World Wildlife Fund

Bill Eichbaum

Hello everyone! My name is Bill Eichbaum and I am vice president and managing director of the WWF-US marine program. I'd like to welcome you to WWF's WAVE FORWARD Ocean Blog.

I'm really excited to kick off this conversation between you - the public - and our WWF marine conservation experts from around the world. In this forum, we hope to exchange information on our changing marine environment, global conservation efforts and ways we can all make a difference. We hope that throughout this campaign, you will take the opportunity to ask our featured marine conservationists questions on the work they will discuss, including:

• Working with fishermen to reduce the incidental catch of turtles
• Creating an energy blue print in the Galapagos
• Helping eliminate the key environmental and social impacts associated with seafood farming.

I'd like to take my turn on this blog to discuss an issue that is harming the livelihoods of local people around the world and threatening our world's marine biodiversity - the deterioration of coral reefs due to threats like tourism, poor fishing practices, and the effects of climate change. It is this issue that sparked WWF and our partners to declare 2008 the International Year of the Reef. This is a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about the value and importance of coral reefs and to motivate action to protect them.I wanted to queue this topic up for you to review as we observe Memorial Day weekend, especially as many of us will be out on the water or playing on a beach.

I look forward to answering any questions/comments you might have on this subject when we're all back online on Tuesday. In the meantime, please take a look at our new WAVE FORWARD website, www.wwfwaveforward.org, to learn more about our work.

Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend

Posted 28 May 2008

Kelly T. wrote: What are you asking people to do through the Reef campaign?

Bill's response:
Well, when we launched the International Year of the Reef, WWF and our partners made some calls for actions so that the area of coral reefs under protection could be increased globally from the current level of 15 percent to 30 percent. These call for actions included

• That protected areas be carefully designed as systems that are able to resist or recover rapidly from the multiple stresses they face, including those caused by climate change;
• That within these protected area systems there be significant areas where human uses are significantly limited so that already stressed marine species can recover; and
• That governments and civil society work together to achieve the effective management of all coral reef protected areas.

Unless these actions are taken, there is little likelihood that the world's coral systems will be there to sustain and protect future generations.

Posted 28 May 2008

Angie B. wrote I always thought WWF worked with animals like pandas and polar bears. What type of work are you guys doing with corals?

Bill's response:
Well, we still work with pandas and polar bears, but coral conservation is equally important! The three top marine areas where we do coral reef conservation work are: the Coral Triangle, the Mesoamerican Reef and Coastal East Africa.

What's really amazing about the Coral Triangle - and why we're trying so hard to conserve it ? is that it holds the richest concentration of iridescent corals, fish, crustaceans, mollusks and marine plants in the world. There, we are working to ensure the health of the region's natural treasures (including coral reefs) and the millions of livelihoods that depend on it. We are working with six countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste - to establish mechanisms that provide long-term financial and other support for effectively managed marine protected areas and locally managed marine areas in the Coral Triangle.

The Mesoamerican Reef (MAR) is another vital marine area where we are focusing our work. It hosts more than 65 species of stony coral and is the Atlantic Ocean's largest coral reef. The reef -- that stretches nearly 700 miles from the northern tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to the Bay Islands in northern Honduras - is part of a larger interconnected system of currents and habitats that stretch throughout the Caribbean Basin and beyond and is one of the region's greatest natural assets. Its massive structure provides an important defense against storms and coastal erosion, while the living reef and associated ecosystems support recreation and commercial fishing.

What's particularly valuable to us as we do research on corals in the MAR is what we learn about the effects of climate change on our oceans. In 2007, we supported a survey that showed that rising temperatures, altered rainfall and coral bleaching are among the main threats to Central America's Mesoamerican Reef.

Coastal East Africa is another place where we've helped conserve important marine areas of Coastal East Africa that cover more than 200,000 square miles along the coasts of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. This ecoregion supports a great diversity of plant and animal life, as well as some of the Indian Ocean's most diverse coral reefs, including fringing coral reefs that form continual stretches of 60 miles or more, and constitute most of the estimated total of 1,000 miles of reefs along these shores. The reefs fringing the Tanzanian islands of Pemba, Zanzibar and Mafia are among the finest remaining reefs in the region with extensive and varied coral reef habitats with high coral cover and diversity. Mafia Island's reefs, for example, support 350 species of fish and 40 classes of corals. Here, we work to enhance nature's resilience to impacts from climate change and implement a framework for sustainable development that protects nature and provides for the people who rely on it for their livelihoods and survival.