Sailing off into the horizon for two or three months at a time on a world cruise can be your opportunity to explore exotic countries and destinations, peek inside other cultures, enjoy new experiences, and meet other savvy world cruise travelers from around the world. If a cruise around the globe is something you have been contemplating but you don’t know where to start, Cruise Specialists has outlined your 2012 world cruise options.
Yachts of Seabourn World Cruise aboard Quest – January 5, 2012 (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Venice, Italy) Cruisers sailing on the 2012 Seabourn world cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale will get the unique opportunity to become a part of the maiden world voyage on the new Seabourn Quest debuting in 2011. Guests onboard the luxurious Quest will get to experience the frills and amenities of Seabourn’s newest ultra-luxury 450-person yacht while sailing for 109 days across the South Pacific to New Zealand and Australia, across Southeast Asia and India, on to Egypt and Arabia ending in Venice, Italy. Travelers on this special maiden world cruise voyage will experience an array of inaugural banquets and exclusive shoreside events.
Crystal Cruises’ World Cruise aboard Serenity – January 18, 2012 (Roundtrip Los Angeles, California) For the first time, guests can sail roundtrip Los Angeles on the Crystal Serenity world cruise and Cruise Specialists will have knowledgeable onboard escorts to accompany the group on this unforgettable adventure around the Pacific Rim. Travelers on the lavish 1,080-person ship will visit 35 ports in 94 days with multiple overnight stays including a unique three day overland visit in Beijing to see the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and Summer Palace.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises Circle South America aboard Seven Seas Mariner – January 6, 2012 (Roundtrip Ft. Lauderdale) Travelers can sail roundtrip Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on the all-balcony, all-suite 700-passenger Seven Seas Mariner on a 72-night voyage circling the continent of South America and visiting legendary destinations such as the Panama Canal, Machu Picchu, Buenos Aires, the Chilean Fjords, Rio de Janeiro, and the Amazon River.
Silversea World Cruise aboard Silver Whisper – January 7, 2012 (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Monte Carlo, Monaco) Distinguished travelers will board the intimate 382-guest Silver Whisper in Ft. Lauderdale and visit the hidden jewels of the Amazon and Africa, Asia and Arabia on their 115-day journey. Recently refurbished, the Silver Whisper exudes a European ambience featuring suites with ocean views and most with a private teak veranda, double vanities in the bathroom, a walk-in wardrobe and separate sitting area for entertaining or in-suite dining. After visiting 43 ports and 25 nations, the Silver Whisper world cruise concludes in scenic Monte Carlo.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises Dubai to Auckland aboard Seven Seas Voyager – December 19, 2011 (Dubia, UAE to Auckland, New Zealand) Guests will board the all-balcony, all-suite 700-passenger Seven Seas Voyager in Dubai, AE for an up-close world class 50-night adventure around India, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and the best of Australia and New Zealand.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises Auckland to Athens aboard Seven Seas Voyager – February 7, 2012 (Auckland, New Zealand to Athens, Greece) Departing from Auckland, New Zealand, the all-balcony, all-suite 700-passenger Seven Seas Voyager will embark on a 69-night exploit visiting major highlights of New Zealand, and Australia, before continuing on to explore must-see destinations in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel with the journey concluding in Athens, Greece.
Princess World Cruise aboard Pacific Princess – January 13, 2012 (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Venice, Italy) Embarking on a new route for the 2012 Princess world cruise, the 680-passenger Pacific Princess will depart Ft. Lauderdale and transit the Panama Canal, sail through the South Pacific, cruise New Zealand’s Fiordland National Park and visit Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Guests will get to visit and explore 40 destinations in 107 days including maiden calls in Santa Marta (Colombia), Puerto Quepos (Costa Rica) and Manama (Bahrain) before their voyage ends in Venice. A highlight of the 2012 world cruise is overnight stays and two days for shore excursions and activities in Sydney, Hong Kong and Dubai.
Holland America Line Grand World Voyage aboard ms Amsterdam – January 6, 2012 (Roundtrip Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) After attending the highly anticipated Cruise Specialists bon voyage gala party and complimentary hotel stay in Ft. Lauderdale, guests will set sail on a 112 day odyssey at sea on the 1,380-person Amsterdam visiting major ports around South America, the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, and Europe before returning to Ft. Lauderdale. Cruise Specialists’ extras on this established 2012 Holland America world cruise includes lively and experienced onboard escorts, hotel overnight and Bon Voyage Gala, exclusive shore tour program, festive cocktail parties and chat times and a commemorative gift.
Take a tour of River Cruise in Istanbul in Turkey – part of the World’s Greatest Attractions travel video series by GeoBeats. Istanbul is divided– Europe to the west, Asia to the east– by the waters of the Bosphorus River. The fifth largest city in the world straddles this 20 mile long strait, making it the only city to be located on 2 continents. The river is large enough to host many small islets, such as the ancient Maiden’s Tower seen here. (01:16)
Name and badge distinctions The Defender name was not adopted until 1990 as a measure to distinguish the utility Land Rover model from the Discovery and Range Rover
There are many Australia Deals on cruises to choose from, but before you make your choice it is vital to your homework first, like finding out what they entail.
Luxury rentals New York should be more than that normal break away from your beloved home. When you need to spend quality time with your loved ones, you definitely need a place that will offer you great ambience to achieve your goal. You will be able to relax foe days or even for months with your family without worrying at all. Luxury vacation rentals have perfect finishes that match the best in the world.
Few things compare to the thrills and pleasures of a cruise vacation. Let’s face it, there are vacations and then there are cruise vacations. And the difference is easy to see. One of the biggest concerns in having an international cruise vacation, something that often holds us back from taking one, is its usually high price.
Cheap cruises may seem to be a taboo term for many but there are choices of cheap cruises if you follow some tactics like booking early or at the last moment and you are almost assured to get a discount during lean phases of cruising bussiness
Indochina Sails announce to attend Luxury Travel Market in Cannes, France from Dec 6th to 9th 2010 and International Travel Trade Fair in Madrid, Spain from Jan 19th to 23rd, 2011 to promote the newest and biggest luxury cruise in Ha Long Bay named Indochina Sails Premium. It is grand opening in Nov 2010.
Many travelers needlessly classify themselves as either cruisers or land vacationers, but may not realize they can easily combine a cruise with extra time to enjoy and get to know a particular destination.
A singles cruise is the perfect environment to get to know a person’s real “profile” by actually spending time getting to know them, and seeing how they treat you and others in the singles cruise group. What a concept – meeting the person before you decide to date them – it’s brilliant!
