Information on the Great Barrier Reef
What Is The Great Barrier Reef
Home of the largest coral reef system with over 2,900 individual coral reefs.
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching 2,300 kilometers with over 600 types of hard and soft corals. The Great Barrier Reef is located between Queensland in northeastern Australia. The Reef area is home to countless species of colorful fish, mollusks, and starfish, plus turtles, dolphins, and sharks thriving on this ecosystem. For a good perspective of how large this area truly is think of the size as 70 million football fields. Check out 10 fun facts about the Great Barrier Reef!
The Reef begins to form full of coral reef life after coral larvae attach to the rocks or other hard surfaces along with islands or continents. as corals grow and expand, reefs take on one of their major structures that becomes a vital barrier for breaking waves and erosion of our lands. Coral reefs are made up of coral polyps and layers of calcium carbonate. The structure of the rock made from calcium carbonate is hard and the corals growing on the rock are soft and flexible organisms that sometimes resemble plants or finger-like limbs of trees. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park:
Coral animals are soft-bodied polyp that can be made up of thousands of tiny coral creatures called polyps. The soft-bodied polyp secretes a hard outer skeleton of limestone that attaches either to rock or the dead skeletons of other polyps. Corals are animals and are single-celled organisms in the class Anthozoa in the animal phylum Cnidaria which this family also includes our ocean Jellyfish and sea anemones. Corals can be both soft and hard corals, which some hard corals are called stony corals types and are bone-like. Corals are amazing and so vital and are among the most biologically diverse regions that protect our Earth by surrounding our central lagoon and islands are made of corals.
Coral reefs are the foremost numerous of all the marine ecosystems of our ocean. Coral reefs host life food and shelter to 1 quarter of all ocean species depend upon coral reefs. Statistics show reefs solely cowl simply a tiny low small fraction of less than one percent of the earth’s surface and fewer than 2 percent of the bed surface. The world’s coral reefs are calculable at over thirty billion U.S. greenbacks every year and around 172 billion U.S. greenbacks aka dollars, every year providing food, bounds protection, medicines, and jobs supported business. The downfall to our coral is that the ocean is warming, the waters are coping with activity and carbonic acid gas levels got to be reduced.
Basic Facts About Ocean Coral Reef
Saving coral reef is much like saving trees in our land forest as for saving coral is just our underwater sea life of plants so many animals and humans depend on to survive. Coral Reefs are the largest structures on the earth of biological origin. The reef has so much color and is home to almost 25% of all known marine species. Coral reefs have algae growing all over the base rock but the algae are not just planted life it’s living creatures and animals called polyps. The largest Reef is the Great Barrie Reef. Belize has an amazing Barrier Reef with must-see photos and 70 hard coral species, 35 soft coral species, over 500 species of fish, and hundreds of invertebrates. Study’s show more than 90 percent of the one world Oceans coral reefs will die by 2050.
What are the Main Functions of Coral Reefs: Coral reefs are important for many different reasons like containing the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. They protect coastlines from the damaging effects of wave action and tropical storms. provide habitats and shelter for almost all organisms of our one world Ocean. Corals are found across the world’s ocean, in both shallow and deep water, but reef-building corals are only found in shallow tropical and subtropical waters.
Reef Safe Sunscreen
Our guide to reef-safe sunscreen and sun protection, written by the experts. 2 chemicals found in sunscreens that cause direct harm to corals: oxybenzone & octinoxate.
Always use reef-safe sunscreen without harmful chemicals. Planting trees to help reduce runoff pollution as we all know all urban streams and rivers flow to our one world Ocean. Use left mulch over chemical fertilizers or organic fertilizers that will not harm our ecosystems, watersheds, and or wild rivers. Fertilizers can add excess phosphorous that cause algae blooms.
Ocean Blue is doing all we can to lower runoff pollution that is affecting our ocean and planting thousands of trees to help lower water temperature flowing into our river and our ocean. Using less water also helps lower chemicals for chlorine is used to treat most of our water nowadays and is not healthy for our rivers. The value of coral reefs has been estimated at 30 billion U.S. dollars.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition seeking to safeguard eighty-three coral reef species underneath the U.S. species Act that boards all U.S. coastal waters. Cool link of Coral facts:
This reef website page is to inspire the reader to want to help save our ocean and the reef. If you would like to help add more facts or content please submit your reef content to Volunteers@oceanblueproject.org add it in the subject line (saveouroceanreef).
Reef Safe Sunscreen
- Manda Organic SPF 50 Sun Paste
- *Raw Love SPF 35 All-natural Mineral Sunscreen
- Thinksport SPF 50 Sunscreen
- All Good SPF 30 Sport Sunscreen Lotion
- Babo Botanicals SPF 30 Clear Zinc Lotion
- Suntegrity Natural Mineral Sunscreen
- Badger SPF 30 Unscented Sunscreen Cream
- Raw Elements SPF 30 Certified Natural Sunscreen
- Stream2Sea SPF 30 Mineral Sunblock
- Loving Naturals Clear Body SPF 30+ All-natural Sunscreen
- Reef Safe Oxybenzone Free Biodegradable SPF 50 Sunscreen
- Banana Boat Simply Protect SPF 50+ Sunscreen (spray, not lotion)
What are Tide Pools
Tide pools or rock pools are shallow pools of seawater that form on the rocky intertidal shore. Many of these pools exist as separate bodies of water only at low tide. The inter-tidal zone is periodically exposed to sun and wind, conditions that can cause barnacles to become desiccated. These animals, therefore, need to be well adapted to water loss. Their calcite shells are impermeable, and they possess two plates that they slide across their mouth opening when not feeding. These plates also protect against predication.
