What we do to the coral reefs.( Cont.)

Here are the other stuff we do to the coral reefs:

Oil and industrial pollution: Petrochemicals and heavy metals are a great threat to all marine life in coral reef zones, especially near urban areas and in the seas of the Middle East.

Sedimentation: When people clearcut forests or bulldoze new housing tracts and parking lots, tons of loose dirt is washed downstream and into near-shore reef areas, where it buries corals under a layer of silt and smothers them.

Tourism: Clumsy or just not aware of, tourists crush, scrape, gouge, and break off fragile corals with their hands, their scuba fins, and their ship anchors. Resort development destroys coastal mangroves, creates new sewage sources, and stirs up more silt that smothers reefs.

Disease: Abuse adds up, and reefs that aren't killed directly by people, it may be getting sick from the accumulated stresses. Recent years have seen epidemics of many coral diseases and the discovery of several new ones previously unknown to science. Coral bleaching, a deadly ailment on the rise, is associated with higher water temperatures—but even that can be attributed to humankind if global warming models are correct. And the diseases seem to be getting meaner: In April, scientists reported in the journal Nature that a new species of coral-bleaching and -killing bacteria was wiping out reefs in two or three days, rather than the weeks or months it took previously.

Climate disruption: Coral bleaching aside, global warming will cause some obvious problems for corals, like decreased ocean salinity and rising mean ocean depth. Then there are the less obvious problems: Australian scientists warned in March 1998 that increasing carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere was raising the acidity of surface water in the world's oceans, making it harder for corals to form the (basic) limestone skeletons that make up the reefs.
Coral mining: People excavate coral reefs for their limestone and sand, for use in building materials, resort hotel beaches, tourist souvenirs, even snake-oil medicines: A Swedish company, Ericssons Preventive Medical Group, claims its Alka-Mine Coral Calcium will "naturally detox the body by neutralizing the acidity with which we are all...too apt to pollute our systems." Sweden, of course, has no coral reefs; the product's mineral-rich coral sand is mined off Okinawa.
Mangrove destruction: The familiar tree of swamps from Mississippi to Mozambique, the mangrove provides a crucial service to coral reefs: It filters silt and even pollution out of terrestrial runoff before it can taint the clear water of the reef zones. People chop down mangroves for firewood and clear them for coastal construction.
See? These are the stupid things we do, that not only will harm the coral reefs, but also us, in future.

Source: Action Atlas