All you have to do is show up at the scheduled event onboard your singles cruise and your enthusiastic singles cruise host will lead the activity and ensure everyone in the group is comfortably mixing and mingling.
If you’re intrigued by the thought of meeting new friends or travel companions or are simply looking for an alternative to traveling on your own, you may be interested in embarking on a singles cruise. A singles cruise allows you to meet and share your vacation with other unattached travel companions, while cruising to beautiful and exotic destinations.
You are about to depart on an exciting singles cruise adventure for the first time. Now, what to pack? Cruising pro and SinglesCruise.com lead cruise director Shelby Bergeron shares her tips on what you should always take and always leave behind when stepping onboard. Shelby sails on nearly twenty singles cruises a year and also previously worked and lived onboard Princess ships.
A singles cruise is a very economical choice for a vacation getaway because it provides you with an all-inclusive vacation. Your accommodations, meals, entertainment, amenities and singles cruise program are included in the basic per-person price, making it so much easier to stick to your vacation budget.
Singles who love to travel may have heard a few things about singles-oriented vacations and group singles cruise, but most of them probably don’t really know what to expect. Many people share common misperceptions about singles cruises that stop them from venturing onboard and experiencing a fun vacation.
Top 10 Country Tweets of the Week
Country music stars sure love Twitter! Here at GAC, we follow them too. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Country Tweets Of The Week! Keith Urban: @KeithUrban On my way to Philadelphia. See you soon! Martina McBride: @martinamcbride Why is it so early? John’s turn to take the girls to school. My turn […] Read more on Great American Country
Good luck, princess
For Kate Middleton — who defi nitely needs to find another milli ner — this engagement is fulfill ment of a dream. As a child… Read more on New York Post
Several centuries BC: (Relief carvings made at this time show Assyrian soldiers crossing rivers using inflated goatskin floats. Several modern authors have wrongly said that the floats were crude breathing sets and that they show frogmen in action.)
Ancient Roman and Greek times, etc.: There have been many instances of men swimming or diving for combat, but they always had to hold their breath, and had no diving equipment, except sometimes a hollow plant stem used as a snorkel. See this link (in Portuguese).
About 500 BC: (Information originally from Herodotus): During a naval campaign the Greek Scyllis was taken aboard ship as prisoner by the Persian King Xerxes I. When Scyllis learned that Xerxes was to attack a Greek flotilla, he seized a knife and jumped overboard. The Persians could not find him in the water and presumed he had drowned. Scyllis surfaced at night and made his way among all the ships in Xerxes’s fleet, cutting each ship loose from its moorings; he used a hollow reed as snorkel to remain unobserved. Then he swam nine miles (15 kilometers) to rejoin the Greeks off Cape Artemisium.
The use of diving bells is recorded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 4th century BC: “…they enable the divers to respire equally well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water, but retains the air, for it is forced straight down into the water.”
1300 or earlier: Persian divers were using diving goggles with windows made of the polished outer layer of tortoiseshell.
15th century: Leonardo da Vinci made the first known mention of air tanks in Italy: he wrote in his Atlantic Codex (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan) that systems were used at that time to artificially breathe under water, but he did not explain them in detail due to what he described as “bad human nature”, that would have taken advantage of this technique to sink ships and even commit murders. Some drawings, however, showed different kinds of snorkels and an air tank (to be carried on the breast) that presumably should have no external connections. Other drawings showed a complete immersion kit, with a plunger suit which included a sort of mask with a box for air. The project was so detailed that it included a urine collector, too.
1531: Guglielmo de Lorena dives on two of Caligula’s sunken galleys using a diving bell from a design by Leonardo da Vinci.
1616: Franz Kessler built an improved diving bell.
Around 1620: Cornelius Drebbel may have made a crude rebreather: see Rebreather#History of rebreathers.
1650: Otto von Guericke built the first air pump.
1772: Sieur Freminet tried to build a scuba device out of a barrel, but died from lack of oxygen after 20 minutes, as he merely recycled the exhaled air untreated.
1776: David Bushnell invented the Turtle, first submarine to attack another ship. It was used in the American Revolution.
19th century
1800: Robert Fulton builds a submarine, the “Nautilus”
Diving helmets appear
1808: Brize-Fradin designed a small bell-like helmet connected to a low-pressure backpack air container .
1820: Paul Lemaire d’Augerville (a Parisian dentist) invented and made a diving apparatus with a copper backpack cylinder, and with a counter-lung to save air, and with an inflatable lifejacket connected. It was used down to 15 or 20 meters for up to an hour in salvage work. He started a successful salvage company .
1825: William H. James designed a self contained diving suit that had compressed air in an iron container worn around the waist.
1827: Beaudouin in France developed a diving helmet fed from an air cylinder pressurized to 80 to 100 bars. The French Navy was interested, but nothing came of this.
1829: Charles Anthony Deane and John Deane of Whitstable in Kent in England design the first air-pumped diving helmet for use with a diving suit. It is said that the idea started from a crude emergency rig-up of a fireman’s water-pump (used as an air pump) and a knight-in-armour helmet used to try to rescue horses from a burning stable. Others say that it was based on earlier work in 1823 developing a “smoke helmet”. However the suit was not attached to the helmet, so a diver could not bend over or invert without risk of flooding the helmet and drowning. Nevertheless, the diving system is used in salvage work, including the successful removal of cannon from the British warship HMS Royal George in 1834-35. This 108-gun fighting ship sank in 65 feet of water at Spithead anchorage in 1783.
1829: E.K.Gauzen, a Russian naval technician of Kronshtadt naval base (a district of Saint Petersburg), offers a “diving machine”. His invention was an air-pumped metallic helmet strapped to a leather suit (an overall). The bottom of the helmet is open. The helmet is strapped to the leather suit by metallic tape. Gauzen’s diving suit and its further modifications were used by the Russian Navy until 1880. The modified diving suit of the Russian Navy, based on Gauzen’s invention, was known as “three-bolt equipment”.
1837: Following up Leonardo’s studies, and those of Halley the astronomer, Augustus Siebe develops standard diving dress, a sort of surface supplied diving apparatus.
1837 By attaching the Deane brothers helmet to a suit, Augustus Siebe develops the Siebe “Closed” Dress combination diving helmet and suit, considered the foundation of modern diving dress. This was a significant evolution from previous models of “open” dress that did not allow a diver to invert. (Siebe-Gorman went on to manufacture helmets continuously until 1975).
