Climate change takes its toll on Fiji's coral

By ANGELA GREGORY

A marine biologist is alarmed at the deterioration of the Fijian coral reefs he has seen in the past 20 years.

Professor Leon Zann, head of the University of the South Pacific's marine studies programme, said Fiji's once large and robust reefs were failing.

Professor Zann, a former manager of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Australia, has been back in Fiji for six months after earlier work monitoring the Suva reef in the 1980s.

"When I arrived, I went out to the reef and the coral was covered with seaweed."

The reef, about 3.5km off Suva, had also been harmed by crown of thorns starfish that ate the coral.

"And there is a lot of alarm in Fiji that the sharks are disappearing ... they are a good indicator of a healthy reef."

Professor Zann said the biggest worry was the extent of coral bleaching, where the coral shed the microscopic algae which gave it its bright colours and turned white.

The algae were essential for the coral's growth, but it dumped them when it was stressed from changes in water temperature, salinity or oxygen levels.

Nothing could be immediately done about such global climate change that would make a difference to coral reefs.

Professor Zann said coral bleaching was a huge worldwide problem.

An outbreak in the late 1990s had not hurt Fiji reefs, but in 2000 a large body of warm water moving from the Cook Islands to Tahiti and Fiji, then Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, had triggered coral bleaching in those reefs.

Fiji's problem was exacerbated by land activity run-off into waterways, increasing population, and high commercial domestic demand for coral fish.