I hope you are being sarcastic. If you did this just so I would answer all your questions, look it up yourself. I have an 18 hour class load, part time job, and volunteer work to keep me busy enough.Originally Posted by Papa Bear
What you just said sounds totally idiotic to ANY scientist, and probably to others not in the science community. Just because you don't understand the science done in the study doesn't mean it is wrong. Please document the sources that say everything is just peachy. I'm about to graduate with degrees in animal science, wildlife biology, and international agriculture, and I need to think of a new career path if that is the case. I would love to be out of a job, unfortunately, humans tend to screw up things like the environment.
The study may not be entirely right, but it does support compelling evidence that ingredients are causing increasing viral infections in algae, leading to coral bleaching.
1) They didn't pull the 25% of sunscreen wash off out of their ass. If you read the study, they did a controlled experiment. It is pretty easy to check, actually. The actual procedure is on page 10 of the study, 11 of the pdf. I posted it below since you obviously didn't read the entire study, only the parts I posted. It is a 34 page pdf. I'm not going to post EVERYTHING from it when I talk about it.
"Quantification of sunscreen release in seawater To estimate the amount of UV filters and preservatives released from sunscreen formulae, 2 mg sunscreen cm-2 (dose recommended by the Food and Drug Administration, US) were applied to the hands of two volunteers. The hands were then immersed in 2 L of 0.45 μm filtered seawater at 24 °C for 20 min. Hands without sunscreen applications were used as controls. All experiments were repeated three times. The percentage of sunscreen released into the seawater was estimated by HPLC analyses on the sunscreen and seawater samples. To this regard some authors suggest that the sunscreen dose recommended by FDA is much lower than the amount actually utilized by tourists (Giokas et al. 2007 and literature therein), so that the quantity of sunscreen released during an usual bath could be far higher than that estimated in this study." (Danovaro 2008)
2) The study never claims there are coral reefs in California. The use of ca. before data is an abbreviation for approximately. Double check your scientific abbreviations.
3) I never claimed humans were causing global warming or that there was a HUGE jump in temperatures all of a sudden, but there is scientific data that shows global temperatures are increasing slowly. This is concurrent with the data that arctic and antarctic ice is decreasing. Here is a link about decreasing arctic ice. I have little doubt polar bears will go extinct in my lifetime because of it, which sucks because they are one of my favorite animals.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2006-107
4) There are some links below about problems with coral reef health.
http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/corp_site/k...nfluences.html
http://www.reeffutures.org/topics/pu...s/cots-bro.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0108150436.htm
5) People don't like to realize that they are swimming in a bunch of crap, but when you get down to it, the ocean is filled with it. Do you really think cruise ships carry the trash and human waste around the ocean then dump it on land? Nope, into the ocean. Most waste plants on land dump the stuff that can't be purified enough for human consumption into the ocean or rivers, which lead to the ocean. What about oil spills? Where do you think the waste from poorer countries goes? Often, American owned hotels and resorts take advantage of the lack of infrastructure in developing areas to disregard any environmental waste management.
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12467
Don't even try to claim there are no problems with excess run off of agricultural products into freshwater and marine systems. Stuff like that isn't even hard to test for. All you need are water samples and then tests to check for the different chemicals. Why do you think there are dead zones around many cities or areas with lots of industry? *coughgulfofmexicocough*
6) While there are still issues with shocking and dynamiting for fish, the main problem is that the commercial fishermen are over harvesting, and that screws up the ecology of coral reefs.
http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/coralreef/CRanthro.html
7) You say you can't hurt coral unless you walk on it. Yeah, that is the problem. New scuba divers with bad buoyancy and trim hit coral, people want to take some for souvenirs, people anchor boats without regard to the coral below them, etc. It happens.
http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/...html#solutions
Take a look halfway down the page, and there is a picture of an idiot standing on the coral.
I don't claim to know everything. I'm landlocked until I graduate with my bachelors, then I'm moving to an ocean to study marine sciences for my masters and PhD. Hopefully there will be something left to run experiments on and save by the time I graduate. I admit my knowledge of ocean systems is not nearly what I want or need it to be, but that is why I read studies and when I question them, I try to figure out the answer myself.
Like I said, list your sources. I would much rather spend my life as a DM and instructor than documenting a bunch of biodiversity loss (i.e. DEATH) around the world and trying to fix what can be saved.
Rachel
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