The first diving regulator
1838: Dr. Manuel Guillaumet invented a twin-hose demand regulator. It was demonstrated used as surface-demand. Use duration was limited to 30 minutes by diving in cold water without a diving suit.
1839 Canadian inventors James Eliot and Alexander McAvity of Saint John, New Brunswick patent an “oxygen reservoir for divers”, a device carried on the diver’s back containing “a quantity of condensed oxygen gas or common atmospheric air proportionate to the depth of water and adequate to the time he is intended to remain below”.
1839: W.H.Thornthwaite of Hoxton in London patented an inflatable lifting jacket for divers .
Around 1842: The Frenchman Joseph Cabirol starts making standard diving dress.
1843: Based on lessons learned from the Royal George salvage, the first diving school is set-up by the Royal Navy.
1849: Saint-Simon-Sicard (a chemist) made the first practical oxygen rebreather. It was demonstrated in London in 1854 .
1856: Wilhelm Bauer starts the first of 133 successful dives with his second submarine Seeteufel. The crew of 12 was trained to leave the submerged ship through a diving chamber.
1860: Giovanni Luppis, a retired engineer of the Austro-Hungarian navy, demonstrates a design for a self-propelled torpedo to emperor Franz Joseph.
1863: H.L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to sink a ship, the USS Housatonic, during the American Civil War.
Diving set by Rouquayrol and Denayrouze with barrel-shaped bailout air tank on the diver’s back
1865: Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouze design a diving set with a backpack spherical air tank that supplied air through the first known demand regulator. The diver still walked on the seabed and did not swim. This set was called an arophore (Greek for “air-carrier”). But air pressure tanks made with the technology of the time could only hold 30 atmospheres, and the diver had to be surface supplied; the tank was for bailout. The durations of 6 to 8 hours on a tankful without external supply recorded for the Rouquayrol set in the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, are wildly exaggerated fiction. Judging by Jules Verne’s inaccurate attempts in the book at describing how the Rouquayrol set worked, how the demand regulator works was not generally known or had already been forgotten when he wrote the book, which was published in 1870. But Jules Verne knew about the tendency of some divers, when surfacing into rain, to want to stay underwater to keep out of the rain.
1866: Minenschiff, the first self-propelled (locomotive) torpedo, developed by Robert Whitehead (to a design by Captain Luppis, Austrian Navy), is demonstrated for the imperial naval commission on December 21.
Gas and air cylinders appear
Late 19th century: Industry begins to be able to make high-pressure air and gas cylinders. That prompted a few inventors down the years to design open-circuit compressed air breathing sets, but they were all constant-flow, and the demand regulator did not come back until 1939.
1876: An English merchant seaman, Henry Fleuss, develops the first workable self-contained diving rig that uses compressed oxygen. This prototype of closed-circuit scuba uses rope soaked in caustic potash to absorb carbon dioxide so the exhaled gas can be re-breathed.
1893: Louis Boutan invents the first underwater camera.
Decompression sickness becomes a problem
1841: First documented case of decompression sickness occurs, reported by a mining engineer who observed pain and muscle cramps among coal miners working in mine shafts air-pressurized to keep water out.
1870: Bauer publishes outcomes of 25 paralyzed caisson workers.
From 1870 to 1910 all prominent symptoms/causes will be established: explanations at the time included: cold or exhaustion causing reflex spinal cord damage; electricity caused by friction on compression; or organ congestion and vascular stasis caused by decompression.
1871: The St Louis Eads Bridge employs 352 compressed air workers including Dr. Alphonse Jaminet as the physician in charge. There were 30 seriously injured and 12 fatalities. Dr. Jaminet himself suffered a case of decompression sickness when he ascended to the surface in four minutes after spending almost three hours at a depth of 95 feet in a caisson, and his description of his own experience was the first such recorded.
1872: The similarity between decompression sickness and iatrogenic air embolism as well as the relationship between inadequate decompression and decompression sickness is noted by Friedburg. He suggested that intravascular gas was released by rapid decompression and recommended: slow compression and decompression; four hour working shifts; limit to maximum depth 44.1 psig (4 ATA); using only healthy workers; and recompression treatment for severe cases.
1873: Dr. Andrew Smith first utilizes the term “caisson disease” describing 110 cases of decompression sickness as the physician in charge during construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. The project employed 600 compressed air workers. Recompression treatment was not used. The project chief engineer Washington Roebling suffered from caisson disease. (He took charge after his father John Augustus Roebling died of tetanus.) Washington’s wife, Emily, helped manage the construction of the bridge after his sickness confined him to his home in Brooklyn. He battled the after-effects of the disease for the rest of his life. During this project, decompression sickness became known as “The [Grecian] Bends” because afflicted individuals characteristically arched their backs: this is possibly reminiscent of a then fashionable women’s dance maneuver known as the Grecian Bend.
1878: Paul Bert Publishes La Pression barometrique, providing the first systematic understanding of the causes of DCS.
20th century
1900: John P. Holland builds the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the U.S. Navy, Holland (also called A-1).
1900: ## Leonard Hill uses a frog model to prove that decompression causes bubbles and that recompression resolves them.
1903: Siebe Gorman starts to make a submarine escape set in England; in the years afterwards it was improved, and later was called the Davis Escape Set or Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus.
1905 Several sources, including the 1991 US Navy Dive Manual (pg 1-8), state that the MK V Deep Sea Diving Dress was designed by the Bureau of Construction & Repair in 1905, but in reality, the 1905 Navy Handbook shows British Siebe-Gorman helmets in use. Since the earliest know MK V is dated 1916, these sources are probably referring to the earlier MK I, MK II, MK III & MK IV Morse and Schrader helmets.
1905: The first rebreather with metering valves to control the supply of oxygen is made.
1907: Draeger of Lbeck makes a rebreather called the U-Boot-Retter. = “submarine rescuer”.
1908: ## Arthur Boycott, Guybon Damant, and John Haldane publish “The Prevention of Compressed-Air Illness”, detailed studies on the cause and symptoms of decompression sickness, and propose a table of decompression stops to avoid the effects.
1908: ## The Admiralty Deep Diving Committee adopts the Haldane tables for the Royal Navy, and publish Haldane’s diving tables to the general public.
1912: ## US Navy adopts the decompression tables published by Haldane, Boycott and Damant. Driven by Chief Gunner George Stillson, the navy sets up a program to test tables and staged decompression based on the work of Haldane.
