Seaweed Wages Chemical Warfare on Coral

The more that outside influences kill off coral, the more space seaweed has to grow. the seaweed

grows much faster that the coral so it covers the places coral used to so it can't repopulate and

rebuild the coral reefs. Some of the things that are killing coral are climate change, over fishing,

disease, and excess nutrients that come from fertilizer runoff. But when the coral is dead the

seaweed moves in and leaves a layer of toxic waste over the dead coral so that new coral can't

grow. When seaweed comes into contact with coral it releases a special organic compounds

known as Terpenes, which probably originally gave the plants toxic protection against infectious

microbes, or fish looking for a quick meal, but it causes coral bleaching which kills the coral and

the coral has no defense against this.

This can affect the whole world because the entire ocean's ecosystem is being disrupted and has

the chance to effect every ecosystem in the world because all the ecosystems are connected in

some way.

It is my opinion that scientists should find a way that gives the coral some type of defense

against the seaweed because i prefer coral over seaweed even though both are necessary for the

ocean's ecosystem.