Satellites & Bleaching

Coral Bleaching

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What Are Corals and Coral Reefs?   |   Coral Bleaching   |
   Why Should We Care About Our Coral Reefs?
Spiny Lobster Florida Keys

Spiny lobster (a.k.a. crawfish) in the Florida Keys. Photo Credit: Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Click the image for a larger view and more information.

Coral reefs are vital to the nations where they occur, and to those nations that rely on the resources coral reefs provide. Approximately 500 million to 1 billion people worldwide directly depend on healthy reefs for food, coastal protection, and their livelihoods (Costanza et al., 2014).

Reefs provide a huge economic benefit. It is estimated that the global value of coral reefs, each year, is more than $9.8 trillion U.S. dollars (or $352,249 U.S. dollars per hectare) in fish, seafood, tourism, and coastal protection (de Groot et al., 2012; Costanza et al., 2014).

Approximately one half of all federally managed fisheries in the United States depend on coral reefs and related habitats for a portion of their life cycles. NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service estimates the commercial value of U.S. fisheries from coral reefs is more than $100 million U.S. dollars.

Additionally, local economies receive billions of dollars from visitors to coral reefs through scuba diving and snorkeling tours, recreational fishing trips, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses based near reef ecosystems. In the U.S., this is especially important in Florida, Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.

Coral reefs also act as a natural barrier, a first line of defense that protect shorelines against 97% of the energy from waves, storms, and floods. This helps to prevent loss of life, property damage, and erosion. So when reefs are damaged or destroyed, the absence of this natural barrier can increase the damage to coastal communities from normal wave action and violent storms. It is estimated that coral reefs provide more than $1.8 billion U.S. dollars in coastal storm flooding protection for U.S. states and territories (Storlazzi et al., 2019).

What's more, we are only beginning to explore the range of potential medicines that reef organisms can provide, including possible cures for cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, viruses, and other diseases.

But even more importantly, coral reef ecosystems host some of the highest biodiversity on the planet -- around a million species depend on the reefs for survival. Coral reefs support more species per unit area than any other known marine environment.

Coral reefs are a vital but threatened ecosystem. To learn more about some of the amazing benefits coral reefs provide worldwide, visit the NOAA National Ocean Service pages here, here, here, and here.


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