[Judy Pino] 
Did you know that more than 
half of the U.S. population
lives within 50 miles 
of the coasts?
About 180 million people visit 
our coasts each year.
Also, one out of every six 
jobs in the United States
is marine-related, generating 
approximately $54 billion
in goods and services annually.
And a big part of this equation 
is our nation's coral reefs.
Hello, and welcome 
to Green Scene,
EPA's series of environmental 
podcasts that you can take
with you.
I'm Judy Pino with the 
Office of Multimedia.
Packed with the same astonishing 
diversity of life as tropical
rainforests, coral reefs are as 
important as they are beautiful.
These incredible ecosystems 
play an important role
in our interconnected planet, 
but coral reefs are also
in serious trouble.
Dr. William Fisher is 
a researcher with
EPA's Office of Research 
and Development's
Gulf Breeze Laboratory, 
and studying the reef
is what he does.
He's with us today to tell us 
more about EPA's efforts
to stop the loss
of coral reefs.
Welcome, Dr. Fisher.
Thanks for being
with us.
[Dr. William Fisher] 
Thank you.
It's a pleasure
to be here.
[Judy Pino] 
I want to begin by telling 
people just, what is the
coral reef and what is the 
importance that they have
in our ecosystem?
[Dr. William Fisher] 
A coral reef is really a 
community of organisms.
It's the soft corals, the stony 
corals, or the hard corals,
that you see.
It's the fish, the sea stars, 
the sea anemones, the urchins.
All of these compose a 
community that's called
the reef community.
And all provide some services, 
some value, to the ecosystem.
In particular, the stony corals 
provide habitat for the fishes,
which support our 
fisheries as well
as our recreational fishing.
The stony corals and the 
soft corals provide --
bring tourists, they attract 
a lot of tourists,
swimmers and snorkelers.
And, of course, the stony corals 
also provide wave protection.
They protect shorelines from 
erosion and storm surge,
so they provide a lot of 
things that we've become
very accustomed to along 
our coastlines.
[Judy Pino] 
But there are problems 
with coral reefs.
What is happening to them
and what are the causes?
[Dr. William Fisher] 
Worldwide, our coral reefs have 
declined as much as 20 percent
over the last
40 years.
In the Caribbean alone, 
we've lost as much as
80 percent of
our coral.
And a lot of coral reefs 
have just vanished.
[Judy Pino] 
What are some of
the stressors?
[Dr. William Fisher] 
Well, there are a lot 
of possible causes
for these declines.
Most people think almost 
immediately of global
climate change, because global 
climate change has increased
seawater temperatures to levels 
that corals are just not used
to, and so they become 
stressed, they bleach,
which is a loss of their 
photosynthetic algae,
and then they don't recover and 
become susceptible to disease
and eventually die.
But there are also human 
activities that cause
a lot of problems.
Just physical contact with the 
corals can be very damaging.
And then, of course, there's 
the land-based stressors.
When we develop on land, 
we generate pollutants,
sediment, nutrients, 
contaminants that get
into the watershed, 
move down our rivers
and streams and eventually 
reach the coastal zone,
where they can affect the 
coral reefs as well.
[Judy Pino] 
So, you don't have to be in the 
water to affect the reef.
You can do a lot of 
damage on land.
[Dr. William Fisher] 
That's right, and land-based 
decisions sometimes affect
coral reefs.
[Judy Pino] 
So, what is the EPA doing 
to save the reefs?
[Dr. William Fisher] 
Well, EPA has a very specific 
charge under the authority
of the Clean Water Act to 
protect aquatic resources,
and one way that EPA can then 
definitely protect and reduce
the stresses on coral reefs is 
to maintain high water quality
both on the reefs and in 
the watershed where some
of these stressors originate.
And this is where we come in, 
in the Office of Research
and Development.
We're working very hard to 
try to figure out the best
assessment protocols to 
evaluate the health
of a coral reef.
We're going to try to work with 
the states and territories and
their particular systems, 
reef systems,
to determine what expectations 
for coral health or conditions
should be.
We don't really know right now 
what the best condition is.
[Judy Pino] 
But you do do a lot of work on 
the EPA's ocean survey vessel,
the Bold.
[Dr. William Fisher] 
That's correct.
We're very fortunate to have 
the Bold because scientific
work on coral reefs is 
obviously a challenge
because it's under water, 
and being able to have
the Bold, which will carry up 
to 15 scientists at a time,
to take us to the reefs and 
house us and house our
scientific apparatus is 
really a huge plus.
[Judy Pino] 
EPA also participates in the 
U.S. Coral Reef Task Force.
Tell me a little
bit about that.
[Dr. William Fisher] 
EPA is a member of the 
Coral Reef Task Force
along with other 
federal agencies,
and they generate and develop 
overall comprehensive plans
for the protection, 
which includes water
quality protection.
[Judy Pino] 
Now, I understand the sharp 
decline in coral reefs
worldwide has inspired 
this year, 2008, to be
designated as the International 
Year of the Reef.
[Dr. William Fisher] 
This is really just 
a reflection of the
worldwide concern 
over coral reefs.
Communities worldwide, 
especially island
jurisdictions that have a lot 
of coral reefs realize the
great treasure that 
we're losing.
And it is important that we 
begin to recognize this
both at the institutional level 
as well as the public level.
And the International Year of 
the Reef allows institutions,
federal, state and local 
governments to become
more involved, to make plans 
and to drive strategies that
will help protect the coral 
reefs, and they can do this
because of greater 
public involvement,
greater public awareness.
That's what the International 
Year of the Reef should bring.
[Judy Pino] 
Well, thank you, Dr. Fisher, 
for sharing with us all this
wonderful information on a 
beautiful and important
part of our ecology.
Thank you 
so much.
[Dr. William Fisher] 
Thank you.
[Judy Pino] 
And for more information on how 
you can protect the reef,
just visit our Web site at 
www.epa.gov/owow/oceans/coral
or www.epa.gov/multimedia/ 
epainaction to find out
what all these scientists 
are doing.
See you next time 
on Green Scene.