The Bravo Crater is the test site of a thermonuclear weapon dropped in 1954, the largest of everyone detonated. It is located in the Marshall Islands and is over one mile wide and 80 yards deep. Apparently this area is still not fit for human life, even above the water. But when a group of marine scientists dove down into the atoll, they found a crater teeming with a vibrant, flourishing coral reef. There were no two-headed fish or other radioactive mutations that you might expect, rather there was a reef perfectly untouched and thriving all on its own. Coral reefs as an ecosystem are unbelievably delicate. This finding proves their resilience, and yet also shows how great of an effect humans have upon them. The beauty of this reef and its pristine cleanliness are largely due to the fact that it has been completely untouched and deserted since the bomb was dropped over 50 years ago. As the researchers pointed out, the reefs obviously do best when left completely alone, something that tourism prevents all over the world.
I found this amazing, and now of course, I want to go dive there! Coral reefs are one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on our planet and we are destroying them more and more each day. The fact that they were able to survive an atomic bomb and flourish, but are unable to survive us is a fact that I find incredibly depressing and revealing of the detriment that we, as human beings, have upon the nature around us.
BLOG: http://www.greendaily.com/2008/04/15/coral-reefs-love-nuclear-fallout/
3 comments:
hey amanda, after talking in class today, i was thinking...the undisturbed reef is flourishing, right? and reefs elsewhere show damage and bleaching from human impact, including ocean warming...but isn't the undisturbed reef also subject to at least the warming? maybe there's hope that reefs aren't quite as delicate as it might seem...just thinking...
25 points. Wow, given all the horrible news about the death of coral reefs worldwide -- including even the Great Barrier Reef -- it is cheering to think that in some other ways their "cities" may be far more resilient and enduring than our own.
The thing about global warming is that it is raising overall temperatures of the earth's oceans at a steadily increasing rate. Corals have an incredibly small range of temperatures at which they are able to flourish, too high or too low and they can suffer through coral bleaching. So although it seems that they obviously do better with little human impact, the overall climate should eventually effect them no matter what.
Post a Comment