Save Eco Destinations

A map showing the extent of deforestation in Borneo.

Watch out for the lies you’ll get fed during paid tours in Borneo, ecotourists.

A deeply eco-minded friend of mine has been spending a few weeks in Borneo’s various regions – Kalimantan, Malaysia, Brunei, Sabah – and come away with many appalling stories to tell.

Palm oil harvesting

Palm oil harvesting dominates Sabah, surrounded by paved roads and not a single tree lining them. In fact, deforestation is rampant in Borneo precisely because palm oil harvesters want to make room for their plantations.

It seems there is just one hectare of trees – trees that take 300 years to grow! This one hectare of 300 just trees constitutes the government’s efforts to promote ecological responsibility. A pathetic spectacle.

Sounds like enough to make an ardent environmentalist cry, yet my friend said the tourists in his group didn’t find anything amiss with the situation, and busied themselves by photographing the pitiable hectare of trees.

Nature “reserves”

With 40,000 hectares, this reserve (alas, I do not know its name) is Borneo’s second-biggest. Malaysia has a total of 120,000 protected hectares – the planet’s biggest jungle after the Amazon.

I’d like to note that these reserves are two of the biggest CO2-suckers on the planet.

Also, that everything other than these “protected” spaces in Borneo is being cut down.

Orangutan at the Semenggok Forest Reserve in Sarawak.

Primates

Gibbons and orangutans inhabit a 50-meter-wide jungle. You read that right.

And behind that it’s all palm oil plantations reaching as far as the shore of the Kinabatangan River in Sandakan. As my friend checked out the jungle from the river, he was able to see artificial light streaming through from the other side of the trees.

The gibbons and orangutans have nowhere to hide from idiotic tourists blasting them with flashes from their cameras, terrifying them, and soon these primates won’t even have this pseudo-jungle to inhabit. The last simians of Borneo, it seems, will soon die out.

Apparently, this is a “protected” area. Numerous parts go under the name “natural sanctuary.” Simply harrowing.

A secondary forest

Moreover, this is a secondary forest. This means that the original trees burned or were cut down and the trees now in their place were planted there. It’s not a pure ecosystem.

More tourist pollution

At night, tourists can board a noisy truck with a huge reflector to take photographs of wildlife. You know, after said wildlife gets woken up by this atrocious intrusion, terrified. And this occurs every single night of the year, apparently.

And did I mention this is taking place within the reserve?

Right.

Also, toward Laha Datu you can spot elephants eating grass by the paved roads.

Stay tuned for more news from Borneo.

A diving buddy pair taking Reef Check Australia substrate data on the Great Barrier Reef.

In this last of four posts, I will discuss some unknown causes of coral reef mortality. In the first post, I looked at the dismal situation of coral reefs and their lack of official protection from trade, plus the incredible importance of these species for the survival of marine life and, in turn, human life. In the second post, I explored how climate change is jeopardizing the existence of coral reefs across the world’s oceans. And in the third post, I wrote about the overexploitation of pink and red corals in particular.

Unknown causes of seaweed overgrowth

Australia’s 345,000-square-km Great Barrier Reef has been found partly choked by seaweed, according to surveys conducted in 2009. Over 40% of the coral reef areas closest to shore were found clogged with the weed.

“We are concerned about it because it does look like a lot of weed and in other places in the world, weed is an indication of decline,” said marine biologist Professor David Bellwood from James Cook University.

Bellwood suspects the overgrowth has been caused by the depletion of algae-eating fish around the coral reef. Without the presence of fish to feed on algae, of course, the plant is allowed to flourish unfettered and smother coral polyps.

“The question is, does this mean the Barrier Reef is in real trouble? That the reef is rotting from the inside out? Or does it mean to say that that amount of weed is natural? And the answer is: it’s hard to say,” he said.

Yet, alarmingly, he assured that

“The Great Barrier Reef is in the best condition of any reef in the world.”

Yowza. Sounds like dire news to me. It’s like saying that guy who suffers from asthma still breathes better than everyone else. He’s still got asthma, so how well can he really be doing?

As well, algae growth is caused by elevated nutrient levels in the water due to fertilizer runoff (from golf courses, farms, and so on) and untreated sewage.

It has also been suggested that sedimentation—possibly caused by heavy rainfall—can spark algal overgrowth. Other ways sedimentation promotes coral death is by smothering or burial (reef-building corals depend on high light, high oxygen, low turbidity, low nutrients, and open ocean salinity to remain healthy); decreasing growth through coral abrasion and shading; increasing the production of respiration and mucus; and by reducing coral reproduction, coral larval settlement, and early survival.

Unknown causes of coral malformations

White warts and tumors that show up on coral reefs are irregular shaped skeletal abnormalities. Because these malformations display fewer protective mucous cells than regular corals, and a porous skeleton, they are especially vulnerable to predation and erosion from algae and other organisms. In turn, damaged coral abnormalities cause local coral mortality and can thwart colony fitness and fecundity.

The causes of coral malformations are speculated to “range from biological pathogens transmitted by corralivore fishes, genetic mutations and external environmental conditions such as excessive UV radiation exposure,” according to APEX Environmental.

