
Sunscreen Ingredient Damages Coral Reefs - DarkContinent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/10/20/after-sunscreen-protects-humans-it-massacres-coral-reefs/
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pvaldes
Well, is a pay per view article, so I can not guarantee it, but it seems that
this is not about coral colonies breaking down and bleaching; Is more complex.

Coral bleaching is a condition when coral colonies either die suddenly
exposing the white skeleton, or lose their green/blue colour so the coral is
alive, but in trouble. This condition can be triggered by many factors: Too
much grazers, other corals, coral killing bacteria, protozoans, storms
breaking and displacing the corals to areas with inaccurate light or currents,
hot water... and also chemicals

But what the Dr. Craig Downs and other members of the Haereticus Environmental
Laboratory have found is, instead, that the planulae are damaged by chemicals.

A planulae is like a tiny flat slug, (hence its name: Plane = flat, ula =
small) swimming freely in the sea. Planulae are wandering "coral babies", not
coral reefs. They do not have an skeleton still.

When a planula settles in an appropriate place starts promptly to creating its
inner skeleton. As appropriate places are limited, natural mortality in
planulae at this phase is very big, with or without chemicals. The problem is
that in sunscreen lotion presence it encases itself in its own developping
skeleton instead, and die. And this happens even at very low doses of
oxybenzone in the water.

 _So what is the real effect of this?_

Unclear, still. We need to pay more attention to the younger colonies. The
long term effect of the chemical could be even to _increase_ the diversity in
the area.

Let suppose that we wipe some planulae of the population. Lots of empty spaces
are available for the other. Fast growing dominant species with small planulae
could be taking the majority of the loses. In this case more opportunities
will appear for the more delicate slow growing corals, or for species with
stronger planulae, or for corals reproducting in winter months. We could have
a sucession, without any visible trace of bleaching.

If all species are sensitive, _something that we do not know still_ ,
eventually we'll have a collapse of the reef for this, but not tomorrow
probably. Oxybenzone has been around since 1980 at least and many reefs in
heavily populated touristic areas are still here. I'll bet for the "natural"
succession theory.

Adult corals could just try to create some resistence. Colonies can live for
hundreds or even thousands of years, and they are poisoned by its neighbourgs
almost every single day of its long life, with not noticeable harmful effects.
They coevolved and are really customed to deal with many types of chemicals.

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betimsl
No body will stop using it, I can guarantee that.

~~~
dade_
The article notes that there are a few sunscreens that don't have the
ingredient, so awareness and consumer demand can have a huge impact.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Regulation would help as well, similar to how many states have outlawed
plastic beads that were used as exfoliators in body care products (those
plastic beads never biodegrade, and were polluting bodies of water).

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-plastic-
micro...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-plastic-microbeads-
ban_55ef5442e4b03784e276ff31)

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AjithAntony
summary:

> Not only did the study determine that a tiny amount of sunscreen is all it
> takes to begin damaging the delicate corals — the equivalent of a drop of
> water in a half-dozen Olympic-sized swimming pools — it documented three
> different ways that the ingredient oxybenzone breaks the coral down, robbing
> it of life-giving nutrients and turning it ghostly white.

