[Coral-List] PBS story on Florida reef

[Peter Sale]

Hi Doug,
It was good of you to draw attention of coral-list to the recent News-Hour 
story on the Florida reef and coral decline.  I also had seen the story. 
It was reasonably accurate, as far as it went, but one thing struck me, 
and I wonder if others notice it as well.

The story focused on warming and acidification as the stressors that are 
of most concern.  And it focused on culturing coral for grow-out to 
restore the reef, and on lab experiments to understand the synergy between 
warming and acidification.  But it said absolutely nothing about the need 
to curtail warming and acidification if we want to avoid the future which 
is coming.

In fact, to state the obvious, if Acropora is dying due to factors like 
warming and acidification (perhaps the case) and other unmentioned factors 
like diseases, all of which are still present in Florida waters, how does 
coral culture and replanting actually help in the long term?

PBS, for those listers outside North America, usually does a lot better 
than this.  It seems the particular elephant in this story was too big to 
tackle. Meanwhile, in Doha, the elephant watches a conversation that seems 
to be going nowhere.

Peter Sale
 
Peter F. Sale
Assistant Director
United Nations University
Institute for Water, Environment and Health

www.inweh.unu.edu           www.petersalebooks.com
UNU-INWEH  The United Nations Think Tank on Water