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Loading...Nature’s Most Overlooked Benefit: Reefs Breaking Waves
- The Nature Conservancy
- January 19, 2012
- 10:30 am
- 27 comments
By Mike Beck, The Nature Conservancy
“Reefs break waves every day”: I know you’re thinking that’s an obvious statement. But there’s more to it than meets the eye. Reefs break waves — waves that would otherwise crash into and erode coasts on which hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars in development sit.
In fact, this wave attenuation by coral reefs is the single most obvious way nature benefits people globally — and it’s a benefit that conservation and science and policymakers need to pay a lot more attention to as climate keeps changing, coral reefs keep dying, and more and more people inhabit and build on the world’s coastlines.
How Have We Missed This?
Most coral reef science and conservation today focuses on: (i) the loss of the stunning diversity and productivity of corals and fishes, and (ii) what that loss means for the future of coral reefs and the people that rely on their fisheries. But despite the obviousness of my title, there is extraordinarily little science that focuses on the role of reefs as barriers (even on the Great Barrier Reef).
The importance of reefs as barriers really hit home for me as I gazed on the Caribbean’s Windward Isles from seat 10A on a return flight home to the States from Grenada recently. But you can make these observations right at your desk. Use Google Earth to look first at the eastern edges of the Windward Isles — look for towns and small cities, and then look for the crescent of what may at first seem like clouds ringing those communities. These are the waves breaking on the fore-reefs that protect these communities.
Read more: Environment, Green, Nature, Nature & Wildlife, Technology, barrier reef, breakwater, Caribbean, climate change, coast, coastline, coral, Dexter Miller, ecosystem services, erosion, fisheries, fishery, fringing reefs, gabion, Great Barrier Reef, Grenada, grey infrastructure, Hurricane Lenny, marine, marine conservationist, marine science, Mike Beck, natural infrastructure, nature's benefits, ocean, overfishing, oyster, Petit Martinique, pollution, reef, reef restoration, sea level rise, sea wall, sedimentation, The Nature Conservancy, wave, wave attenuation, wave energy, Windward Isles
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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I will especially try the olive oil in my frizzy hair!
Great ideas, thanx
Peninsula Valdés is great! I've been there for only one day, and sure plan to go again with m…
tyvm...
Yes, Mom was enjoying her baby enjoying the water and looked like she was having fun too. I'll bet t…
27 comments
+ add your ownnoted with thanks
Thank you
Good point... learned something again... thanks!
Sounds good to me. When do we get started?
Thank you for this informative article!:)
Coral reef is an asset and tourist attraction.
nice :)
Hi Jennifer E.
On harnessing wave energy. This is a good idea but you need even more wave energy to make it cost effective (think of the coasts of Oregon and Tasmania).
Adding height to reefs with concrete is a good idea and it becomes a very good idea if you couple it with coral transplants on top of these blocks. this way you can grow a living skin of reef on top of these blocks. We have coral nurseries being developed in several places to test this idea.
Indeed a big reef is a lot of limestone with a skin of live coral on top.
Mike
Thank you, Mike, for this fascinating insight into a global issue. At one point, you mention the wave energy and its destructive effect on the shores. I wonder if one of the ways two birds could be killed with one stone, is to use wave collection technology to produce power and in the process, the waves would be reduced in energy, so less destructive.
The other thing which comes to mind, is adding height to the reefs with concrete blocks and stone. I know here in Australia, groynes have been used to protect beaches, though I haven't studied them by any means, so don't know the usefulness or long term effects of them.
Again, we must get to work on ending the destruction of our oceans, their polluting, their acidification, their overfishing. We act as the whole Earth is dead and that there are no consequences for destroying our support system.
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