas, it is usually inevitable that pollutants will be released into the air, land, and water in the forms of fuel, oil, paint, sewage, and so on. SOLUTION: go green or don’t go at all!

It is imperative that we continue to raise awareness about green tourism to inspire respect for our precious planet. As we continue to devise new ways to mitigate humans’ effects on our planet, we owe it to ourselves to compassionately educate those around us.

Coral reefs are facing extinction

Healthy coral reef on the North coast of East Timor.

In this first of four posts, I will explore the dismal situation of coral reefs and their lack of official protection from trade, plus the incredible importance of these species for the survival of marine life and, in turn, human life. In the second part of this series, I will look at climate change and unknown causes jeopardizing the existence of coral reefs across the world’s oceans. In the third part of the series, I will explore coral reefs’ overexploitation,and in the fourth, unknown causes of coral mortality.
Coral reefs are facing increasing danger due to various factors, ranging from climate change and harvesting to different types of pollution, tourism, and outbreaks of disease, to fishing, overexploitation, infestation by pestilent species and even unknown causes.
Exacerbating these problems is a lack of legal protection for coral reefs by international official organizations.

Coral reefs suffer from a massive lack of protection

The world’s largest international ocean conservation organization, Oceana, recently released a statement chastising the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) for refusing to grant trade protection to 31 threatened species of red and pink coral. The convention voted to exclude these corals from its Appendix II listing during CITES’ two-week-long March meeting in Doha, Qatar, where it discussed the state of myriad species and ecosystems in dire straits.

“An Appendix II listing would require the use of export permits to ensure that the species were caught by a legal and sustainably managed fishery,” said Oceana.

These 31 species of coral from the western Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea are being increasingly harvested for their use in jewelry, souvenirs, and even homeopathic products, according to Oceana, a phenomenon is leading to the extinction of coral reefs. This issue alone (which I will look at in the third part of this series of posts), many insist, is enough to warrant the species’ listing under Appendix II.

Locations of coral reefs across the globe.

The importance of coral reefs

Coral reefs provide uncountable species with shelter and the foundation of an intricate and fragile marine food chain. By extension, hundreds of millions of humans worldwide obtain their food and livelihoods from the life that thrives off coral reefs. Thus, without them, these masses would be left with a dearth of food and income, which would lead not only to famine and poverty, but also possibly to wars through political upheaval.

“Whole nations will be threatened in terms of their existence,” said Carl Gustaf Lundin of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Grouper, snapper, oysters, clams, and other commonly consumed species would disappear without coral reefs.

“Fish will become a luxury good,” said Cassandra deYoung of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. “You already have a billion people who are facing hunger, and this is just going to aggravate the situation,” she added. “We will not be able to maintain food security around the world.”

Old Dominion University professor Kent Carpenter is the director of a worldwide census of marine species. He warned that if climate change continues to wreak havoc on the planet, all coral reefs could be extinct within a century.

“You could argue that a complete collapse of the marine ecosystem would be one of the consequences of losing corals,” Carpenter said. “You’re going to have a tremendous cascade effect for all life in the oceans.”

Clearly, this is a key issue for the entire planet, for the balance of ecosystems worldwide, and thus the wellbeing of non-humans and humans alike.

Coral reefs are facing extinction

Coral bleaching

This post is part two of a four-part series. Here I will look at how climate change is jeopardizing the existence of coral reefs across the world’s oceans. In the third part of the series, I will explore coral reefs’ overexploitation, and in the fourth, I will explore some unknown causes of coral reef mortality.)
(Here is the first post of the series, which covers the general dismal situation of coral reefs and their lack of official protection from trade, plus the incredible importance of these species for the survival of marine life and, in turn, human life.)

