Watch an enlightening, frustrating and hopeful presentation by world-leading coral reef scientist Nancy Knowlton. The talk was given 28 January 2010 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Most coral reefs are a pale shadow of their former selves. Overfishing, pollution, invasive species and increasingly greenhouse gases have taken an enormous toll: about 80% of the living coral in the Caribbean and 50% in the Pacific have already been lost.
- Fortunately, remote reefs protected from local human impacts still remain healthy, so we know that damage from global change is not yet irrevocable. The challenge for the future is to figure out how human wellbeing and coral health can co-exist, says Nancy Knowlton.
Professor Knowlton’s research focuses on coral reefs, and her analyses have led to the recognition that estimates of marine diversity are probably too low by a factor of ten.
- We know almost nothing about what actually lives on coral reefs. Estimates suggest that 25-35% of all marine species live on reefs, despite the fact that their total area is about the size of the country France.
Nancy Knowlton was professor at Yale University prior to moving to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Later, she joined the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, where she became the founding Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation.
