Personal experience with Coral Reef Destruction

Have you ever experienced Coral Reef destruction?

Last year I went on a family trip to the Dominican Republic. While there, we all went on a boat called the Jolly Pirate. There was a rope swing, you get to go scooba diving, a place to jump off the boat, free drinks, etc. After being on the water for about an hour or so, we started to jump off the boat and begin diving. While underwater I saw hundreds of beautiful coral reefs. The colors were incredible. Everyone got to swim right up to the coral reefs and see how beautiful they were and all the animals that were living in them. While I was swimming around I saw one woman in around her 20s start playing with the corals. After about 10 minutes of playing with them she began ripping them out of the ground and stuffing it in her scooba gear. Fish were swimming out of the corals and the clear blue water started to have a fog in that area. This woman had no idea the effects she had on the ecosystem for those fish and other animals. Any given coral reef has around 4000 species living off it at anytime. Coral reefs support more species per unit area than any other marine environment. When I saw this it got me thinking about how many people must go on this boat experience per year and how many other people could be doing the same thing as this woman. I then decided to take these thoughts and look around to see if I can find any more destruction to the corals by taking a deeper look. Surprisingly enough, I found dozens of corals with rips, dents, etc. This was super upsetting to me because I realized how large of an affect this is really having on our planet and how little people know about the importance of coral reefs. After we finished diving and got back on the boat I spoke with the captain of the boat about what I saw. He told me that he knows that people do this and needs to take more serious precautions due to the severity of what could happen if people continue to destroy the corals. All in all, we as a world need to start bringing even more attention to the protection of coral reefs or we will be in a lot of trouble in the near future.