How climate change is threatening coral reefs

Ocean acidification

Carbon dioxide (CO2), as we know, plays a huge role in warming up our planet and causing climate change. What you might not know is that one-third of the planet’s carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, and the more CO2 the ocean absorbs, the greater the waters’ acidity. The effects of ocean acidification, as this phenomenon is called, remain partly unpredictable.
Scientists do know, however, that worsening ocean acidification harms coral reefs, crustaceans, and shellfish because it weakens these species’ calcium carbonate shells. These animals thus become unable to build thick, protective shells for themselves and turn into easier prey for predators and pollution.
Coral reefs located near the poles will suffer these effects more sharply than those in warmer waters for two reasons: first, colder water absorbs more CO2 than warm water, and second, coral reefs in cold water grow at a slower pace than other coral reefs.

Bleached corals

Coral bleaching and disease

Warming waters also cause the bleaching of coral reefs. Naturally occurring, beneficial bacteria living on coral turns begins to disappear as temperatures rise, facilitating the onslaught of pathogenic bacteria that cause bleaching and other types of disease.
Moreover, the type of pathogenic bacteria that take over coral reefs sticks even if the temperature drops low enough to provoke the return of beneficial bacteria. By this time, the coral is too sick to recover and dies.
For those interested, here is an article on a recently created mathematical model that explains how coral reefs die due to warming waters.
Here is the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explanation:

“Because many corals live in water which is already near their upper temperature limit, a water temperature increase of only a few degrees can be deadly. As water temperatures rise, corals become increasingly stressed. When stress levels get too high, corals expel the symbiotic algae, or zooxanthellae (tiny one-celled plants) which live within the thin layer of live coral tissue. Zooxanthellae are important because they turn sunlight into food for their coral hosts. They also facilitate the formation of the coral skeleton — the main structural component of coral reefs. Because zooxanthellae give corals their various rich colors, a coral without zooxanthellae appears bleached. Corals can not thrive without zooxanthellae. For coral reefs that are already stressed due to poor water quality, destructive fishing, or frequent interactions with irresponsible divers and snorkellers, increased water temperatures could become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Coral reefs are facing extinction

Pink coral

In this third of four posts, I will discuss the overexploitation of pink and red coral in particular. In the first, I looked at the dismal situation of coral reefs and their lack of official protection from trade, plus the incredible importance of these species for the survival of marine life and, in turn, human life. In the second, I explored how climate change is jeopardizing the existence of coral reefs across the world’s oceans. In the fourth, I will talk about unknown causes of coral reef mortality.

The problem with harvesting pink and red coral

I recently wrote about the bleak state of coral reefs around the globe. In this post, I would like to examine why harvesting pink and red coral, or Corallidae, in particular, is problematic.
The coral trade is worth tens of millions of dollars per year. Some 30-50 tons of pink and red coral are harvested yearly. A coral necklace can go for as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars in the jewelry market.
You’ve surely seen jewelry made from pink and red coral beads – pendants, earrings, and so forth. Well, much of this coral is harvested unsustainably (can you even sustainably harvest a living thing that grows at a rate of less than 1 mm in thickness per year and can live up to 100 years? This is why I am suspicious of the claims defending the sustainable harvest of coral reefs.).
The use of red and pink coral can be substituted with black coral, a species already protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). CITES, by the way, refused to add red and pink coral to its Appendix II listing during its two-week-long March meeting in Doha, Qatar, where it discussed the state of myriad ecosystems currently in calamitous straits.

Red coral

“Coralliidae are in desperate need of a mechanism that controls the immense trade in these species. CITES could have provided that, but today the representatives failed to heed the science showing these populations are in steep decline,” said Kristian Teleki, vice president of science initiatives for SeaWeb, whose campaign Too Precious to Wear had called for governments to protect Coralliidae.

“It is now up to the jewelry and design industries, and their customers, to act where governments have failed.”

Even elite jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co., jewelry designer Temple St. Clair, ocean conservationist Celine Cousteau and numerous others voiced support for the proposal to add red and pink coral to CITES’ Appendix II listing.

Coral reefs are facing extinction

A diving buddy pair taking Reef Check Australia substrate data on the Great Barrier Reef.

