Saving the world’s reefs with Red Sea coral

By Thomas C. Mountain
Online Journal Contributing Writer


May 17, 2010, 00:12

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ASMARA, Eritrea -- The world’s coral reefs have been severely damaged going back many decades. Knowledge about the problem goes back decades as well. This writer helped put on the “Coral Reefs in Crisis” conference in Dec. of 1971 while still in high school and it has only gotten worse for coral reefs since.

These days, there has been widespread incidences of what is known as “coral bleaching,” where high water temperatures end up killing coral reefs.

Most corals reefs in the world cannot survive in water much over 26-27c/85-86f.

As a result large chunks of the Australian Great Barrier Reef have been severely damaged. Major damage has also been done in the Caribbean region and in parts of the Indian Ocean as well. Even the Northern Hawaiian Islands Marine Preserve in the Northern Pacific has been heavily damaged in places by high water temperatures.

Coral reefs take many thousands of years to develop and are an essential part of the ocean environment. A growing movement around the world has begun to demand that the destruction of the world’s coral reefs be addressed by their governments.

One solution to this problem that has begun to get some serious attention in the scientific community is using heat tolerant coral from the Red Sea to replant the world’s coral reefs. Coral has become heat adapted in the very warm waters of parts of the Red Sea over millennia, until today Red Sea corals on the Eritrean coast grow in water up to 33c/98f.

The need to develop heat tolerant Red Sea coral reef nurseries has only just begun to take seed in the scientific community. Phillipe Cousteau briefly visited Eritrea’s Red Sea coast a couple of years ago and was delighted to see pristine coral reef complexes such as his grandfather and father observed many decades ago around the world, which, in nearly all cases, now are only a memory. He spoke about the possibility of using Eritrean corals to replant the world’s reefs and took samples of the corals to see if this could be done in his laboratories.

The destruction of the worlds coral reef’s was one of the main themes of the world tour that brought him to Eritrea’s Red Sea coast as a part of the BBC/Discovery series “Oceans.”

Unfortunately, it seems information about another example of what Eritrea has to offer the world is being ignored, or worse, suppressed. The world’s coral reefs are dying and the powers that be are keeping the best chance to avert this disaster from happening, from even being known about, all due to some very nasty big power chauvinism. Reducing malaria mortality and HIV/AIDS infection rates, conquering climate change and now saving the worlds reefs, it would seem that the world has much to learn from Eritrea, one of the smallest, newest, most underdeveloped countries on the planet. It is criminal how the Western media, in collusion with their governments, are doing their best to prevent this from happening .

If you want to know more about how Red Sea coral can save the world’s reefs a good place to start is with the “Oceans” program earlier mentioned.

And stay tuned to Online Journal for more news about the Horn of Africa that the so-called Free Press in the West refuses to cover.
Thomas C. Mountain was, in a former life, an educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain at yahoo.com.

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