[Coral-List] Reassessing Coral Reefs: Reply To S. Mussman & C. Kruer

[Alevizon, William Stephen]

Steve - I am in 100% agreement with your statement, “This is our doing and its about time we find a way to stop it.

The diving industry can be a start and why not, their culpability is obvious.

But more than anything we need leaders, people of stature willing to speak truth

to power...we have got to find a way to shake things up.”

However, as I stated in a previous post (see below), the “leaders” who need to come forward

on THE key issue - unregulated numbers of divers on single reef sites - are MPA managers,

not those within the dive industry.



>From my previous post, “The dive industry will never voluntarily curtail

the number of divers any more than McDonald’s will volunteer to sell you

only 1 bag of fries per visit to protect your health.”



Climate change and acidification are indeed issues to be addressed,

but in addition to - not in lieu of - things that MPA managers can do

 here and now to protect many of the most diverse and well-developed reef tracts.



With all the money and time and effort NOAA has expended on planning and managing

the “health”(?) of the Florida Reef Tract, the end result are some of the most

severely degraded reef areas on the planet. I see lots of speculating and talk

coming from NOAA on global warming (and that's fine), but not a word in 30 years

about maybe controlling the numbers of boats and divers visiting reefs?



If The NOAA Sanctuary program were to take a highly visible lead on this issue,

 there would be world-wide attention generated and likely a widespread move to follow.

The science is there to back up such a management strategy - but where is the leadership?


William S. Alevizon

Research Associate

Dept. of Biology

College of Charleston

58 Coming St.

Charleston,  S.C. 29424

USA