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Coral Reef Diseases in the Atlantic-Caribbean

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Coral Reefs: An Ecosystem in Transition

Abstract

Coral reefs are the jewels of the tropical oceans. They boast the highest diversity of all marine ecosystems, aid in the development and protection of other important, productive coastal marine communities, and have provided millions of people with food, building materials, protection from storms, recreation and social stability over thousands of years, and more recently, income, active pharmacological compounds and other benefits. These communities have been deteriorating rapidly in recent times. The continuous emergence of coral reef diseases and increase in bleaching events caused in part by high water temperatures among other factors underscore the need for intensive assessments of their ecological status and causes and their impact on coral reefs.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Zvy and Maya Dubinsky for their kind invitation to be part of this book. Thierry Work, Kim Ritchie, Ken Sulak, Noga Stambler, and an anonymous reviewer made important comments and suggestions that helped improve this contribution. Some results presented here come from research funded by the GEF-World Bank CRTR program through the disease working group and NOAA-CRES Grant (NA170P2919) to E. Weil.

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  1. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, 9000, Mayagüez, PR, 00680, USA

    Ernesto Weil

  2. USGS Caribbean Field Station, 1300 Cruz Bay Creek, St. John, VI, 00830, USA

    Caroline S. Rogers

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  1. Ernesto Weil
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Correspondence to Ernesto Weil .

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  1. , The Mina & Everard Goodman Fac. of Life, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel

    Zvy Dubinsky

  2. , The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel

    Noga Stambler

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Weil, E., Rogers, C.S. (2011). Coral Reef Diseases in the Atlantic-Caribbean. In: Dubinsky, Z., Stambler, N. (eds) Coral Reefs: An Ecosystem in Transition. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0114-4_27

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