With summer upcoming, many Oregonians will be embarking on vacations to warmer weather and water, exploring the flora and fauna that coastal ecosystems offer.
Coral reefs offer a particularly impressive combination of biodiversity and beauty which have solidified them as a major attraction for tourists. However, the compounding effects of climate change, water pollution, tourism, and overfishing have led to widespread reef damage attributable to human activity.
Beyond being aesthetically pleasing, coral reefs have importance to marine biodiversity and coastal communities. A 2015 study from Fisher et al. found that reefs provide habitat to roughly 32% of named marine species globally, despite their proportionally small contribution to the global footprint of the ocean.
This density of life also makes reefs valuable to adjacent communities, providing food, wave protection, and erosion resistance. The relationship between humans and reefs is not innately destructive, but it can easily become so if sustainable practices are eschewed for short-term benefit.
Current estimates suggest that, globally, roughly half of all reefs have been damaged from human activity.
Overfishing and pollution threaten to destructively alter the biological makeup in reefs through species elimination and algal blooms while climate change increases ocean temperatures and acidity, causing particularly negative impacts on coral. Additionally, tourism has been observed to produce both direct and indirect harm to reefs, with snorkeling and diving being identified as potentially destructive activities.
A 2021 study was able to quantify the impacts made on reefs by recreational divers. On average, it was reported that 71-98% of divers make some sort of reef contact per dive.
These contacts are very likely to cause damage to the reef, especially when they involve live coral, making them a real threat to reefs that experience a high volume of tourist activities. While it may be difficult to have a significant impact on issues like climate change or industrial pollution as an individual, we can all directly reduce reef damage by being conscious of our actions when visiting a reef.
First and foremost, by understanding the impacts that we can have on reef life as tourists, we can easily remind ourselves to not intentionally touch, remove, or destroy reef life, especially delicate species such as corals.
Beyond this, when in proximity to reef life, it is important to retain bodily awareness to avoid unintentional reef contacts. Accessories like flippers can pose risks for damaging corals, and being aware of this risk can help reduce unintentional reef contacts.
If diving, it may be worthwhile to enroll in an environmental diving certification course such as EcoDiver or Green Fins to gain diving-specific knowledge of ways that you can personally minimize reef harms during recreational diving.
The benefits of exercising care and caution when diving can be realized here in Oregon as well as warm-water locations. Although Oregon’s reefs differ significantly from those in tropical areas, they still host biodiverse ecosystems and recreational diving activities.
Locations like the South Beach Reef in Newport and the rocky reef outside Port Orford promise excellent diving opportunities, conditions permitting, hosting cold-water coral, crabs, octopus, sharks, rays and more. These unique parts of our state deserve our consideration to do what we can when visiting to minimize reef contacts and, by extension, reef damage.
Global coral reef tourism draws in millions yearly with the promise of encountering some of the world’s most interconnected and biodiverse ecosystems. While this proximity promises for an engaging experience, it also runs the risk of harming the nature being observed.
By simply being conscious of our surroundings when exploring a reef to avoid reef contacts, we as individuals can take action in reducing human harm to coral reefs, preserving these important ecosystems of Oregon and the world.
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