http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/03/17/m...
The world's coral reefs are under threat. Overfishing, unsustainable tourism, coastal development, pollution, the global aquarium trade and climate change are having a devastating effect on these fragile ecosystems, according to the International Coral Reef Initiative.
In Mexico and across the world, the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs are under threat from human activity.
The group has designated 2008 as International Year of the Reef in a bid to publicize the reefs' precarious predicament.
Meanwhile fellow conservation group, Nature Conservancy, warns that if destruction continues at its current rate, 70 percent of the world's coral reefs will have disappeared within 50 years.
A report released in January by the World Conservation Union concluded that hurricanes and rising sea temperatures in 2005 -- the hottest year since records began -- caused large-scale examples coral bleaching, in which corals lose the essential algae that coat their surfaces, devastating more than half of the Caribbean's reefs.