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Protection...
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| What can you do as an individual? |
- Try to make sure that whoever is taking sewage from your boat and home is treating it correctly. This could mean asking your superintendent of water distribution or sewer maintenance. You could also ask the person who pumps your septic system, or the mayor of your city or town. Pollutants, fertilizers, organic waste, and nutrients in water can have a bad effect on reef ecosystems.
Remember: Always ask questions and be informed.
- Limit your use of fertilizers enhanced with chemicals and pesticides or stop using them entirely wherever you can (garden organically!). Even though you may live very far away from a reef, these products end up in the ocean through drains that empty into streams, lakes, estuaries, wetlands, and eventually the ocean. Try using organic or natural fertilizers.
Remember: Everything you use indoors or outdoors that goes down a drain eventually ends up in a body of water.
- For your aquarium, only buy fish and other organisms when you know that they have been collected in a way that does not harm the reef (when you know that the animal and their environment have not been harmed). It would be a good idea to ask a salesperson where the fish in the store comes from, and if they come from a breeding farm. Make sure that the coral you buy for your aquarium is grown in a breeding farm, because that doesn't harm the reefs. People who sell organisms taken from live reefs are damaging them.
Remember: Whenever someone buys a tropical fish, or a piece of coral harvested from a reef, they are taking the animals away from their natural habitat, and harming their species, and their habitat.
- Try to limit your use of household cleaners and try to conserve water. Use natural cleaners whenever you can.
Remember: The less water and harmful chemicals you use, the less will runoff into groundwater and eventually end up in rivers and oceans.
- When you dive, make sure that you don't touch the corals. Make sure you keep all your diving equipment such as fins, and heavy oxygen tanks away from the reefs because this can harm you and the coral.
Remember: Organisms living in the reefs are delicate.
- Recycle what can be used again, and buy products that have been made out of recycled material when you can. If everyone pitches in to do this, our groundwater will be less polluted because there won't be as much trash in our landfills and oceans.
Remember: It is good to recycle because it reduces pollution!
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| What can countries that have coral reefs do? |
- Countries can expand protection areas for coral reefs within their borders. Only 8 percent of the world's reefs are in protected areas. Reducing over fishing by improved management of fish resources can lead to healthier and more variety of fish stocks. Decreased fishing by using quotas (the highest number you can reach) and limiting catches by size or breeding season would allow fish stocks to recover and result in higher catches of fish.
- Regulate the international trade in live reef organisms. The amount of money spent on live reef fish is more than $1 billion during a year. About 85 % of reef fish for aquariums comes from Southeast Asia . Since so many fish are being taken out of one specific region, this is really having a bad long term effect on the well-being of the reefs in this area.
- Improve the management of existing marine protected areas. This will require political and financial commitments from the local government, private organizations, and the tourism industry.
- Countries can make laws that don't allow destructive fishing (i.e. cyanide and dynamite fishing). By making these laws we can make sure that all the fish from one reef don't die at the same time.
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| What can the world community do? |
- The world community can work cutting back on pollutants that cause global warming. Global warming is causing glaciers to melt and is altering sea currents that carry nutrients that are necessary for many organisms to survive. Glaciers' melting is also causing the water level in the ocean to rise, and that is not letting the water get as warm as it should be for the reef organisms to survive.
- Countries that don't have coral reefs can help by discouraging tropical fish or coral trade. This will help because fish aren't being taken out of their natural habitat. The coral needs the fish to survive, and the fish need the coral to survive.
- Provide better regulation on maintenance of ocean vessels: use safe materials that don't give off toxins. Toxic paints on the bottoms of ships used to prevent barnacle growth releases toxins that kill coral, and causes coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is when the coral dies and all that is left is their white limestone skeleton.
- Create an international body to regulate and monitor the ocean's reefs. This will help set standards that help preserve the ecosystem. Countries should do this because it will allow us to monitor successful reef conservation efforts and take corrective action where reefs continue to fail.
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