⌛ Reef Loss

At 50 years of age I must say I am fortunate in over 35 years of active diving to have seen the earth and its oceans at their best. In any event it is sad to say that won't be the case for my children or any children for that matter coming into the world today.

Here is just another example. Coral reefs dying faster than expected - Yahoo! News

BANGKOK, Thailand - Coral reefs in much of the Pacific Ocean are dying faster than previously thought, according to a study released Wednesday, with the decline driven by climate change, disease and coastal development.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill found that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific — an area stretching from Indonesia's Sumatra island to French Polynesia — dropped 20 percent in the past two decades.

About 600 square miles of reefs have disappeared since the 1960s, the study found, and the losses were just as bad in Australia's well-protected Great Barrier Reef as they were in poorly managed marine reserves in the Philippines.

"We found the loss of reef building corals was much more widespread and severe than previously thought," said John Bruno, who conducted the study along with Elizabeth Selig. "Even the best managed reefs in the Indo-Pacific suffered significant coral loss over the past 20 years."

 

I posted this in another thread but I think it's worth spreading around.
2005 Scorecard for the Philippines

 

Hidden Reefs

Since the likelyhood of all but a few people having the luxury of a depth/fish finder that can also show the contors of the bottom here in the Philippines. I am wondering if there may be a ton of hidden or undiscovered reefs not too far from our area here in Dumaguete, Siquihor, Cebu, etc.... I have to believe that this is a real possibility. Therefore, it would be interesting to navigate the waters and see what pops up. Something interesting and you can jump in to explore and may be lucky to find a hidden treasure of life.

About six months before I came to the Phlippines for good in the summer of 2005 this actually happened to me and my dive buddies. Just off Miami lie over 200 wrecks of various sizes and depths. There is one particular wreck that we like to dive and hunt on and it lies in 120'. Generally it is very productive to hunt on. One of the reasons for this is our group has a golden rule that we will only take a maximum of two groupers total on any wreck we dive and we don't go back to that same wreck for at least a couple of weeks or upwards of a month after. Well on one particular day we saw a large grouper in the sand and decided to pursue him. After about 15 minutes we came upon a wreck that none of us had ever seen or heard about and for that matter we don't think anyone else had either. It was down about 105 feet and the wreck itself was a 60 - 75 foot Cabin Cruiser. Amazingly there were about 30 black and some red and even nassau groupers swimming around and through it. Obviously we were very excited and after our dive we promised not to go there more than once a month and apply the same two grouper rule and maybe even less. The point I am makingis that from what we can see, this is a wreck that has not been discovered up until our group. That in itself is amazing as practically every boatmen carries the latest, greatest and most sophisticated depth finders money can buy and remember this is Miami, a city of over two million and home to countless fishermen and recreational divers.

So far my understanding (now two years later) according to the guys is, the grouper population is doing great and this previously unknown wreck is still maintaining its grouper population even with our responsible spearing.