1913 The Navy also begins developing the future MK V, influenced by Schrader and Morse designs.
1915 The submarine USS F-4 is salvaged from 304 feet establishing the practical limits for air diving. Three US Navy divers, Frank W. Crilley, William F. Loughman, and Nielson, reached 304 fsw using the MK V dress.
1916 With the addition of a battery-powered telephone, the design of the MK V is finalized however, several more design improvements are made over the next two years.
1916: The Draeger model DM 2 becomes standard equipment of the German Navy.
1917 The Bureau of Construction & Repair introduces the MK V helmet and dress, which then becomes the standard for US Navy diving until the introduction of the MK 12 in the late seventies
1918: Ohgushi (he was Japanese) patents “Ohgushi’s Peerless Respirator”. It was a constant-flow diving and industrial open-circuit breathing set. The user breathed through his nose and switched the air on and off with his teeth.
Around 1920: Hanseatischen Apparatebau-Gesellschaft make a 2-cylinder breathing apparatus with double-lever single-stage demand valve and single wide corrugated breathing tube with mouthpiece, and a “duck’s beak” exhalent valve in the regulator. It was described in a mine rescue handbook in 1930. They were successors to Ludwig von Bremen of Kiel, who had the licence to make the Rouquayrol-Denayrouze apparatus in Germany .
1924 Yves le Prieur invented a hand-controlled self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. It delivered air at constant pressure without a demand regulator. He first experimented with it in 1926.
1926: Draeger displayed a rescue breathing apparatus that the wearer could swim with. While the previous devices served only for ascending to the surface and were designed also to develop lift so that the wearer arrived at the surface without swimming movements, the diving set had weights, which also made it possible to dive down with it, to search and save after an accident.
1937: US Navy publishes its revised diving tables based on the work of O.D. Yarbrough.
Swim-diving starts
The 1930s:
In France, Guy Gilpatrick starts swim diving with waterproof goggles, derived from swimming goggles (which were originally intended to keep salt water out of the eyes at the surface).
Sport spearfishing became common in the Mediterranean, and spearfishers gradually developed the common sport diving mask and fins and snorkel, with mostly Georges Beuchat in Marseille, France, which created the speargun and the 1st isothermic wetsuit, and Italian sport spearfishers started using oxygen rebreathers. This practice came to the attention of the Italian Navy, which developed its frogman unit Decima Flottiglia MAS using oxygen rebreathers and manned torpedoes, playing a large role in World War II.
1933:
In France, Louis de Corlieu patents the first swimming swimfins.
In San Diego, California, the first sport diving club is started, called the Bottom Scratchers. As far as it is known, it did not use breathing sets; its main aim was spearfishing.
More is known of Yves Le Prieur’s constant-flow open-circuit breathing set. It is said that it could allow a 20 minute stay at 7 meters and 15 minutes at 15 meters. It has one cylinder feeding into a circular fullface mask. Its air cylinder was often worn at an angle to get its on/off valve in reach of the diver’s hand; this would have caused an awkward skew drag in swimming.
1934:
In France, establishment of Beuchat, oldest scuba diving and spearfishing company in the world,
In France a sport diving club is started, called the Club des Sous-l’Eau. It did not use breathing sets as far as is known. Its main aim was spearfishing.
Otis Barton and William Beebe dive to 3028 feet using a bathysphere.
1935: The French Navy adopts the Le Prieur breathing set.
1936: On the French Riviera, the first known sport scuba diving club started. It used Le Prieur’s breathing sets.
1937: The American Diving Equipment and Salvage Company (now known as DESCO) develops a heavy bottom-walking-type diving suit with a self-contained mixed-gas helium and oxygen rebreather.
1937: ## US Navy publishes its revised diving tables based on the work of O.D. Yarbrough.
1939: Hans Hass developed from the escape set a type of rebreather with its bag on his back and two breathing tubes but no backpack box. These sets appear much in his movies and books.
1954: Underwater hockey (octopush) is invented by four navy sub-aqua divers in Southsea who got bored swimming up and down and wanted a fun way to keep fit.
The diving regulator reappears
1937: Georges Commeinhes developed a two-cylinder open-circuit apparatus with demand regulator. The regulator was a big rectangular box between the cylinders. Some were made, but WWII interrupted development.
World War II
1939: Georges Commeinhes offers his breathing set to the French Navy, which could not continue developing uses for it because of WWII.
July 1943: Commeinhes reached 53 meters (about 174 feet) using his breathing set off the coast of Marseille.
1944: Commeinhes died in the liberation of Strasbourg in Alsace. His invention was submerged by Cousteau’s invention.
Christian J. Lambertsen of the United States designed a ‘Self-Contained Underwater Oxygen Breathing Apparatus’ for the U.S. military. It was a rebreather. It was the first device to be called SCUBA.
Various nations use frogmen equipped with rebreathers for some of the best known and most spectacular war actions: see Human torpedo.
Hans Hass later said that during WWII the German diving gear firm Drger offered him an open-circuit scuba set with a demand regulator. It may have been a separate invention, or it may have been copied from a captured Commeinhes-type set.
1943: Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan invent and make an open-circuit diving breathing set, using a demand regulator which Gagnan modified from a demand regulator used to let a petrol-driven car run on a big bag of coal-gas carried on its roof during wartime shortages of petrol. Cousteau had his first dives with it. He made two more aqualungs: there were now 3, one each for Cousteau and his first two diving companions Frdric Dumas and Taillez. His aqualung remained a secret until the south of France was liberated. This type of breathing set was later named the “Aqua-Lung”. This word is correctly a tradename that goes with the Cousteau-Gagnan patent, but in Britain it has been commonly used as a generic and spelt “aqualung” since at least the 1950s, including in the BSAC’s publications and training manuals, and describing scuba diving as “aqualunging”.
Early 1944: the USA government, to try to stop men from being drowned in sunken army tanks, asked the company Mine Safety Appliances (MSA) for a suitable small escape breathing set. MSA provided a small open-circuit breathing set with a small (5 to 7 liters) air cylinder, a circular demand regulator with a two-lever system similar to Cousteau’s design (connected to the cylinder by a nut and cone nipple connection), and one corrugated wide breathing tube connected to a mouthpiece. This set was stated to be made from made from “off-the-shelf” items, which shows that MSA had that regulator design before; also, that regulator looks like the result of development and not a prototype; it may have arisen around 1943. In an example recovered in 2003 form a submerged Sherman tank in the Bay of Naples the cylinder was bound round in tape and tied to a lifejacket. These sets were too late for the D-day landings in June 1944, but were used in the invasion of the south of France and in the South Pacific war.