In this last of four posts, I will discuss some unknown causes of coral reef mortality. In the first post, I looked at the dismal situation of coral reefs and their lack of official protection from trade, plus the incredible importance of these species for the survival of marine life and, in turn, human life. In the second post, I explored how climate change is jeopardizing the existence of coral reefs across the world’s oceans. And in the third post, I wrote about the overexploitation of pink and red corals in particular.

Unknown causes of seaweed overgrowth

Australia’s 345,000-square-km Great Barrier Reef has been found partly choked by seaweed, according to surveys conducted in 2009. Over 40% of the coral reef areas closest to shore were found clogged with the weed.

“We are concerned about it because it does look like a lot of weed and in other places in the world, weed is an indication of decline,” said marine biologist Professor David Bellwood from James Cook University.

Bellwood suspects the overgrowth has been caused by the depletion of algae-eating fish around the coral reef. Without the presence of fish to feed on algae, of course, the plant is allowed to flourish unfettered and smother coral polyps.

“The question is, does this mean the Barrier Reef is in real trouble? That the reef is rotting from the inside out? Or does it mean to say that that amount of weed is natural? And the answer is: it’s hard to say,” he said.

Yet, alarmingly, he assured that

“The Great Barrier Reef is in the best condition of any reef in the world.”

Yowza. Sounds like dire news to me. It’s like saying that guy who suffers from asthma still breathes better than everyone else. He’s still got asthma, so how well can he really be doing?
As well, algae growth is caused by elevated nutrient levels in the water due to fertilizer runoff (from golf courses, farms, and so on) and untreated sewage.
It has also been suggested that sedimentation—possibly caused by heavy rainfall—can spark algal overgrowth. Other ways sedimentation promotes coral death is by smothering or burial (reef-building corals depend on high light, high oxygen, low turbidity, low nutrients, and open ocean salinity to remain healthy); decreasing growth through coral abrasion and shading; increasing the production of respiration and mucus; and by reducing coral reproduction, coral larval settlement, and early survival.

Unknown causes of coral malformations

White warts and tumors that show up on coral reefs are irregular shaped skeletal abnormalities. Because these malformations display fewer protective mucous cells than regular corals, and a porous skeleton, they are especially vulnerable to predation and erosion from algae and other organisms. In turn, damaged coral abnormalities cause local coral mortality and can thwart colony fitness and fecundity.
The causes of coral malformations are speculated to “range from biological pathogens transmitted by corralivore fishes, genetic mutations and external environmental conditions such as excessive UV radiation exposure,” according to APEX Environmental.

Yellow-band disease on a stony coral

Ocean stressors at play

Ocean acidification is one key factor. Here’s what it’s about: carbon dioxide (CO2) (along with methane and other gasses) plays a huge role in heating up our planet and thereby causing climate change, which includes melting polar ice caps and rising ocean levels. Okay. What you might not know is that one-third of the planet’s CO2 is absorbed by the ocean, and that the more CO2 the ocean absorbs, the greater the waters’ acidity. This phenomenon is called ocean acidification and it’s noxious to our planet for many reasons. For example, rising acidity levels in our oceans have been found to:

• Impair fish hearing and smell, putting their survival in danger
• Kill off endangered species such as northern abalone
• Threaten the survival of krill, itself the basic food source of nearly all animals in the ocean

Coral reef in Papua New Guinea. By Mila Zinkova via Wikimedia Commons

Apart from ocean acidification, rising water temperatures, overfishing, pollution, and even tourism are all exacerbating the rapid decline of species such as reef-forming coral. (Go here, here, and here for more on the state of coral reefs.)
Sharks and other species may be next, warned Rogers, lead author of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) report.
Further, he said that, in many cases, the impacts of ocean stressors were found to have a greater overall effect than any single effect when taken together. For example, the decline of coral reef ecosystems due to overfishing and reef bleaching, plus the acidification that causes bleaching, will eradicate “the most diverse marine ecosystems on the planet.”