[Coral-List] What do coral reef scientists perceive are the major threats to Caribbean coral reefs?

[Iain Macdonald]

Surely it is am simple as the IMO say - the 4 major threats to our "oceans" (replace with Caribbean if you will) are invasive marine species, land-based sources of marine pollution, over exploitation of living marine resources and physical alteration/destruction of marine habitat.

CO2 related global warming and ocean acidification fall under "land-based sources" i would say given the thermal "pollution" relationship. Start solving these and we start moving forward. That's easy then! 

All the other "threats" are either a personal peeve of that person or their research interest. Not bias then..... and curing them will not help in the long run if not examined holistically.
On Friday, 11 April 2014, 14:16, Sarah Young <syoungresides at gmail.com> wrote:
 
Dear Coral List,


I have been an active reader of coral list for the last 15 years and this
is my first post!  Fingers crossed you can help....


Newcastle University in conjunction with UK overseas territory government
departments have amassed a large dataset on *perceived* impacts and threats
to Caribbean coral reefs.  These range from sun cream to anchor damage.  We
are testing the hypothesis that people will be more supportive of
management initiatives seen to be addressing threats they view as
important, leading to reduced implementation and enforcement costs.
Notably absent from the majority of interview responses were any mention of
coral bleaching, ocean acidification, climate change or overfishing.  So we
would like to compare our perception data to (preferably) a ranked list of
scientific expert derived threats to Caribbean coral reefs, but failing
that a list of the top 10 / top 20 threats to coral reefs.


There is a lot of information on the web but I am looking for something
with a robust method - a journal article would be great, or perhaps a
survey with a decent sample size, conducted within the last 5 years......
Can anyone help?


If people are interested I can post links to the reports when they are
complete.


Thank you in advance,

Sarah Young (syoungresides at gmail.com)

Future of Reefs Project

Intro video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8ZNSIUDwZ5Q

-- 
"Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an
inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day." E.B.
White
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