1944: In October, Frdric Dumas reaches 62 meters (about 200 feet) with a Cousteau aqualung.
1945: Cousteau’s first aqualung is destroyed by a mis-aimed artillery shell in an Allied landing on the French Riviera: that left two. Afterwards, he had more aqualungs made and gathered more men and taught them to aqualung dive. In Toulon he started an unofficial mine-clearing and wreck-clearing unit. Later this unit was made official. One of the men who he trained was Broussard, who founded the first post-WWII scuba diving club, the Club Alpin Sous-Marin.
Postwar
The public first hears about frogmen.
The first known underwater diving club in Britain, “The Amphibians Club”, is formed in Aberdeen by Ivor Howitt (who modified an old civilian gas mask) and some friends. They called underwater diving “fathomeering”, to distinguish from jumping into water .
1946:
Cousteau-type aqualungs go on sale in France.
Yves Le Prieur invents a new version of his breathing set. Its fullface mask’s front plate was loose in its seating and acted as a very big, and therefore, very sensitive diaphragm for a demand regulator: see Diving regulator#Demand valve.
The Cave Diving Group (CDG) is formed in Britain.
1948: Auguste Piccard sends the first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2, on unmanned dives.
Siebe Gorman and/or Heinke start making Cousteau-type aqualungs in England. Captain Trevor Hampton had a dive with one. Siebe Gorman and the Royal Navy expected aqualungs to be used with weighted boots for bottom-walking for light commercial diving: see Aqua-lung#”Tadpoles”.
Ted Eldred in Australia starts designing the first open-circuit single-hose scuba set known: see Porpoise (make of scuba gear).
Georges Beuchat in France creates the first surface buoy.
1948 or 1949: Rene’s Sporting Goods shop in California imports aqualungs from France. Hollywood sees them and gets interested.
1949: Otis Barton makes record dive to 4,500 feet in his Benthoscope.
1950: Cousteau-type aqualungs go on sale (but very expensive) to industry and civilians in Britain. Siebe Gorman made it at Chessington.
A British naval diving manual printed soon after this said that the aqualung is to be used for walking on the bottom with a heavy diving suit and weighted boots, and did not mention Cousteau.
A report to Cousteau said that only 10 aqualung sets had been sent to the USA because the market there was saturated.
The first camera housing called Tarzan is released by Georges Beuchat,
1951: The movie “The Frogmen” is released. It is set in the Pacific Ocean in WWII. In its last 20 minutes, it shows USA frogmen, using bulky 3-cylindered aqualungs on a combat mission. This equipment use is anachronistic (in reality they would have used rebreathers), but it shows that aqualungs were available (even if not widely known of) in the USA in 1951.
1951: The US Navy starts to develop wetsuits, but not known to the public. .
1951: In December, the first issue of Skin Diver Magazine (USA) appears. The magazine ran until November 2002.
Cousteau-type aqualungs go on sale in Canada.
1952: Cousteau-type aqualungs go on sale in the USA.
Ted Eldred in Australia starts making for public sale the Porpoise (make of scuba gear). This was the world’s first commercially available single-hose scuba unit and was the forerunner of most sport SCUBA equipment produced today.
Public interest in scuba diving takes off
1953: The National Geographical Society Magazine publishes an article about Cousteau’s underwater archaeology at Grand Conglou island near Marseille, and in French-speaking countries a diving film called paves (Shipwrecks) came out. That started a massive public demand for aqualungs and diving gear, and in France and America the diving gear makers started making them as fast as they could. But in Britain Siebe Gorman and Heinke kept aqualungs expensive, and restrictions on exporting currency stopped people from importing them. Many British sport divers used home-made constant-flow breathing sets and ex-armed forces or ex-industrial rebreathers. In the early 1950s, diving regulators made by Siebe Gorman cost 15, which was an average week’s salary.
After the supply of war-surplus frogman’s drysuits ran out, free-swimming diving suits were not readily available to the general public, and as a result many scuba divers dived with their skin bare except for swimming trunks. That is why scuba diving used often to be called skindiving. Others dived in homemade drysuits, or in thick layers of ordinary clothes.
After the supply of war-surplus frogman’s fins dried up, for a long time fins were not available to the public, and some had to resort to such things as gluing marine ply to plimsoles.
Captain Trevor Hampton founds the British Underwater Centre at Dartmouth in Devon in England.
Rene’s Sporting Goods shop (now owned by Spirotechnique) becomes U.S. Divers, now a leading maker of diving equipment.
Georges Beuchat in Marseille, France invent and release the first isothermic wetsuit.
15 October 1953: The BSAC is founded.
1954: USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, is launched.
The first manned dives occur in the bathyscaphe FNRS-2.
First scuba certification course in the USA is offered by the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation. Program created by Albert Tillman and Bev Morgan now known as LA County Scuba.
1954: In the USA, MSA advertises (in Popular Mechanics magazine) a two-cylinder aqualung-like open-circuit diving set using the MSA regulator.
1955: In Britain, “Practical Mechanics” magazine publishes an item “Making an Aqualung”.
1955: Louis Malle, a young film maker of 23, and Jacques-Yves Cousteau shoot The Silent World, one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to show the ocean depths in color.
1956: Wetsuits become available to the public.
1956: ## US Navy publishes tables that allow for repetitive diving.
Around this time, some British scuba divers start making homemade diving demand regulators from industrial parts, including Calor Gas regulators. (Since then, Calor Gas regulators have been redesigned, and this conversion is now impossible.)
Later, Submarine Products Ltd in Hexham in Northumberland, England designed round the Cousteau-Gagnan patent and made sport diving breathing sets accessibly cheap. This forced Siebe Gorman’s and Heinke’s prices down and started them selling to the sport diving trade. (Siebe Gorman gave its drysuit the tradename “Frogman”.) Because of this better availability of aqualungs, BSAC’s policy towards rebreathers became merely “Here be dragons: keep out!” and remained so for a long time. In the USA, some oxygen diving clubs developed down the years. Eventually, the Cousteau-Gagnan patent time-expired and any firm could legally copy it.
1956: The Silent World receives an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival.
1957: The television series Sea Hunt begins. It introduces scuba diving to the television audience. It ran until 1961.
1958: USS Nautilus completes the first ever voyage under the polar ice to the North Pole and back.
1958: The CMAS (World Underwater Federation) is founded in Brussels.
1959: NAUI is founded by Albert Tillman and Neal Hess.
