"Grief on the reef" features CEA and Paul Sanchez-Navarro

From an article by Charlie Devereux on CNN.com:

A report released in January by the World Conservation Union concluded that hurricanes and rising sea temperatures in 2005 -- the hottest year since records began -- caused large-scale examples coral bleaching, in which corals lose the essential algae that coat their surfaces, devastating more than half of the Caribbean's reefs.

But human activity at ground level is having an equally damaging effect, says Paul Sanchez-Navarro, Director of Centro Ecologico Akumal, an organization that monitors the impact of development on the reefs that thrive off the coast of Mexico's Quintana Roo province. Pollution spilled into the sea by the thousands of hotels on the Mexican Riviera is "stressing" the coral reefs.

"There are a lot of nutrients going into the ground water caused by treated water from the hotels and municipal waste water treatment plants," he explains. "They inject the water into the ground and that makes its way into the aquifer... We've found way too many nutrients -- nitrates and phosphates -- and that comes from human waste, mostly urine."

The result, says Sanchez-Navarro, is increased algae growth that effectively suffocates the coral, impeding its growth.