What can we do?

I wrote my previous post on the threat climate change poses to coral reefs around the world. In a comment a reader asked me a critical question.

What can we do to save the corals and maintain the reefs so that they can provide life for our fellow living creatures??

I wanted to write a response to this comment because this sort of response is exactly what I am looking for. I personally believe that each individual has the ability to not only take action but make a difference for our oceans. My response to this comment got so long that I decided to give it an entire post so that I could try to do it justice.

Photo from goodplanet.org

Stopping or even reversing climate change is a complicated problem, with many intricate components. For a large issue such as this it is easy to adopt the mentality that there is nothing any single person can do. Simply not true. There are so many things we could do every day that would reduce the effects of global warming, some of which are so small that we disregard them. It's just one plastic bottle, one light bulb, one plastic bag, one piece of paper... all those ones can add up fast. Making little adjustments in your daily routine could not only save energy and CO2 emissions, but your hard earned dollars as well. Check out this site for a list of things you could do and just how helpful they are.

Photo from www.alertdiver.com/Biorock_Electric_Reefs

But how do we bring the coral reefs back even if we do stop global warming? Just this week I received a new issue of Alert Diver and much to my pleasant surprise there was an article about Biorock Reefs. Biorocks are submerged wire-mesh structures connected to a renewable energy source such as tidal and wave generators or windmills. The low-voltage current flowing through the structure in combination with the surrounding water results in the formation of a limestone layer, the skeleton of every coral reef system. Salvaged coral is "transplanted" onto the limestone skeleton. These transplanted corals grow up to six times faster than normal! It's advances such as this that make me hopeful that my friends on the reefs will live to see another day.