Recently a Navy Poseidon plane overshot a runway, plunging into Hawaii's Kaneohe Bay and plowing into a coral reef. The Navy placed a floating barrier around it to protect the reef from hazardous materials as well as draining the remaining fuel from the plane. The area, known for snorkeling, fishing, and swimming, had "only recently recovered from sewage spills in the 1960s and '70s" and was also "suffering the effects of climate change and overfishing."
Less dramatic damage happens every day when boat anchors drag across coral reefs. In places where fishing fleets or vacationers in boats congregate, significant damage to seagrass beds and reefs can occur. Every tidal cycle scraps the area within the circumference surrounding the anchor and this can happen multiple times as the boats are moved and anchored again. Large ships can destroy a much greater area, often requiring many decades for the reefs to recover. The information in the first paragraph is from Livia Albeck-Ripka's article "U.S. Navy Works to Salvage Plane From Fragile Hawaiian Bay" in the December 1, 2023 edition of the New York Times. The source for the section on anchoring is Coral Reefs: A Natural History by Charles Sheppard and published by Princeton University Press in 2021.
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AuthorI am a Northwest artist making collages from mulberry papers stamped by hand from original images that I have carved. Archives
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