Owen O'Brien
This week, I watched a TED talk titled "Why I Still Have Hope For Coral Reefs", this TED talk focuses on the preservation of the coral reefs. The speaker Kristen Marhaver is a marine biologist that studies things like, ecology, reproduction, and behavior of the coral reefs.
The main idea of the talk is that there are things that we are doing right that allows us to have the ability to keep coral alive for so long, and there are some things that need to be changed. This is interesting because when she said this, "There were corals 1,000 years old lined up one after another. They had survived the entire history of European colonialism in the Caribbean, and for centuries before that." (Marhaver) this is very cool to see because now when we see news about coral reefs we are starting to just associate it with bad things. but seeing this now is a very good morale booster.
This TED talk made me wonder about how much pollution it takes to destroy one coral reef, so I looked up some information on this topic. After some research I found Erik Stokstad talking about this, this is what he wrote: "Corals without any plastic had a 4% chance of being diseased, but the presence of plastic raised the risk to 89%, they report today in Science" (Erik) This is very interesting to look at because knowing that just a small amount of plastic can make irreversible damages to the reefs.
The Coral reefs are beautiful places that need to be saved and having trash throughout them is not cool at all. We need to be more aware and find new ways to make the places thrive again. Even though we are on land we have the biggest impact on these places.
Work Cited
Marhaver, Kristen. “Why I Still Have Hope for Coral Reefs.” TED, Apr. 2017, www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_why_i_still_have_hope_for_coral_reefs.
Monster, Bag. “Plastic Bag Floating in Ocean.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 19 Aug. 2008, www.flickr.com/photos/28020116@N02/2779061348/in/photolist-5ezq7Q-69xhPC-7cVZaw-2iFdDMn-2jXqMuK-2gU45wu-899Fat-6R3iKh-kJzuEP-2iHMJJ2-qeSpuM-RT4Fj5-nUUCxD-ap4ihk-7WK82G-kJjwdk-XSoTqo-DmjQrE-88MDGv-Z4wsLy-4RnkAb-mim5ec-4aTRSi-rnxtVT-4RRQuD-4QkJhz-2frNUnt-P67jqU-dX4zCN-4P25fk-4QkHMB-GYLLiQ-FSy3pY-4P27H4-dX4zEj-4P23An-6Mx9Ed-88QWJS-akM6Ei-GDFyBh-64F9Cu-dWXVvr-gPCSzY-GC8afr-HvXZMr-W43bEs-69xhEC-q1w8d7-GKR4y3-GDFyuJ.
Erik StokstadJan. 25, 2018. “Is Plastic Trash Making Coral Reefs Sick?” Science, 25 Jan. 2018, www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/plastic-trash-making-coral-reefs-sick.
"File:Plastic Pollution in Ghana.jpg." Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. 14 Nov 2020, 10:08 UTC. 18 Dec 2020, 15:24 <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Plastic_Pollution_in_Ghana.jpg&oldid=512560044>.
I watched the same videos as you but I didn't know all the statistics and other information you got too. I think this will show people that we need to make a change and let the oceans and coral reefs live again.
ReplyDeleteOwen, is there something that has been done that is helping the coral reefs? Knowing how much plastic is in the ocean, it seems surprising that someone would have hope for them.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a little bigger font size next time?