Local colour: Coral Reef Alliance is on a mission in Roatan, Honduras
Myriad Canada’s project with the Coral Reef Alliance supports the protection of the Mesoamerican Reef in Honduras. The loss of coral reefs has a devastating impact in the ocean – and on land
It’s often said that the disappearance of bees is a harbinger of environmental doom, but for the world’s oceans this symbol would undoubtedly be coral reefs. While they are crucial to the survival of marine life, their impact on humans is far greater than most of us realise.
“They really do a lot for us,” says Mandy Norman, Development Director at the Coral Reef Alliance. “Coral reefs act as natural barriers, absorbing up to 97% of wave energy and helping to protect coastal communities from storm surges and erosion. If coral reefs disappear, many places would see flooding.”
Some 375 billion USD in goods and services come straight from coastal reefs, whether from fishing or tourism. “They are even used in medicine,” notes Norman. “There are cancer treatments created from material derived from coral reefs.”
25% of all marine life
While reefs themselves only make up 1% of the ocean, they are home to 25% of all marine life, supplying one billion people worldwide with protein. “So, imagine if coral reefs went away. The cascading impact to all of the species would be catastrophic.”
And yet coral reefs are indeed going away. “Fifty percent of the world’s coral reefs have already died,” states Norman. “If there’s no drastic change in what’s happening, we will see a 70% to 90% decrease by 2050.”
Coral Reef Alliance works with local communities in Hawaii, the Western Caribbean and the area in southeast Asia/Oceania known as the Coral Triangle. It is trying to save coral reefs by reducing the two major threats – land-based pollution and overfishing.
One of the issues coming from the shore is sedimentation. Native species that used to hold in place sediment caused by rains in mountainous areas have disappeared. Now the sediment runs out onto the reefs, depriving them of oxygen. But the biggest land-based problem is wastewater.
A testing ground for coral conservation
“It’s not a sexy topic, but the reality is that even in tourist destinations, there are homes and resorts and businesses where the pipes go straight from the toilets out onto the reefs.”
This was the case on the Honduras island of Roatan, home to the critically endangered staghorn and elkhorn corals, where Coral Reef Alliance has spent nearly 25 years working to preserve a key part of the Mesoamerican Reef, the second-largest barrier reef system in the world. This project, supported by 23,750 USD over the next two years, has been a testing ground for Coral Reef Alliance because it was an early project and combines both land-based pollution and overfishing.
Over the years, the Coral Reef Alliance has worked with the island’s community and government to build four wastewater treatment plants, contributing to cleaner, healthier waters. This is good for all the marine life that depend on coral reefs for survival. Fish rely on coral to spawn, and they protect their habitat by eating the algae. “If the algae is left unchecked, it does the same thing to coral as the sediment does,” explains Norman. “It smothers it and blocks the sunlight.”
‘Long-term stewards’
To keep all those fish at home in the coral, the island has implemented sustainable fishing management, together with the northern coast of the Honduras mainland, along which the Mesoamerican Reef runs. Coral Reef Alliance helped establish the Roatan Marine Park, a non-profit that now protects and patrols the waters. It is now also a Marine Protected Area – a designation only currently applied to 8.3% of the world’s marine areas.
“The local communities are the knowledge holders and the long-term stewards of the reef,” says Norman. “You have to make sure that there are people who are going to take care of the region.”
Norman has been visiting Roatan for more than four years. “The first time I saw the reefs, I couldn’t believe how gorgeous they were. And then to go back two or three years later and see some of them completely wiped out by bleaching … that was really hard.”
Corals “bleach” – lose their colours – several weeks before they die. “There was a bleaching event last summer, and a lot of it died off. But as we were diving, we saw a lot of new growth, and so we are hoping that – with the waste treatment facility now operational in that community, plus these additional protections – we are going to see that new growth thrive.”