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Chapter 2, ““And Then We Wept”: Coral Death on Record,” documents the despair side of the pendulum as it contemplates the existing modes and technologies for recording coral bleaching and death. Here, the trajectory is typically of devastation and gloom, as the numbers are depressing at best. Much of the chapter focuses on the third global bleaching event at the Great Barrier Reef, documenting how scientists have both recorded and narrated this event to themselves and to the general public. I examine the role of monitoring in particular, considering whether enhancing scientific knowledge about corals through monitoring is an act of hope, in that it supports conservation action, or one of despair, as it stifles such action and masks the resulting inaction with more and more monitoring. Finally, the chapter shows that even in the world of numbers and maps, “bright spots” and optimistic indexes still rear their more hopeful heads.

This chapter explores the diversity of coral reefs and atolls and the factors governing their patterns of distribution. It highlights the important reasons for studying and mapping coral reefs, and describes the major factors that threaten the coral reef ecosystem. Reef ecosystems are now facing overexploitation brought about by sophisticated technology that supports intense fishing and collecting of corals and mollusks. Another threat to coral reefs is coral bleaching, or the loss of photosynthesizing symbionts due to progressive global warming.

Today coral reefs, perhaps more than other marine systems, are suffering from numerous pressures. As a result, many have collapsed as functioning ecosystems. Nutrient pollution, sewage pollution, industrial pollution, landfill, coral diseases and diseases of other important groups of organisms, as well as over-extraction of fish, invertebrates and even the limestone rock itself, have all contributed to the demise of over one-third of the world’s reefs. More recently, climate change, notably causing a sea temperature rise, which in turn has led to coral bleaching and the death of component corals, has added to the stress imposed on this ecosystem. In the future, ocean acidification, sea level rise and an increase in the frequency and severity of storms will add further stress. Many of these factors interact, making the precise responses of reefs to these changes very complex.