Hawaii Initiates Plan To Fight Coral Bleaching

By controlling fishing activities, establishing new Marine protected patches on the sea and controlling the runoff population that arises from the land, Hawaiian officials have started their campaign to rid their surrounding waters off the effects of global warming.

Due to the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the temperatures in Hawaii's oceans have increased, causing corals to discharge algae which they rely on for food. Without this algae, the corals will turn white and die. Over the past two summers, vast stretches of the reef have turned white and some of the coral on these stretches have already died, according to VOA News.

The state officials are being aided with the help of the fishermen community. The Head of the Hawaiian fisherman's group is confident that the plan to eradicate coral bleaching from the reefs will be successful. Because of the deterioration of the surrounding habitat, the number of fish which swim towards the shore will decrease, which is why the fishermen want to bring back the reef, according to Hawaii Fishermen's Alliance for Conservation and Tradition President Phil Fernandez.

However, the state limiting the fishing activities to a certain degree is a matter of discussion between the officials and the group, towards which they are open for discussion. Hawaii's Division of Aquatic Resources proposed numerous measures to help the corals recover from bleaching due to being exposed by warmer temperatures, in a report from ABC News.

Bruce Anderson, administrator of the Division of Aquatic Resources said, "We are going to have future bleaching events, and the water is going to get warmer. And it's going to happen again and again."

Before any of the proposed solutions are implemented however, public meetings will be held to rigorously discuss their validity and their consequence. 80 scientists around the world were called to come up with solutions for the existing problem and have come up with various suggestions to that will be most effective at rehabilitating the coral reefs.

Although the proposals seem promising, they have to face long public approval process, according to News24.