Deep trouble

From an article by Mark Schropeon on Smithsonian.com:

Research has shown that, with paltry few exceptions, the planet's coral reefs have experienced a prolonged, devastating decline in recent decades. But determining which factor, or factors, is most responsible for that decimation has proved vastly more difficult. The result has been an ongoing, often contentious debate between those who believe that local factors such as overfishing and pollution are most to blame, and those who say global climate change is the main culprit. Solving the debate could be critical to determining how best to direct efforts and resources for restoring reefs, but definitive answers remain elusive, as two recent studies illustrate.

To help answer some of these questions, a team of researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography set out in a converted World War II freighter in September 2005 to study reefs in the South Pacific's remote Line Islands. They have since returned to the area twice, most recently this past August.

The reefs they are studying follow a gradient of human influence, beginning with those near Christmas Island, with a population of roughly 10,000 people, and ending some 250 miles away at Kingman Reef, a U.S. protectorate that has never been inhabited and has been the target of very limited fishing. If global influences are the dominant factor in reef decline, the team hypothesized, then isolated Kingman should look as bad as, or worse than, Christmas reefs. But if human influence plays the larger role, then Christmas reefs would be in worse shape than Kingman.