Coral reefs aren’t being protected against climate change despite the protective zones set up to do just that, say researchers in a report just published in PLoS ONE. (Paper and press release)

Lead researcher Nick Graham from Newcastle University says that the No-Take Areas (NTAs) set up in the 1960s and 70s were devised when climate change wasn’t the big deal it is now. These zones have had no effect on the health of the coral, he says, and are in the wrong place.

The NTAs are often small, and are surrounded by exploited areas, the report points out. The researchers looked at different fish populations in areas that were protected, and areas that weren’t. The results were stark – “irrespective of body size and trophic categorization, NTAs provided no clear benefits for any of the fish groups in terms of their change in response to coral decline,” the report reads. The work follows a report earlier this year that fishing statistics for tropical regions were wrong, and that overfishing is a much bigger problem than thought.

Elsewhere, Australian researchers are saying that warmer oceans will mean more coral diseases. They, like Graham and colleagues, traced the fate of a reef after a major bleaching event in 1998, but in the Great Barrier Reef off Australian, rather than the Indian Ocean.

Other scientists, including the group The Nature Conservancy, have prepared a statement called the Honolulu declaration, calling for greenhouse gas reductions to prevent acid eating up coral. The future for coral reefs, it has to be said, looks bleak.

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