Over half of coral reef cover across the world has been lost since 1950
80% of Cozumel’s coral reefs have died in just 40 years. Without urgent and immediate action, they could all be gone by 2050.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND BLEACHING
What is coral bleaching?
The largest threat to corals right now is bleaching caused by rising ocean temperatures due to climate change.
Corals, like humans, have a thermal limit. Coral bleach when they are stressed by factors like rising ocean temperatures. They expel the colorful algae living within their tissues. These algae, called zooxanthellae, provide corals with food through photosynthesis.
Without them, the corals turn white (bleach) and become vulnerable to disease and starvation. While corals can recover from bleaching if conditions improve, prolonged stress often leads to death.
This poses a severe threat to entire reef ecosystems, as corals are the foundation species, providing habitat and food for countless other marine organisms.
Bleaching events are becoming more frequent and lasting longer
As greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, the oceans absorb more heat, leading to more frequent, intense and longer marine heatwaves. Before the 1980s, mass bleaching events were rare. Now, they are occurring with alarming regularity. The time between bleaching events is shrinking, giving corals less time to recover.
The extreme temperatures of 2023’s summer killed off 75% of the staghorn and elkhorn corals that were planted in the Florida Keys. Similarly, we have witnessed bleaching on our reefs here in Villa Blanca and Palancar and some of our transplants have succumbed to bleaching.
With 1.5°C of warming, coral reefs are projected to decline by 70-90%. At 2°C, more than 99% of coral reefs are expected to be lost. Today, we are already at 1.5°C and our emissions are still rising.
What are scientists doing?
Scientists are trying to selectively breed corals for heat resistance. Similarly, there are research projects investigating if they can identify strains of zooxanthellae that are more heat resistant that we can innoculate corals with. Scientists may be able to buy corals a little more time, but they are not likely to survive a 3 or 4°C change. We still urgently need to solve climate change.
What are we doing?
At the CCRRP, we are have moved our new platforms to deeper water where the depth and currents bring colder waters. We are also experimenting with coral shades. It is showing promising results and seems to reduce bleaching when corals are placed under shades during marine heatwaves. Learn more about our summer intern’s coral shade research. We have pre-emptively deployed them on all our coral nursery platforms in summer 2024 as our corals have start bleaching and we didn’t want to lose any more corals.
How you can help:
Climate change is a big challenge. Use your vote to push for systemic change and use your individual actions to reduce emissions and spread awareness. Small changes add up! Be persistent and focus on what YOU can do.
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Demand Change:
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Vote: Support climate-conscious leaders.
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Speak Up: Talk about climate change with everyone.
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Advocate: Contact officials, support organizations.
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Live Lighter:
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Home: Efficient appliances, LEDs, less energy &
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water use.
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Travel: Drive less, fly less, choose efficient vehicles.
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Stuff: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Buy less, waste less
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food. Eat less meat.
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Choose Sustainable Options:
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Food: Local, seasonal produce.
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Clothes: Buy less, choose sustainable brands, consider secondhand.
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Money: Divest from fossil fuels, invest in green solutions.
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Spread Awareness:
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Learn: Understand climate change.
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Share: Educate others.
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THE CRUISE SHIP INDUSTRY
Cozumel is one of the world's largest cruise ship ports. Up to 7 ships visit each day, bringing over 3.6 million passengers to the island each year. While these tourists have become vital to the economy, this industry is the largest threat to the Cozumel coral reef ecosystem.
Their giant propellers disturb marine life, resulting in steep population declines
beneath their routes. They also stir up sediment which settle on the corals,
blocking their photosynthesis, and starving them to death. Our site
is frequently cloudly due to the passing ships and our volunteers need to
constantly dust the colonies to keep them healthy.
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Ships carry pathogens and pests with their ballast waterShips use ballast water to maintain stability and maneuverability. This water is taken on in one port and discharged in another, often carrying with it a multitude of marine organisms, including potential pathogens. These pathogens can introduce new diseases or harmful algal blooms to the local marine environment, impacting both marine life and potentially human health.Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) was first observed in Florida, near Virginia Key in Miami-Dade County, in 2014. Ocean currents should have carried it up the coast towards New York. However, cruise ships brought SCTLD to Cozumel in 2018, against the ocean currents from Miami. In just a year, over 60% of Cozumel's corals died. Some coral species went entirely extinct in the wild.
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Similarly, lionfish were first reported in South Florida waters in 1985.They are an invasive species from the Indo-Pacific. It was likely thataquarium owners released their pet fish into the wild. The fish has avoracious appetite and no natural predators here in the Carribean.We spearfish them whenever they are reported to preserve our fish lifehere.
Proposed New Cruise Terminal On Our Restoration Site
MSC Cruises and the local Yucatan peninsula oligarchic Molina family, have lobbied to build a fourth Pier; located both along the edge of the UNESCO protected Marine Park and right on the site of the CCRRP. This proposed $25 million 800-yard long pier, would have capacity for another 11 cruise ships bringing another 40,000 tourists to Cozumel every day.
