Synthesizing Research on Coral Reefs

 The economic principle I researched was “institutions are the "rules of the game" that influence choices.” In order to demonstrate this I mainly focused my research on what institutions acted as threats to coral reefs and the institutions that have been trying to help these ecosystems flourish by working to limit the amount of dangers to them.

There are many different threats play factor into the well-being of coral reefs. In my second blog post, I studied an article titled “Coral Reefs,” and I provided an overview of the general problems within these areas. These included practices such as “overfishing, intensive boating and recreational impacts, and land-based sources of pollution in the form of sediments and excess nutrients threaten coral ecosystems.” Later, in my fourth blog post, I elaborated more on one problem in particular. Overfishing. The numbers of wildlife living in reefs have been decreasing over time and overfishing, in my opinion, has been the greatest factor in this decline. In and article titled “Coral Reefs: Threats,” there was a list of various fishing practices which “include cyanide fishing, blast or dynamite fishing, bottom trawling, and muro-ami (banging on the reef with sticks).” As I stated before in a previous blog post, I believe that bottom trawling is has had the most effect on the reefs. Bottom Trawling is the practice of dragging a fishing net across the sea floor. These nets are extremely large, as the fishermen have intentions of catching a large quantity of fish with them, and can get caught on anything that resides on the seafloor. Coral grows on the seafloor and can be broken apart by these nets as they are dragged along without stopping.

Despite the many threats to the environment, there have been many efforts to conserve coral reefs by other institutions. Returning to my second blog post, the institution that I chose to focus on was the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The author wrote that the “NFWF works with local, state, federal and regional partners to achieve its goals in coral conservation and bolsters multi-agency initiatives like the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force Watershed Partnership Initiative. The program works to support reef resiliency by reducing negative impacts from unsustainable fishing and land-based pollution.” In order to carry out this initiative, the key foci are “Reducing primary threats such as land-based sources of pollution from agricultural runoff, sewage outfall, and erosion from bare soils, and reducing functional reef species through unsustainable harvest… Increasing the use of measurable goals, objectives and coral health thresholds in management planning… Increasing the management effectiveness of Marine Protected Area networks through management training and community engagement.” By eliminating the effects that the threats I mentioned before have on reefs, we can help to preserve these amazing ecosystems for the future.