Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.
That includes not cutting down the rain forest, and stop polluting the ocean because once we kill the coral reefs and the rain forest, this earth is toast.
Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.
Oman overall has great animal and plant biodiversity because it has mountains, desert, coastal areas and rich coral reefs.
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
I have watched the river and the sea for a lifetime. I have seen rivers rob soil from the roots of trees until the giants came foundering down. I have watched shores slip and perish, the channels silt and change; what was beach become a swamp and a headland tumble into the sea. An island has eroded in silent pain since my boyhood, and reefs have become islands. Yet the old people used to say, People pass away, but not the land. It remains forever. Maybe that is so. The land changes. The land continues. The sea changes. The sea remains.
Coral reefs are under assault. They are rapidly being degraded by human activities. They are over-fished, bombed and poisoned. They are smothered by sediment, and choked by algae growing on nutrient-rich sewage and fertilizer run-off. They are damaged by irresponsible tourism and are being severely stressed by the warming of the world's oceans. Each of these pressures is bad enough in itself, but together, the cocktail is proving lethal.
I can mention many moments that were unforgettable and revelatory. But the most single revelatory three minutes was the first time I put on scuba gear and dived on a coral reef. It's just the unbelievable fact that you can move in three dimensions.
I watched the coral reefs that I studied as a student vanish in the blink of an eye, and for decades I wrote and spoke of ocean obituaries. But big scary problems without solutions lead to apathy, not action.
Think about this: If water is the blood of our planet flowing through veinous rivers, streams, and into our oceans, what does that make coral? Our heart. We simply cannot survive without our heart; therefore, it's mandatory we heal and protect our coral reefs now.
Coral reefs represent some of the worlds most spectacular beauty spots, but they are also the foundation of marine life: without them many of the seas most exquisite species will not survive.
You simply cannot make more (reefs), unless you have a few thousand years to wait.
Some experts look at global warming, increased world temperature, as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world. And there's no question that it is a factor, but it's preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.
Permissiveness, immorality, pornography, drugs, the power of peer pressure-all these and more-cause many to be tossed about on a sea of sin and crushed on the jagged reefs of lost opportunities, forfeited blessings, and shattered dreams.
During the 1960 election, I saw Richard Nixon as the winner.
The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.
I saw how, when my brother smoked reefer, it made my mother cry. He was 16 at the time. And I saw that she broke down and cried. I never wanted to hurt my mother, so I kept away from drugs.
Then after I saw the scoreboard that we were tied, I was really happy, because I really wanted to win.
My idea of an amusement park story is getting adventurers to go tour environmental disaster areas. After all, if the entire Great Barrier Reef gets killed, which seems like an extremely lively possibility, what are you going to do with all that rotting limestone?
Reef aquariums are definitely the pinnacle of the hobby.
I saw a very good Hollywood film the other day. It was about Cole Porter.
If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of the lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the 'comfort' of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment.
The main line of the Yugoslav Attack has become just too vast for most players to study in depth, and anyone intending to venture into such tricky waters needs to have an intimate knowledge of all the hidden reefs.
I can't remember what the last film I saw was, as I can't smoke or drink in cinemas.
Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.
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