Saving the Oceans

From Florida to the Philippines, many of the world's best known coral reefs and most popular dive sites are now threatened by human activity. Long admired for their spectacular beauty and extraordinary biodiversity, coral reefs are among Earth's most biologically productive, commercially valuable, and ecologically fragile ecosystems.

Coral reefs are deteriorating worldwide due to the rapid growth of human populations and the effects of human technology. Land-based sources of pollution and overexploitation of reef resources are among the most serious human-induced threats on local and regional scales, with global warming also contributing on a broader scale. These threats extend to reefs throughout our oceans, but are of greatest concern to reefs close to human populations, such as those off Florida, throughout the Wider Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa.

We often wonder what we as individuals can do. The Marine Conservation Centre offers opportunities for divers to get involved. To help bridge this information gap, CMC is teaming up with recreational SCUBA and snorkel divers to learn more about the condition of reef ecosystems through CMC’s new program, Reef Ecosystem Condition (RECON). RECON is an easily learned activity in which trained volunteer divers collect information about the reef environment, the health of stony corals, the presence of key reef organisms and obvious human-induced impacts.