The Coral Triangle
THE LAST GREAT FRONTIER OF MARINE CONSERVATION
t’s 2060 and you’re telling your grandchildren what it was like to dive a living coral reef – a real one in the open ocean, teeming with fish. They’re rapt, because they’ve only ever seen
coral on film, or as preserved samples in aquariums.
This might sound like an outlandish scenario, but it’s one that many scientists believe we may be facing. Coral ecosystems are as fragile as they are fertile. They contain ¼ of all marine life on our planet and provide spawning aggregation sites that help populate the rest of our oceans. Yet they could be all but extinct within decades, as rising water temperatures, ocean acidification and unsustainable fisheries take their toll.
When you consider just how significant coral is in populating our oceans, it’s ironic that the world’s richest reef system is still largely unknown to most people. Yet we’re talking about a bioregion that’s half the size of the United States, passes through six countries (the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, PNG, Solomon Islands and East Timor), and harbors more marine species than anywhere else on the planet. Forget the Caribbean or even the Great Barrier Reef, when it comes to species abundance and sheer scale, nothing comes close to the Coral Triangle – the global epicenter of marine biodiversity.
There is a land-based bioregion that shares many characteristics with this singular marine environment, however. It is similarly rich in biodiversity, crosses the territories of nine countries, supports countless livelihoods and, like the Coral Triangle, is under grave threat. And this one you’ll definitely have heard of – it’s called the Amazon. If its jungles are the lungs of the earth, then the Coral Triangle is the wellspring of the oceans. There are single reefs in Indonesia that contain more species than the entire Caribbean. What’s more, scientists believe that the reefs in places like Raja Ampat, off the coast of West Papua – widely regarded as the biodiversity bull’s eye of the seas – are highly resistant to coral bleaching.
Writing by Johnny Langenheim www.johnnylangenheim.com
Photos by James Morgan www.jamesmorgan.co.uk
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24 - SEVENSEAS