To prevent this, we have joined a collective with other Cozumel ecological organizations, dive shops and concerned citizens, fighting this megaproject in the Mexican courts. We succeeded in gaining a temporary injunction
against construction, as the project failed to obtain proper permits and did not properly consult Cozumeleños on how their environmental rights would be affected. But with MSC Cruises and the Molina family appealing the ruling, our fight will continue until permanent a suspension is achieved.
CO2 Emissions that accelerates climate change
Most modern cruise liners are mini cities, with pools, discotheques, cinemas, restaurants and theme parks located on a ship. That takes a lot of fossil fuels to move them across the ocean and keep them powered.
Cruise ships keep their generators running at dock to power the ships. Come stand by Cozumel and you can see their smoke stacks belch out smoke as they are docked at the cruise terminal 24/7. A medium-sized cruise ship spews greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of 12,000 cars.
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This puts the coral further at risk of bleaching.
How you can help:
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Do not visit Cozumel by cruise ship.
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If visiting from the mainland, do not take Winjet Ferry. It is owned by the Molina family.
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Use your voice to help us gain international media attention!
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Donate to the Legal Defense Fund of NoAlCuartoMuelle, the civil organization filing the injunction.
LACK OF WASTEWATER TREATMENT
Coral thrives in water in clean water with low nutrients, where very little algae can block the sunlight it needs for photosynthesis. The island has only one water treatment plant and it only services the northern portion of the island. It is already saturated and outdated.
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The south near Villa Blanca and Palancar reefs are now experiencing a building boom with condos and other developments. There are no sewage treatment facilities. As such, when septic tanks overflow or leech into the
porous limestone ground, the sewage eventually make its way to the reefs.
The nutrients acts as fertilizer for algae growth. Corals grow 1cm per year, whereas algae can grow 1cm a day. We have to clean our coral nursery daily to prevent algae from overgrowing smothering our corals.
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Poor water quality is also suspected to compromise the coral’s immune system and allow diseases to proliferate. ​
Cozumel’s wastewater disposal laws have not been updated in 25 years, and dumping untreated waste in the marine park is, unfortunately, legal.
New developments plan to dump wastewater directly onto Palancar reef, one of the most beautiful and diverse diving locations in the world - and they’re not the only ones - at least a dozen major hotels on Cozumel have been caught dumping untreated water directly into the ocean.
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What we are doing:
To counteract this, we will continue to monitor water chemistry regularly around the reefs and advocate for more stringent water treatment regulations.
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How you can help:
Stay closer to town where at least some form of sewage plumbing and treatment is available. Avoid staying near the south of the island where the reefs are, unless you know the hotel has their own wastewater treatment facilities.
SUNSCREEN
Don’t wear sunscreen while visiting the reefs. Sunscreens, deodorants, and other beauty products contain non-biodegradable compounds that block UV light. It protects your skin, but if it washes into the ocean it attaches to the corals, it blocks the UV light they need for photosynthesis and can kill them. Even products that are marketed as “reef friendly” still contain compounds that can be harmful.
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Rashguards or UV protection shirts are a common solution in hot climates. These thin and quick drying shirts protect us from the sun without killing corals. They are readily available all over the island – buying one in Cozumel also helps the local economy.
PHYSICAL DAMAGE FROM DIVERS
Our coral nursery is located near many dive shops where new divers are trained. We witness many broken or damaged corals from people touching them, or accidentally kicking them with their fins.
We spend a lot of our time rescuing coral fragments that have been kicked and broken by inexperienced divers.
How you can help:
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Educate yourself on safe diving practices. If you are a new diver, stay a safe distance from the corals until you have mastered your buoyancy, so as not to hit or kick delicate corals.
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Do not touch the corals.
If you wish to improve your buoyancy control, you can consider taking the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Course.
DISEASES
Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease​
It reached Cozumel in 2018, carried by cruise ships from one port to another. In just a year over 60% of Cozumel's corals died. Some coral species went entirely extinct in the wild.
There is no definitive cure to date, but the CCRRP has conducted studies and determined that covering coral in antibiotic paste has a 50% chance of stopping the disease from spreading to adjacent colonies. We are also growing Pillar corals (Dendrogyra cylindrus) and other at risk species in our coral nursery to monitor and proactively treat them, until either the surviving populations gain immunity, or an more effective treatment is found.
Although diseases are present in nature in low incidence. Corals are already being stressed by warming waters, sediment and poor water quality, making them significantly more susceptible to disease.
There are two major diseases threatening Cozumel’s coral right now: Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, which manifests as rapidly expanding lesions on coral colonies, and White Band Disease, in which tissue peels off from colonies leaving behind a “white band” of exposed calcium carbonate skeleton.
White Band Disease
White Band Disease came from Florida to the Caribbean in the 1980s. White band disease largely targets Elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and Staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) corals, two of the most common reef building species in Mesoamerica. With a 95% mortality rate, white band disease literally destroys the reef’s foundation. ​Warming water conditions and exposure to untreated wastewater are the main contributors to outbreaks of white band disease. We are still looking to find an effective and distributable cure, but some experiments of increasing colonies sea urchin populations have made them more resilient.​
