Travel Industry, Fisheries Depend on Threatened Coral Reefs

14 February 2012

MARIO RITTER: Welcome to Explorations in VOA Special English. I’m Mario Ritter. This week, we hear from a prize-winning expert on bees. May Berenbaum has studied ways to help protect the insects from bee diseases and other threats. Last year, she won the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

We also tell about efforts to study the spread of plastic waste in the world’s oceans. But first, we hear how human activities are threatening coral reefs and the sea life they support.

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Snorkelers swim with sharks on a reef in Bimini, Bahamas, in 1995

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: The world’s coral reefs are increasingly being threatened, mostly because of human activities. A group of environmental organizations released a report on the issue. The “Reefs at Risk Revisited” report used new information and improved satellite mapping systems to study the world’s coral reefs. For the first time, it also considered the effect of climate change on these threatened sea organisms. Jane Lubchenco is administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. She says the problem is serious.

JANE LUBCHENCO: "Approximately 75 percent of the world’s coral reefs are currently threatened by a combination of local and global pressures."

Lubchenco says the threat to coral reefs will continue to increase unless something is done to save them.