1960: Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh, USN, descend to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the ocean (about 10900m or 35802 feet = 6.78 miles) in the bathyscaphe Trieste: see at this link andthis link
USS Triton completed the first ever underwater circumnavigation of the world.
In Italy, sport diving oxygen rebreathers continued to be made well into the 1960s.
1964: in France, Georges Beuchat create the Jetfins, first vented fins.
1965: ## Robert D. Workman of the U.S. Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) publishes an equation for computing decompression requirements suitable for implementing in a dive computer, rather than a pre-computed table.
The film version of James Bond in Thunderball (using both sorts of open-circuit scuba) is released and helps to make scuba diving popular.
1966: PADI starts.
1968: First known rebreather with electronic parts is made: the Electrolung.
1971: Scubapro introduces the Stabilization Jacket, now in England commonly called stab jacket, and elsewhere Buoyancy Control (or Compensation) Device (BC or BCD).
1972: Scubapro introduces the decompression meter (the first analogic dive computer).
1976: ## Professor Albert A. Bhlmann publishes his work extending the equations to adapt to diving at altitude and with complex gas mixes.
1983: The Orca Edge (the first electronic dive computer) is introduced.
1985: The wreck of RMS Titanic is found. Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747 aircraft, is found and salvaged off Cork, Ireland during the first large scale deep water (6,200 feet) air crash investigation.
1989: The film The Abyss (including an as-yet-fictional deep-sea liquid-breathing set) helps to make scuba diving popular.
The Communist Bloc falls and the Cold War ends (see Fall of Communism and Collapse of the Soviet Union), and with it the risk of future attack by Communist Bloc forces including by their combat divers. After that, the world’s armed forces had less reason to requisition rebreather patents submitted by civilians, and sport diving automatic and semi-automatic mixture rebreathers start to appear. See “rebreather history” link below.
1995: BSAC allows Nitrox diving and introduced Nitrox training.
1996: PADI releases their Enriched Air Diver Course.
1997: The film Titanic helps to make underwater trips onboard MIR submersible vehicles popular.
1998 August: Dives on RMS Titanic occur using Remotely Operated Vehicle controlled from the surface (Magellan 725). First ever live video broadcast from the sunken White Star liner is made.
1999 July: The Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft is raised from 16,043 feet (4891 m) of water in the Atlantic Ocean during the deepest commercial search and recovery operation to date.
2001 December: The BSAC allows rebreathers to be used in BSAC dives.
Notes
^ Entries marked ## are about decompression tables.
^ Arthur J. Bachrach, “History of the Diving Bell”, Historical Diving Times, Iss. 21 (Spring 1998)
^ a b c d e f g h Acott, C. (1999). “A brief history of diving and decompression illness.”. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal 29 (2). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/6004. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
^ a b c d e Historical Diving Society magazine issue 45, page 37
^ Edmonds, Carl; Lowry, C; Pennefather, John. “History of diving.”. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 5 (2). http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/5894. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
^ Mario Theriault, Great Maritime Inventions 1833-1950, Goose Lane, 2001, p. 46
^ a b Quick, D. (1970). “A History Of Closed Circuit Oxygen Underwater Breathing Apparatus”. Royal Australian Navy, School of Underwater Medicine. RANSUM-1-70. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/4960. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
^ a b Butler WP (2004). “Caisson disease during the construction of the Eads and Brooklyn Bridges: A review”. Undersea Hyperb Med 31 (4): 44559. PMID 15686275. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/4028. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
^ Bert, P. (originally published 1878). “Barometric Pressure: researches in experimental physiology”. Translated by: Hitchcock MA and Hitchcock FA. College Book Company; 1943.
^ Boycott, A. E.; G. C. C. Damant, J. S. Haldane. (1908). “Prevention of compressed air illness”. J. Hygiene 8: 342443. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/7489. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
^ a b c d e Carter Jr, R. C. (1977). “Pioneering Inner Space: The Navy Experimental Diving Unit’s First 50 Years”. US Naval Experimental Diving Unit Technical Report NEDU-1-77. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/4799. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
^ Historical Diving Society magazine issue 45, page 43
^ Vann RD (2004). “Lambertsen and O2: beginnings of operational physiology”. Undersea Hyperb Med 31 (1): 2131. PMID 15233157. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/3987. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
^ Butler FK (2004). “Closed-circuit oxygen diving in the U.S. Navy”. Undersea Hyperb Med 31 (1): 320. PMID 15233156. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/3986. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
^ a b Historical Diving Times, issue #44 (summer 2008), pages 5-12
^ Fulton, H. T.; Welham W., Dwyer J. V., Dobbins, R. F. (1952). “Preliminary Report on Protection Against Cold Water”. US Naval Experimental Diving Unit Technical Report NEDU-5-52. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/3387. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
^ Valentine, R. BSAC: The Club 1953-2003. BSAC. ISBN 9780953891955.
^ a b c BSAC. “Section 1.1 A Brief History of the British Sub-Aqua Club”. BSAC. http://www.bsac.org/page/52/11-brief-history-of-bsac.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-05.
^ “LA County Scuba” (in en-US). LACountyScuba.com. http://www.lacountyscuba.com/. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
^ Workman, R. D. (1965). “Calculation of Decompression Schedules for Nitrogen-Oxygen and Helium-Oxygen Dives”. US Naval Experimental Diving Unit Technical Report NEDU-6-65. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/3367. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
^ Bni M., Schibli R., Nussberger P., Bhlmann Albert A. (1976). “Diving at diminished atmospheric pressure: air decompression tables for different altitudes”. Undersea Biomedical Research 3 (3): 189204. ISSN 0093-5387. OCLC 2068005. PMID 969023. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/2750. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
^ Allen, C (1996). “BSAC gives the OK to nitrox. reprinted from Diver 1995; 40(5) May: 35-36.”. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal 26 (4). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/6275. Retrieved 2008-09-05.
^ Richardson, D and Shreeves, K (1996). “The PADI Enriched Air Diver course and DSAT oxygen exposure limits.”. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal 26 (3). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/6310. Retrieved 2008-09-05.
References
Mark Lonsdale, The Evolution of US Navy Diving.
