The Caribbean has a system of defense against deadly storms, however, it’s slowly disappearing.
The hurricane Beryl and other storms could be much more deadly without these famous ocean creatures.
by Benji Jones
Infrared satellite images of the hurricane Beryl in the afternoon of Monday.NOAA
Benji Jones is an environmental reporter in the senior position at Vox covering the loss of biodiversity as well as climate changes. Prior to joining Vox the newspaper, he worked as a senior reporter for energy at Insider. Benji used to be an animal researcher.
The hurricane season is in full swing and is off to a an alarming start.
This morning, Beryl, the first named hurricane of the year struck coastal islands of the Southeast Caribbean as an Category 4 storm. The Grenadines as well as other islands of the Lesser Antilles including St. Lucia and Grenada are battling fierce storms and potentially life-threatening flooding.
The storm, moving west towards Central America, is already record-breaking. Beryl was the first Category 4 hurricaneand more easterlythan any other previously recorded storm. The storm also intensified with record-breaking speed for an early storm of the year. It went From Category 1 into Category 4 within fewer than 24 hours.
Caribbean nations are the most vulnerable to hurricanes for the reason that they tend to be on their paths. The majority of these storms originate within the Atlantic Ocean, west of northern Africa and move to the west.
However, the Caribbean islands also boast one of the most effective protection systems against superstorms such as Beryl. The system is hidden beneath the sea, it’s not expensive and all-natural. It’s coral reefs.
In fact, the majority of Caribbean countries are surrounded an array of vibrant coral reefs and living animals which act to act as sea walls. These hard, rock-like creatures assist in damping waves and decrease flooding. Research suggests that coral reefs aid many countries to avoid billions of dollars worth of flood damage every year, both in the Caribbean and around the world.
The main issue, and more urgent more than ever is that these vital ecosystems are disappearing precisely because the hurricanes are becoming more destructive.
An all-natural hurricane defense system
Every piece of coral found on reefs is actually a community of tiny creatures, known as polyps. They build skeletons made of calcium carbonate, which is not like a snail that grows shells, and create an underlying structure for the reef.
These coral skeletons protect coastlines from storms.
In essence waves lose energy once they crash into coral reefs. The higher and larger it is the reef greater energy that is lost to the ocean due to the same reason that coastal cities build breakwaters that are made of rocks to safeguard the shoreline. It is remarkable that studies have shown that coral reefs disperse over 90 percent of the energy generated by waves. Waves that have less energy are slower and smaller and do not cause with as much destruction when they hit the shore.
Just a tiny difference in a reef’s size can have a significant impact in the risk. Risk of flooding is usually determined by what’s known as”the 100 year flood zone”an area where the probability of flooding during a particular year is just 1 percent. When coral reefs across the US decrease by one meter in elevation, a study revealed that the zone in the US could grow by an area of 104 square km (or approximately 26,000 acres, which is nearly double the size of Manhattan) which would put around 51,000 more residents at danger of flooding.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean.Getty Images
This service, which coral reefs provide at no cost is worth the price.
All across the US and the United States, including Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, coral reefs protect the homes of over 18,000 people. They also help to prevent $1.8 billion of flood damage every annually, as per to an assessment of the US Geological Survey (USGS). A little earlier research discovered that, worldwide the number was more four billion dollars.
“Without reefs, the annual damage would be more than twice as high,” authors of the study that was released in Nature Communications,wrote.
Caribbean countries are among the ones who benefit the greatly from the coral reefs as well as the damage they can prevent. According to the Nature Communicationsstudy, released in 2018, researchers evaluated countries according to the extent of the damage coral reefs prevent from flooding in relation in relation to GDP. 8 of the Top 10 countries are Caribbean countries.
No. 3 is Grenada in Grenada, the place where the hurricane Beryl struck on Monday.
Reefs disappearing
The many benefits reefs offer can make the loss of them more terrifying. They are actually losing them, particularly within the warm(ing) oceans in the Caribbean.
The amount that live corals found on Caribbean reefs has decreased by around eighty percent over the past few decades. In some areas, such as that of the Florida Keys, the declines are much more dramatic. In comparison to the 1970s, the majority of Caribbean coral reefs have become nearly unrecognizable.
Elkhorn coral – a species similar to moose antlers, and renowned for its ability to weaken wavesis in particular danger. The 1970s saw it expanded over more than 30 percent of Caribbean reefs. In the 1980s, the coverage of coral had dwindled down to just 2 percent and is likely to shrink even more over the past few years.
Many human actions have led to the destruction of Caribbean coral, ranging from fishing to construction of the coast in the Caribbean, and also some natural dangers, such as disease. The most persistent and enduring issue, however, concerns climate change.
The warm ocean water triggers an essential relationship between coral and the bacteria living in it to breakdown. As it breaks down the coral begins to turn white — also known as “bleach” -and then starve. Corals that are bleached often have more problems surviving other threats and end up dying.
This means that climate change isn’t just creating more severe tropical storms and destructive, but it reduce the natural defences we have against these storms. This is a crucial alarming fact The warming of the ocean makes storms more risky not only because they’re getting stronger or dumping more rain, but because, in areas such as the Caribbean we’re losing the resilience to the iconic ecosystems that provide it.