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Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

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Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#41

Post by paulhebert »

wildfireday2 wrote: post #24
novia wrote: post #3

> Zinzindohoué agrees: “We don’t need to wait for others to come to our country to show us what is under our sea. We are the ones who must take responsibility.

Yet, they didn’t. And for those commenting about risk from tourism, this is mesophotic coral at 175 feet. It’s out of range of recreational scuba much less shallow-reef snorkelers. Only technical divers can reach this reef. That’s why it hadn’t even been explored for all this time.

Isn’t this whole article about how they’re doing so right now?

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#42

Post by stasomatic »

aboardRat4 wrote: post #19
slibhb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, only publish stories about coral bleaching, animals going extinct, and forest fires. Censor any good news at all costs!

Forest fires are natural. Coral bleaching seems too actually be a sign of prosperity, not suffering.

[flagged]

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#43

Post by [deleted] »

mips_avatar wrote: post #20
functionmouse wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Very few people travel to visit the Amazon especially in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. In the absence of tourist money these amazing ecosystems are being turned into agriculture and logged. In the protected areas supported by eco tourism the sound of the insects is deafening. But a few miles away in the banana plantations the area is completely silent. Even on “organic” banana plantations every insect is killed.

[deleted]

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#46

Post by bix6 »

xandrius wrote: post #39
bix6 wrote: post #28

For the coral lovers. There are multiple companies working on reef preservation. They are woefully under resourced. If you can help, please do.

You should give some names if you personally know them.

I work with Hybrid Reefs out of Scripps in San Diego. Daniel is an amazing dude, Moore fellow, and prolific inventor. If you can help, there’s contact info on the website. https://www.hybridreefs.com/

Coral Vita is the trailblazer in the for profit category, first coral Series A (2025). I don’t know them yet though. https://www.coralvita.co

https://coral.org is a 501c3. One of my friends is on the board.

Other fun stuff.

Mars runs one of the most prolific programs: https://www.buildingcoral.com/

Reefstarter was backed by my friends at SOSV. They design coastal barriers. Great team. East coast for any of you Floridians. https://www.reefstarter.net/

There’s more but there’s a few off the top.

In general the US is primarily focused on erosion control since the beaches are disappearing. Coral is more an afterthought especially with the gutting of all our science. Australia is really leading the way here with AIMS and Saudi has KAUST. Big ups to the Paul Allen Foundation though, they gave Scripps $10M a few years back.

Fun stat to end with: coral reefs are responsible for over $10T in annual economic value. They get less than $1B a year to ensure they stick around. We’re gonna change that.

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#47

Post by bamboozled »

Aboutplants wrote: post #33
bix6 wrote: post #28

For the coral lovers. There are multiple companies working on reef preservation. They are woefully under resourced. If you can help, please do.

I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.

Homeostasis, that was probably an option for most of nature in the 1950s or something, I think the damage is too great to just leave the reefs, forrests and other habitats to "fend for themselves". Even if what you say is true from an environmental perspective, we also have to fight to protect these areas from exploitation from fisherman, mining etc.

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#48

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Aboutplants wrote: post #33
bix6 wrote: post #28

For the coral lovers. There are multiple companies working on reef preservation. They are woefully under resourced. If you can help, please do.

I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.

I would suppose getting out of nature's way happens in one of two ways - infrequently because there is nothing of value in an area left to extract so people leave it alone, or infrequently because there is regulation forcing people to leave it alone.

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#49

Post by bix6 »

bamboozled wrote: post #47
Aboutplants wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always been curious as to the level of success these programs achieve compared to just letting nature respond on its own. There are many cases where “dead” areas come back to life with abundance and give me pause as to whether we should for the most part just get out of natures way.

Homeostasis, that was probably an option for most of nature in the 1950s or something, I think the damage is too great to just leave the reefs, forrests and other habitats to "fend for themselves". Even if what you say is true from an environmental perspective, we also have to fight to protect these areas from exploitation from fisherman, mining etc.

Yep you’ll see most stats base off ~1950. This is when we started noticing and especially in the ensuing decades as SCUBA equipment got good.

Re: Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

#50

Post by tomhow »

functionmouse wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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