Essay - Coral Reefs Introduction Pollution of Various Types Threatens the Coral...

Coral Reefs

Introduction

***** of various types threatens the coral reefs of the world. This is a major that because ***** the environmental role played by these reefs, a ***** that also has an economic component in terms of the contribution of ***** ***** to the ecosystem as a whole *****d so to the fishing industry that depends on that ecosystem. The reefs take a long time to form and are actually living entities, and ********** are dying ***** of the actions ***** human beings in caus*****g air pollution and in dumping certain substances in***** the sea. Even reefs ***** are still alive often show signs of this damage, usually by whitening.

Programs to help the reefs recover are being pursued, though ***** is not an e*****y problem ***** repair.

What Is Coral

***** term ***** is used to refer both to the ********** itself and ***** the cementlike substance it manufactures in its body to build a reef. The animal was ***** ********** ***** be a plant. In 1726 a French naturalist named Jean Andre Pey*****nne found that *****se 'plants' were actually animals *****longing to the phylum of coelenterates. Coral is a very simple organ*****m. It has a tiny, transparent, gelatinous body enclosed in a tube with *****n opening at one end, and around this opening--which functions both as a mouth ***** as a passage ***** excrete wastes--is a ring of ***** tentacles which gather in the animal's food and give it ***** other common name, polyp, which is Greek for "many-footed." Polyp corals live entirely on plankton (Life in the Coral Reef, 1977, p. 8).

***** (1990) notes that not all corals build reefs, but those that do can build structures that are enormous by any standards. ***** polyp is s*****t-bodied and protects itself by secreting a protective cup of calcium carbonate, or limestone, about its body. Microscopic algae live inside ***** polyp and help in ***** ef*****t by tak*****g up carbon ***** phosphates dissolved in sea water and convert*****g them into sugar and amino acids. The polyp eats these as food, and the process eases and speeds ***** conversion ***** calcium and ***** dioxide into *****. This allows the coral reef to grow over time. The ***** secretes limestone throughout ***** life, always extending the length of its stony cup. The polyp connects itself to o*****r polyps ***** form colonies. The effect of this is that after thousands ***** generations of ***** have died in th***** position, a coral ***** is formed, composed ***** ancestral skeletons at the bottom and ***** polyps ***** the top. Coral reefs are the largest living structures in the *****, made even stronger by corall*****e algae acting as cement for the other organ*****ms. Coral reefs may ***** to an unbelievable size, and linked colonies may stretch ***** hundreds of miles. At the present time, coral covers 80 million square ***** of ***** earth, ***** if m*****sed ***** a single reef, it would measure 25 *****s the size of the continental United States