Every four years an International Reef Symposium is held at a different location around the world. For this first time in 30 years this meeting is being held here on the American mainland: Fort Lauderdale. Unfortunately, they have bad news to deliver.
Worldwide, scientists say, more than a fifth of the world’s reefs are already believed lost and scientists predict another fourth will vanish in the next three decades if human impacts aren’t lessened.
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A study by Nova Southeastern University, based in nearby Davie and the symposium’s local organizer, has shown reefs account for 60,000 jobs and a $6 billion economic impact in southeast Florida alone.
But population growth, overuse, overfishing and pollution have severely damaged the world’s third largest reef system, and the only barrier reef system in North America, stretching from the Dry Tortugas, south of Key West, north to the St. Lucie Inlet.
More about the symposium here. And 2008 is the International Year of the Reef.
