CoralMining

Coral Mining

Purpose of Mining

    Coral is mined throughout the world and has many uses. Coral can be fashioned into jewelry to sell to tourists, used in the medical field for bone graph clinical trials, made into lime to use to fertilized agricultural fields (especially in Australia). Live coral collected to be used by the marine aquarium industry while dead coral is made into calcium supplements. The most common use of coral is to turn it into limestone or a cement substitute for use as a building material. In many island nations this is the cheapest material to use to build their roads, houses, and seawalls.

• Construction
  • Limestone
    • Coral can be made into limestone or a cement substitute for use as a building material
  • Building Material for Roads, Houses, Seawalls/Groins/Jetties
    • Coral is the main construction material in many islands, such as the Maldives, where there is no cheaper option
• Calcium
  • Dead coral is made into calcium supplements
• Jewelry/Souvenirs
  • Coral jewelry and dried coral are often sold to tourists and exporters
• Marine Aquaria
  • Live coral is collected and used by the marine aquarium industry
• Medical Use
  • Coral is used for bone graph clinical trials
• Mining for Lime
  • Especially in Australia because farmland was very acidic, lime was added to fertilizer to decrease acidity and thus increase yields. Most of the lime came from burnt coral from the Great Barrier Reef. This was a very cheap source of lime because only a permit was required to harvest the coral in a specific area

(Dulvy et. al., Naseer, Abdulla, Coral Reef Alliance, Daley & Griggs)

Methods for Mining

Coral can be mined in one of two ways. Dynamite can be used to blast the coral into bits to be picked up. This negatively affects a large area of the reef. Or collectors can manually retrieve the coral and break up the larger corals using iron bars into more manageable pieces to carry inshore.

• Dynamite Blasting
  • Affects a large area of the coral reef
• Manual Removal
  • Collectors use small boats, free-dive, or wade into the coral reefs to collect the corals
  • Large corals are broken up into small, manageable pieces using iron bars

(Dulvy et. al., Naseer, Abdulla, Coral Reef Alliance)

Location of Mining

Coral mining can take place anywhere there is coral available in a convenient location such as off of cays in shallow water. Mining usually occurs at low tide when it is easier to gather the coral. Some prominent locations for mining activity include: the Great Barrier Reef, the Maldives, Panama, Indonesia, East Africa, and the general area of the South Pacific.

Coral mining can really take place anywhere there is coral available in a convenient location (off cays in shallow water, usually at low tide). Prominent locations include the Great Barrier Reef, the Maldives, Panama, Indonesia, East Africa, the the general area of the South Pacific (Caras & Pasternak, Daley & Griggs, Shepherd et. al., Guzman et. al., and Clark & Edwards).

Impacts of Mining

• loss in biodiversity due to:
  • loss of substrate
  • increased sedimentation
  • more algae
  • land retreat
  • increased vulnerability to waves and natural disasters
  • decrease in recruitment (mainly because there is not enough substrate available)
• some reefs that have been mined and left untouched for 20 years have still not recovered because the biodiversity of the reef depends on corals and because corals do not have sufficient substrates to attach themselves to, coral cannot survive
• Surprisingly, the harvesting of live corals, etc. for the aquarium industry do not have much of an impact of the reef. This is because only pieces of coral are taken and much of it is left intact. Also, because corals can regenerate from broken off fragments, it is generally observed that harvesting can be sustainable when the right methods are used
• Many of the natives in Indonesia and miners almost a century ago did not regard coral as a living being. To them, it was merely rock and it would do no harm to remove it because it had significant economic value
• economic loss of mining to local communities
  • less tourism/ecotourism money coming into the community
  • the destruction/mismanagement of 1sq. km. of reef results in a loss of up to $6.6 million
  • for every $10 is profit made from mining, the community loses $254 (from the fishery and tourism industries)
• economic value of mining to local communities
  • the value of material taken from reefs is estimated at about $375 billion per year

(Caras & Pasternak, Daley & Griggs)

Sources

• http://www.dulvy.com/publications/pre_2000/Dulvy_etal_1995_AMBIO.pdf
• http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5623E/x5623e0o.htm
• http://www.coral.org/resources/issue_briefs/mining_and_harvesting

(not sure how to link to other sources)