Other diving history timelines (external links)
There are other diving history chronologies at:
Diving Lore from its origins to the aqualung breakthrough.
rebreather history
hem.passagen.se
marinebio.org
BSAC info
Rebreather Diving History
Museum of old scuba gear
History of Cave Diving
Categories: Technology timelines | Underwater divingHidden categories: Articles needing additional references from January 2009 | All articles needing additional references
The first stop of the Cliff Diving World Series 2010 challenges competitors with strong winds and cold temperatures. WatchMojo presents a behind-the-scenes look at La Rochelle, France. (03:25)
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See also: Fringing reef, Atoll reef, and The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
Most coral reefs were formed after the last glacial period when melting ice caused the sea level to rise and flood the continental shelves. This means that most coral reefs are less than 10,000 years old. As coral reef communities were established on the shelves, they built reefs that grew upwards, keeping pace with the rise in sea level. Reefs that didn’t keep pace could become drowned reefs, covered by so much water that there was insufficient light for further survival.
Coral reefs are also found in the deep sea away from the continental shelves, around oceanic islands and as atolls. The vast majority of these ocean coral islands are volcanic in origin. The few exceptions have tectonic origins where plate movements have lifted the deep ocean floor on the surface.
In 1842 Charles Darwin published his first monograph, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs. There he set out his theory of the formation of atoll reefs, an idea he conceived during the voyage of the Beagle. His theory was that atolls were formed by the uplift and subsidence of the Earth’s crust under the oceans. Darwin theory sets out a sequence of three stages in atoll formation. It starts with a fringing reef forming around an extinct volcanic island as the island and ocean floor subsides. As the subsidence continues, the fringing reef becomes a barrier reef, and ultimately an atoll reef.
Darwin theory starts with a volcanic island which becomes extinct
As the island and ocean floor subside, coral growth builds a fringing reef, often including a shallow lagoon between the land and the main reef
As the subsidence continues the fringing reef becomes a larger barrier reef further from the shore with a bigger and deeper lagoon inside
Ultimately the island sinks below the sea, and the barrier reef becomes an atoll enclosing an open lagoon
A fringing reef can take ten thousand years to form, and an atoll can take up to 30 million years
A small atoll in Maldives.
Darwin predicted that underneath each lagoon would be a bed rock base, the remains of the original volcano. Subsequent drilling has proved this correct. Darwin’s theory followed from his understanding that coral polyps thrive in the clean seas of the tropics where the water is agitated, but can only live within a limited depth of water, starting just below low tide. Where the level of the underlying land stays the same, the corals grow around the coast to form what he called fringing reefs, and can eventually grow out from the shore to become a barrier reef. Where the land is rising, fringing reefs can grow around the coast, but coral raised above sea level dies and becomes white limestone. If the land subsides slowly, the fringing reefs keep pace by growing upwards on a base of dead coral, forming a barrier reef enclosing a lagoon between the reef and the land. A barrier reef can encircle an island, and once the island sinks below sea level a roughly circular atoll of growing coral continues to keep up with the sea level, forming a central lagoon. Barrier reefs and atolls don’t usually form complete circles, but are broken in places by storms. Should the land subside too quickly or sea level rise too fast, the coral dies as it is below its habitable depth.
In general, the two main variables determining the geomorphology, or shape, of coral reefs are the nature of the underlying substrate on which they rest, and the history of the change in sea level relative to that substrate.
As an example of how coral reefs have formed on continental shelves, the current living reef structure of the Great Barrier Reef began growing about 20,000 years ago. The sea level was then 120 metres (390 ft) lower than it is today. As the sea level rose, the water and the corals encroached on what had been the hills of the coastal plain. By 13,000 years ago the sea level was 60 metres (200 ft) lower than at present, and the hills of the coastal plains were, by then, continental islands. As the sea level rise continued most of the continental islands were submerged. The corals could then overgrow the hills, forming the present cays and reefs. The sea level on the Great Barrier Reef has not changed significantly in the last 6,000 years, and the age of the present living reef structure is estimated to be between 6,000 and 8,000 years. Although the Great Barrier Reef formed along a continental shelf, and not around a volcanic island, the same principles apply as outlined by Darwin’s theory above. The Great Barrier Reef development has stopped at the barrier reef stage, since Australia is not about to submerge. It has formed the world’s largest barrier reef, 3001000 metres (330-1100 yards) from shore, and 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) long.
Healthy coral reefs grow horizontally from 1 to 3 centimetres (0.39 to 1.2 in) per year, and grow vertically anywhere from 1 to 25 centimetres (0.412 in) per year; however, they are limited to growing above a depth of 150 metres (490 ft) due to their need for sunlight, and cannot grow above sea level.
Types
The three principal reef types are:
Fringing reef a reef that is directly attached to a shore or borders it with an intervening shallow channel or lagoon.
Barrier reef a reef separated from a mainland or island shore by a deep lagoon.
Atoll reef a more or less circular or continuous barrier reef extending all the way around a lagoon without a central island.
Other reef types or variants are:
Patch reef an isolated, comparatively small reef outcrop, usually within a lagoon or embayment, often circular and surrounded by sand or seagrass. Patch reefs are common.
Apron reef a short reef resembling a fringing reef, but more sloped; extending out and downward from a point or peninsular shore.
Bank reef a linear or semi-circular shaped-outline, larger than a patch reef.
Ribbon reef a long, narrow, somewhat winding reef, usually associated with an atoll lagoon.
Table reef an isolated reef, approaching an atoll type, but without a lagoon.
Inhabited cay in the Maldives
Microatolls certain species of corals form communities called microatolls. The vertical growth of microatolls is limited by average tidal height. By analysing the various growth morphologies, microatolls can be used as a low resolution record of patterns of sea level change. Fossilized microatolls can also be dated using radioactive carbon dating. Such methods have been used to reconstruct Holocene sea levels.
Cays small, low-elevation, sandy islands formed on the surface of a coral reef. Material eroded from the reef piles up on parts of the reef or lagoon, forming an area above sea level. Plants can stabilize cays enough for them to be habitable by humans. Cays occur in tropical environments throughout the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans (including in the Caribbean and on the Great Barrier Reef and Belize Barrier Reef), where they provide habitable and agricultural land for hundreds of thousands of people. Their surrounding reef ecosystems also provide food and building materials for island inhabitants.
When a coral reef cannot keep up with the sinking of a volcanic island, a seamount or guyot is formed. Seamounts and guyots are below the surface of the ocean and may host many species, depending on their location and depth. Seamounts are rounded at the top and guyots are flat. The flat top of the guyot, also called a tablemount, is due to erosion by waves, winds, and atmospheric processes.
Distribution
Locations of coral reefs.
Boundary for 20 C isotherms. Most corals live within this boundary. Note the cooler waters caused by upwelling on the south west coast of Africa and off the coast of Peru.
