Kenting, Taiwan Coral Reef Loses Bio-diversity

[Gouldian]

Coral reef communities in waters around Kenting, southern Taiwan, have slumped by over 63 percent in the past 26 years due to climate change and bleaching, Taiwan's top research institute said Tuesday.

The coral reefs in waters around Kenting's Wanlitung region decreased from 47.5 percent in 1985 to 17.7 percent in 2010, with biodiversity there becoming what Chen Chaolun, a research fellow at the Academia Sinica's Biodiversity Research Center, described as "monotonous."

Since 1996, the reefs around Kenting have been in decline as a result of typhoons, particularly Typhoon Morakot in 2008, as well as global sea-surface temperature-related worldwide coral bleaching that started coming to attention in 1998, Chen added.

From 1999 to 2005, during which there were no major disturbances, coral cover managed to return to 1987 levels.

Coral species from the genera Acropora and Montipora have almost disappeared from the reefs, whereas corals belonging to the genera Favia and Heliopora have maintained their presences at steady levels, which has resulted in fewer habitats for other species in the coral ecosystem, Chen said.

The disappearance of hard corals indicates that the health of the area's coral reefs is in jeopardy and that diverse reefs are declining, he went on.

"When a city changes, the citizens there change as well. With overfishing, now what snorkelers see is only a vast area of coral reef covered by green algae,"

Source: - http://focustaiwan.t...ID=201209110041