The most common injuries occur from coming in contact with fire coral, stinging hydroids, jellyfish or scrapes from
hard coral. It's important to know what these forms of marine life look like, so that you can avoid contact.
However, Acanthaster occurs in cooler waters near the limits of
hard coral distribution (3, 4, 7).
Under a system pioneered in 1979 by respected marine scientists Ed Gomez and Angel Alcala, a former environment secretary, coral reefs with under 25-percent
hard coral cover are considered poor, those between 25 and 50 percent are fair, 50 to 75 percent are good, and those of more than 75 percent are considered excellent.
We were with the "boys" as they manned the 24-hour radio, tagged turtles for scientific research, manually cleared the reefs of crown-of-thorns starfish that nibbled at
hard coral, patrolled the reefs at night and sang along on a videoke machine to while away the long hours of their two-month tour of duty.
It showed that after the bleaching event,
hard coral cover in the region declined by 20 per cent and fleshy algae cover increased by almost 35 per cent.
(2003) there has been a massive region-wide decline of coral reefs across the Caribbean, since the 1970s, with the average amount of
hard coral cover reduced by 80%.
A recent study covering 166 coral reef stations all over the Philippines found an average of 22 percent
hard coral cover, 10 percent lower than that reported in the 1990s, citing a study by Licuanan et al.
Fabricius (2005) evaluates the effects of terrestrial runoff on the growth and survival of
hard coral colonies, coral reproduction, and recruitment, and organisms that interact on scleractinian coral populations, taking as parameters: increased dissolved inorganic nutrients, enrichment with the particulate organic matter, the light reduction from turbidity and increased sedimentation.
3) Small dense patches of
hard coral communities dominated by sensitive table corals
They were about 40 meters deep when he noticed the underwater graffiti-the name 'Charlie' etched on a
hard coral that was about 1.5 meters (5 feet) wide and '2018' on a smiliar
hard coral beside it.