If you ever visit a
marine national park, the tour guide
will insist on a ride in a
glass-bottomed boat. For the more
adventurous, there’s snorkelling or
even a deep-water scuba-dive. Whatever
be your forte, don’t say no. For what
you see will be a sight that competes
with the colours of a rainbow. Take a
good look for, like the rainbow, the
creatures that colour the world under
water may be tremulous, temporary.
To most of us, corals are pretty things
to dress tabletops with, souvenirs from
a memorable trip to some coastal town.
But corals are exciting, brilliantly
coloured animals that live and breathe
and die, creators of the ethereal magic
that is the underwater world across the
tropical oceans.
Called the rain forests of the oceans
because they support a huge biological
diversity, the reefs, according to the
World Atlas of Coral Reefs published by
the University of California press, are
among the oldest and most biologically
diverse ecosystems on earth. They
emerged some 200 million years ago and,
till date, only 100,000 species have
been identified out of a possible two
million. Not only are they are the
breadbaskets of the sea, a vital link in
the food chain for numerous marine
species, these great microcosms of life
and colour are a highly sensitive
barometer of the health of the
surrounding environment. |
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Of late, however, the only indicators
they are producing are cause for panic.
Experts say that at the current rate of
destruction — brought on by aggressive
human intervention and global warming
— coral reefs across the globe may
disappear by 2050. "Corals, like most
natural resources, are facing an
unprecedented (health) crisis due to
pollution, over-fishing and global
warming," says Gregor HOdgson, Director
of the Reef Check programme at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
India has a rich repository of corals,
with major reef formations around the
Lakshadweep, the Andaman and Nicobar
Islands, and the Gulfs of Mannar and
Kutch. There are strong laws too, and
the Indian Coral Reef Monitoring Network
has recently helped with training
programmes to monitor reefs.
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There are five declared protected areas:
the Gulf of Kutch Marine National Park,
Wandoor Marine National Park (also
called the Mahatma Gandhi National Park)
and the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve
and the Rani Jhansi National Park, all
in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and
the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve.
Though the best reefs in South Asia are
found in the atolls of Maldives, they
are in anything but good shape, thanks
to natural and human-created
disturbances like the crown of thorns
starfish, mining, pollution,
sedimentation and global warming. Then,
of course, there is the large coastal
population, a considerable section of
which is dependent on coral reef
resources for their livelihood.
According to the Status of Coral Reefs
of the World 2000, a report prepared by
the United Nations Environment Program
and the Reef Check Organisation, upto a
quarter of all the fish caught along the
Indian coastline are from the reefs.
Global warming is another major factor,
since corals are bleached by the warm
seas. This is not just a cosmetic
problem, but indicates a loss of
vitality for the corals. |
Though the temperature of the Indian
Ocean has been rising 0.12 degrees
centigrade each year over the past
half-century according to scientists, El
Nino in 1998 badly hit shallow water
corals and some of the branching corals
of the Gulfs of Kutch and Mannar and
around Andaman and Nicobar. In the Gulf
of Mannar alone, only about a quarter of
the live corals still remain; the
branched ones are all but gone. The
Lakshadweep corals, too, were bleached
almost totally in 1998. Three years down
the line, recovery is very very slow. "It
is a graveyard of corals out there,"
says Craig Shuman, a UCLA marine
biologist on board the research and
exploratory ship Indies Trader, which is
currently surveying the coral reefs of
South Asia as part of a global programme
(see box). "But there is hope, since
large schools of the vibrantly coloured
fish that inhabit the reefs are still
present among the dead corals." The
Zoological Survey of India, in its 1999
studies, too, discovered fresh growth of
corals in patches. But, Shuman warns, "Recovery
is very slow in these underwater
tropical gardens."
It is not helped by human habits.
Consider the Gulf of Mannar, where coral
reefs grow around 21 small islands some
eight km off the coast of Tamil Nadu, in
a formation described as the
Pamban-to-Tuticorin barrier reef. For a
local fisherman, the reef is home to
sprats, herrings and barracuda, sea
horses and sea cucumbers, pearl oysters
and turtles. But 140 km of coastline, 47
fishing villages and some 50,000 people
add up to a great deal of pressure on
the barrier reef.
Tuticorin is also a major industrial
township; the resultant pollution also
impacts the health of the coral reefs.
Sources say there is so much of sewage
pollution off Keelakarai that thick
green algae now cover the corals. In the
Andaman and Nicobar islands, incredibly
high levels of sedimentation and
consequent rise in fresh water levels,
in addition to industrial effluents from
Port Blair, are killing off the corals.
In the Gulf of Kutch, too, industry is a
major factor, as are port activities.
The answer may lie in marine national
parks and marine protected areas, but
neither of these are easy options.
Unlike land-based protected areas, the
sea offers no physical barriers; nor are
there too many alternative sources of
income for coastal people. In addition,
it is not easy to monitor reefs, though
it is being taken more seriously than
before. |
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