Coral Reef Essay

Coral reefs experience overfishing as well as blast and poison fishing. Overfishing in coral reefs cause a change in the reefs overall ecosystem. The biodiversity of a coral reef can be threatened when fish species are removed or thinned along the reef. Each species of plant and marine life is important to a coral reef since each one has specific role to play within the reef’s ecosystem. There is a find balance that the reefs need in the amounts of oxygen, salt, and nutrient content that marine life keeps in check. (Human Impact on the Great Barrier Reef) The overall loss of biodiversity in a coral reef has led to the net value loss of $1.2 billion over 20 years in the Philippines and $1.9 billion in Indonesia. (Cesar, Burke, & Pet-Soede, 2003, p.25) Overfishing just doesn’t hurt the fishing industry when fish numbers begin to dwindle. Tourism is hit hard with the reduction in scuba divers, which are come to see a wide variety of marine …show more content…
There is a need for worldwide coral reef protection. Sustainable practices must be met in all phases of coral reef use from tourism to global warming. A healthy reef can produce an average of 20,000 more fish per km2 compared to 4,000 fish per km2. Over a ten year period a healthy reef can see a catch of 200, 0000 compared to 72,000 for a recovering reef. The overall gain in amount of fish in sustainable fishing is tremendous with an increase of 128,000. With an increase of fish comes an increase in revenue of $19, 2000 per year as of 2000. (White, Vogt, & Arin, 2000, p.600) A study conducted in Indonesia estimated that over the next 20 years if sustainable fishing was used that a coral reefs production could produce a net value of $63,000 more per km2. While the gain to an individual is higher at $39,000 in Indonesia for non-sustainable fishing the overall loss to the economy is $102,000. (The Economic Loss Associated with Coral Reef Degradation,