by Samuel Silva

Can anyone deny that most of what can be said about a city can also be said about a coral reef?

That was the point made by reef expert Robert Ginsburg of the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at a recent presentation at the IDB's Washington, D.C., headquarters. Ginsburg, who chairs the Organizing Committee for the International Year of the Reef (1997), was the featured speaker at the Bank's May Forum of the Americas luncheon.

Reefs are valuable for a variety of reasons. They provide protection for shorelines and serve as a source of food. They are also one of the main tourist attractions in much of Central America and the Caribbean.

"I propose that we place a monument somewhere in this region to these little polyps that are no bigger than the head of a pencil, and yet are responsible for these remarkable edifices," said Ginsburg.

In many respects, corals are like buildings, according to Ginsburg. In reefs, he said, "the apartment dwellers actually build their own apartments, they keep building new ones, and they use sea water: it's a developer's dream."

No housing problems

The corals are like the bricks in a building, held together with calcium carbonate, an organic cement secreted by algae. The sand produced by the disintegration of reefs fills in the whole structure, resulting in a solid mass of wave-resistant buildings.

Corals also use algae in their tissue, both to provide food as well as to take care of their waste products, turning carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Like cities, coral reefs need pure water. In coral reefs, the water purifiers are the sponges; they pump water equivalent to thousands of times their own volumes each day, simultaneously filtering out what they need for food and at the same time removing impurities.

Reefs also have gardeners, explained Ginsburg. Damselfish tend lawns of algae, guarding them jealously and farming them by removing the algae they don't want and keeping the ones that they use for food.

"Reefs are a kind of role model really for our cities," said Ginsburg. "They are enormously efficient in recycling. Everything that comes in is used over and over again. Instead of petroleum they use solar energy, and even their building material is renewable."

The bottom line of Ginsburg's presentation was, of course, conservation of coral reefs. "We are hoping that this Year of the Reef will allow us not only to gauge the conditions of the reefs in much the same way we screen the health of populations, but also to bring together researchers and governments responsible for these reefs throughout the region in a common effort to see that they're preserved."