Comments on: One in three species of reef-building corals face extinction

By: student

student — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:41:29 +0000

Message to pactrick what do sunscreens do

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:59:02 +0000

John, I don’t know the answer to that. You can’t assess the extinction risk of an extinct species, so the paper I was writing about only looked at the threats facing living corals. Throughout the ages, several coral species will have gone extinct, but I’m not sure if any are known to have disappeared through human disturbances. Anyone else know?

By: John Thomas

John Thomas — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:20:40 +0000

I noticed you made a list of corals that are threatened by extinction, but the list includes nothing (yet) that has gone extinct.
Have we lost any of them yet?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:02:47 +0000

I assume you've heard of another menace to coral reefs, sunscreens: http://www.ehponline.org/members/2008/10966/10966.html#resu

By: Mike Spear

Mike Spear — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:56:20 +0000

Great (albeit depressing) article.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:50:59 +0000

I did some reef diving back in 1990, and even back then the dive master stated that we’d be able to see much less than he did when he started diving, and that his instructur had said the same thing. It’s shifting baselines as usual.