Yellow-band disease on a stony coral

Unknown causes of coral diseases and syndromes

These conditions are usually prompted by stresses such bacteria, fungi, and viruses, as well as rising sea temperatures, UV radiation, sedimentation, and pollution. These stresses can exacerbate each other.

The causes of most coral diseases remain unknown, however, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S.

Coral diseases include black-band disease, coral bleaching, dark-spots disease, red-band disease, white-band disease, white-plague disease, white pox, and yellow-blotch disease.

Of course, the topic is nearly inexhaustible.

You can follow this link and the ones above to learn about additional causes of coral reef mortality.

Pink coral

In this third of four posts, I will discuss the overexploitation of pink and red coral in particular. In the first, I looked at the dismal situation of coral reefs and their lack of official protection from trade, plus the incredible importance of these species for the survival of marine life and, in turn, human life. In the second, I explored how climate change is jeopardizing the existence of coral reefs across the world’s oceans. In the fourth, I will talk about unknown causes of coral reef mortality.

The problem with harvesting pink and red coral

I recently wrote about the bleak state of coral reefs around the globe. In this post, I would like to examine why harvesting pink and red coral, or Corallidae, in particular, is problematic.

The coral trade is worth tens of millions of dollars per year. Some 30-50 tons of pink and red coral are harvested yearly. A coral necklace can go for as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars in the jewelry market.

You’ve surely seen jewelry made from pink and red coral beads – pendants, earrings, and so forth. Well, much of this coral is harvested unsustainably (can you even sustainably harvest a living thing that grows at a rate of less than 1 mm in thickness per year and can live up to 100 years? This is why I am suspicious of the claims defending the sustainable harvest of coral reefs.).

The use of red and pink coral can be substituted with black coral, a species already protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). CITES, by the way, refused to add red and pink coral to its Appendix II listing during its two-week-long March meeting in Doha, Qatar, where it discussed the state of myriad ecosystems currently in calamitous straits.

Red coral

“Coralliidae are in desperate need of a mechanism that controls the immense trade in these species. CITES could have provided that, but today the representatives failed to heed the science showing these populations are in steep decline,” said Kristian Teleki, vice president of science initiatives for SeaWeb, whose campaign Too Precious to Wear had called for governments to protect Coralliidae.

“It is now up to the jewelry and design industries, and their customers, to act where governments have failed.”

Even elite jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co., jewelry designer Temple St. Clair, ocean conservationist Celine Cousteau and numerous others voiced support for the proposal to add red and pink coral to CITES’ Appendix II listing.

Please reject the use and purchase of red and pink coral until proper management measures are implemented to protect these fragile species from extinction. Also, spread the word! Knowledge is always power.

Coral bleaching

This post is part two of a four-part series. Here I will look at how climate change is jeopardizing the existence of coral reefs across the world’s oceans. In the third part of the series, I will explore coral reefs’ overexploitation, and in the fourth, I will explore some unknown causes of coral reef mortality.)

(Here is the first post of the series, which covers the general dismal situation of coral reefs and their lack of official protection from trade, plus the incredible importance of these species for the survival of marine life and, in turn, human life.)

How climate change is threatening coral reefs

Ocean acidification

Carbon dioxide (CO2), as we know, plays a huge role in warming up our planet and causing climate change. What you might not know is that one-third of the planet’s carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, and the more CO2 the ocean absorbs, the greater the waters’ acidity. The effects of ocean acidification, as this phenomenon is called, remain partly unpredictable.

Scientists do know, however, that worsening ocean acidification harms coral reefs, crustaceans, and shellfish because it weakens these species’ calcium carbonate shells. These animals thus become unable to build thick, protective shells for themselves and turn into easier prey for predators and pollution.

Coral reefs located near the poles will suffer these effects more sharply than those in warmer waters for two reasons: first, colder water absorbs more CO2 than warm water, and second, coral reefs in cold water grow at a slower pace than other coral reefs.

Bleached corals

Coral bleaching and disease

Warming waters also cause the bleaching of coral reefs. Naturally occurring, beneficial bacteria living on coral turns begins to disappear as temperatures rise, facilitating the onslaught of pathogenic bacteria that cause bleaching and other types of disease.

Moreover, the type of pathogenic bacteria that take over coral reefs sticks even if the temperature drops low enough to provoke the return of beneficial bacteria. By this time, the coral is too sick to recover and dies.

For those interested, here is an article on a recently created mathematical model that explains how coral reefs die due to warming waters.

Here is the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explanation:

“Because many corals live in water which is already near their upper temperature limit, a water temperature increase of only a few degrees can be deadly. As water temperatures rise, corals become increasingly stressed. When stress levels get too high, corals expel the symbiotic algae, or zooxanthellae (tiny one-celled plants) which live within the thin layer of live coral tissue. Zooxanthellae are important because they turn sunlight into food for their coral hosts. They also facilitate the formation of the coral skeleton — the main structural component of coral reefs. Because zooxanthellae give corals their various rich colors, a coral without zooxanthellae appears bleached. Corals can not thrive without zooxanthellae. For coral reefs that are already stressed due to poor water quality, destructive fishing, or frequent interactions with irresponsible divers and snorkellers, increased water temperatures could become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

(For more information, here is a previous post I wrote on the effects of climate change on coral reefs.)