NOAA report: US coral reefs in severe decline
By BRIAN SKOLOFF – 3 hours ago FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Almost half the coral reef ecosystems in United States territory are in poor or fair condition, mostly because of rising ocean temperatures, according to a government report released Monday.

The reefs discussed in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report serve as breeding grounds for many of the world’s seafood species and act as indicators of overall ocean health.

“They are a major indicator of something that could go wrong with the environment,” said Timothy Keeney, NOAA’s deputy assistant secretary for oceans and atmosphere.

Keeney said 25 percent of all marine species need coral reefs to live and grow, while 40 percent of the fish caught commercially use reefs to breed and since NOAA’s last report in 2005, the Caribbean region has lost at least 50 percent of its corals, largely because sea temperatures have risen.

No Blue Sky Here:
The 569-page report took 18 months to complete with input from 270 federal, state and university scientists. It documented 15 ecosystems in U.S. states and territories, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Florida, Hawaii, American Samoa and Guam. The report found that coral bleaching caused largely by rising sea temperatures is a major factor. Carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is absorbed by the oceans, making the waters more acidic and corrosive on corals. Land-based pollution, such as sewage, beach erosion, coastal development and overfishing also are to blame.

Keeney sees corals as “a sentinel species of the planet,” and calls them “the rain forests of the sea.” Beyond their importance as breeding grounds for fish, reefs could hold cures for diseases.” “There’s no question that … man-made actions are the major cause for these losses and stresses on the reefs,” Keeney said.

Well, I guess we better start building more fish farms and getting used to eating Chinese-raised tilapia, that trash fish that they’re selling us now that’s loaded with their sewage pollutants and industrial waste. Yum!

The warming of the oceans may still prove to be at least partly a cyclical thing our old planet does every so often, but I personally wouldn’t be so arrogant as to argue the point with 270 scientists. When you can get two of them to agree on anything, it’s a miracle. So when 270 of them agree, I think they’re probably right, don’t you?

Now here’s the bottom line. No one is going to do diddly squat to fix this. We are still going to dump our sewage and garbage and other pollutants in the ocean. We are still going to continue burning fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate. We are going to wipe out our coral reefs and therefor 25% of our ocean fish and 40% of what we eat from the ocean, and that’s for starters. Those fish are also food for other fish that we also eat, so those other fish will die off too, and we are going to find ourselves eating some pretty strange stuff to fill our bellies. Lots of soy products, chemically manufactured pseudo-foods, meats cloned in vats by the ton, the same basic way skin is grown from samples now for medical repairs. Watch our brave new world unfold as you sit down to a tasty treat of Genuine ersatz imitation imitation crab salad because all the codfish that they made the imitation crab from are extinct along with all the crabs.

Imagine the trade wars erupting between Japan and Russia and other nations fishing fleets as they literally fight over the dwindling supply of fish. The Japs will go back to wiping out all the whales and find their ships being sunk by the Russians who are doing the same thing.

Personally, I’m praying for either a global plague or the immediate onset of another Ice Age.

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