[Coral-List] On Science Communication about Coral Reefs

[Peter Sale]

Regular readers of coral-list will know I periodically pipe up with some thoughts about how effective we are being in getting the news out about the serious decline of coral reefs.  Today, based on a very non-scientific Google surf of the media about a month ago, I have posted some observations on my blog.  The communication is so poor that the average person in the street would have to work quite hard to figure out what the science is telling us, and most average persons are simply not that committed to finding out.  Why not interested?  Because they don't depend on coral reefs directly, because they are not intensely interested in coral reef ecology, and because there is too much else happening to distract them.  I suggest the poor communication is partly the fault of us, the reef science community, partly the fault of the media.  A third part of the fault is due to the average person in the street who has failed to gain the skills to separate beliefs and facts, to recognize the difference between events, linear trends and exponential trends, or even to comprehend the magnitude of degradation represented in the phrase '50% of coral cover'.  We, the reef science/management community, cannot solve this communication problem alone.  But we can improve our share of it (and, in truth, there are valuable efforts being made to help us learn how to do a better job).  We need to work harder at communicating.

I am still perplexed at how the great wake-up call most of us anticipated following the 1997-98 circumtropical bleaching never really manifested itself.  I also fear that, in many countries, the ability of the average person in the street to follow a logical, science-based argument has deteriorated measurably since that time, making the challenge to communicate effectively even greater.  And yet I still believe we can get moving and keep the world not too far away from a Holocene state.  (Perhaps I am less rational than I believe!)  Anyhow, it's at http://www.petersalebooks.com/?p=2634

Peter Sale
University of Windsor
www.petersalebooks.com<http://www.petersalebooks.com>
sale at uwindsor.ca