This map shows areas of upwelling in red. Coral reefs are not found in coastal areas where colder and nutrient rich upwellings occur
Coral reefs are estimated to cover 284,300 square kilometers (109,800 sq mi), which is just under one percent of the surface area occupied by the world oceans. The Indo-Pacific region (including the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific) account for 91.9% of this total. Southeast Asia accounts for 32.3% of that figure, while the Pacific including Australia accounts for 40.8%. Atlantic and Caribbean coral reefs only account for 7.6%.
Although corals exist both in temperate and tropical waters, shallow-water reefs form only in a zone extending from 30 N to 30 S of the equator. Tropical corals do not grow at depths of over 50 meters (160 ft). The optimum temperature for most coral reefs is 2627 C, and few reefs exist in waters below 18 C. However reefs in the Persian Gulf have adapted to temperatures of 13 C in winter and 38 C in summer.
Deep water coral is more still exceptional since it can exist at greater depths and colder temperatures. Although deep water corals can form reefs, very little is known about them.
Coral reefs are rare along the American west coast, as well as along the African west coast. This is due primarily to upwelling and strong cold coastal currents that reduce water temperatures in these areas (respectively the Peru, Benguela and Canary streams). Corals are seldom found along the coastline of South Asia from the eastern tip of India (Madras) to the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar. They are also rare along the coast around north-eastern South America and Bangladesh due to the freshwater release from the Amazon and Ganges Rivers respectively.
Principal coral reefs and reef areas of the world
The Great Barrier Reef – largest coral reef system in the world, Queensland, Australia.
The Belize Barrier Reef – second largest in the world, stretching from southern Quintana Roo, Mexico along the coast of Belize to the Bay Islands of Honduras.
The New Caledonia Barrier Reef – second longest double barrier reef in the world, with a length of about 1,500 kilometers (930 mi).
The Andros, Bahamas Barrier Reef – third largest in the world, following the east coast of Andros Island, Bahamas, between Andros and Nassau.
The Red Sea Coral Reef – located off the coast of Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
Ghe Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia’s West Papua province offer the highest known marine diversity.
Biology
Anatomy of a coral polyp.
See also: Coral
Live coral should be thought of as small live animals embedded in calcium carbonate. It is a mistake to think of coral as plants or rocks. Coral consists of accumulations of individual animals called polyps, arranged in diverse shapes. Polyps are usually tiny, but they can range in size from a pinhead to a foot across. Reefs grow as polyps along with other organisms deposit calcium carbonate, the basis of coral, as a skeletal structure beneath and around themselves, pushing the coral’s “head” or polyps upwards and outwards. Waves, grazing fish (such as parrotfish), sea urchins, sponges, and other forces and organisms break down coral skeletons into fragments that settle into spaces in the reef structure. Many other organisms living in the reef community contribute skeletal calcium carbonate in the same manner. Coralline algae are important contributors to reef structure in those parts of the reef subjected to the greatest forces by waves (such as the reef front facing the open ocean). These algae deposit limestone in sheets over the reef surface, thereby strengthening it.
Reef-building or hermatypic corals are only found in the photic zone (above 50 m depth), the depth to which sufficient sunlight penetrates the water for photosynthesis to occur. Coral polyps do not photosynthesize, but have a symbiotic relationship with single-celled organisms called zooxanthellae; these cells within the tissues of the coral polyps carry out photosynthesis and produce excess organic nutrients that are then used by the coral polyps. Because of this relationship, coral reefs grow much faster in clear water, which admits more sunlight. Indeed, the relationship is responsible for coral reefs in the sense that without their symbionts, coral growth would be too slow for the corals to form impressive reef structures. Corals get up to 90% of their nutrients from their zooxanthellae symbionts.
Table coral
Close up of polyps arrayed on a coral, waving their tentacles. There can be thousands of polyps on a single coral branch.
Corals can reproduce both sexually and asexually. An individual polyp may use both reproductive modes within its lifetime. Corals reproduce sexually by either internal or external fertilization. The reproductive cells are found on the mesentery membranes that radiate inward from the layer of tissue that lines the stomach cavity. Some mature adult corals are hermaphroditic; others are exclusively male or female. A few even change sex as they grow.
Internally fertilized eggs develop in the polyp for a period ranging from days to weeks. Subsequent development produces a tiny larva, known as a planula. Externally fertilized eggs develop during synchronized spawning. Polyps release eggs and sperm into the water simultaneously. Eggs disperse over a large area. Spawning depends on four factors: time of year, water temperature, and tidal and lunar cycles. Spawning is most successful when there is little variation between high and low tides. The less water movement, the better the chance for fertilization. Ideal timing occurs in the spring. Release of eggs or planula larvae usually occurs at night and is sometimes in phase with the lunar cycle (36 days after a full moon). The period from release to settlement lasts only a few days, but some planulae can survive afloat for several weeks (7, 14). They are vulnerable to heavy predation and adverse environmental conditions. For the lucky few who survive to attach to substrate, the challenge comes from competition for food and space.
There are about one thousand species of coral, which build different shapes such as wrinkled brains, cabbages, table tops, stag antlers, wire strands and pillars.
Brain coral
Staghorn coral
Spiral wire coral
Pillar coral
Darwin’s paradox
Darwin’s paradox
Coral… seems to proliferate when ocean waters are warm, poor, clear and agitated, a fact which Darwin had already noted when he passed through Tahiti in 1842.
This constitutes a fundamental paradox, shown quantitatively by the apparent impossibility of balancing input and output of the nutritive elements which control the coral polyp metabolism.
Recent oceanographic research has brought to light the reality of this paradox by confirming that the oligotrophy of the ocean euphotic zone persists right up to the swell-battered reef crest. When you approach the reef edges and atolls from the quasi-desert of the open sea, the near absence of living matter suddenly becomes a plethora of life, without transition. So why is there something rather than nothing, and more precisely, where do the necessary nutrients for the functioning of this extraordinary coral reef machine come from ? Francis Rougerie
During his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin described tropical coral reefs as oases in the desert of the ocean. He reflected on the paradox that tropical coral reefs, which are among the richest and most diverse ecosystems on earth, flourish when they are surrounded and supported by tropical ocean waters that provide hardly any nutrients. It has been a challenge for scientists to explain this paradox.
Coral reefs cover just under one percent of the surface of the world ocean, yet they support over one-quarter of all marine species. This huge number of species results in complex food webs, with large predator fish eating smaller forage fish that eat yet smaller zooplankton and so on. However, all food webs eventually depend on plants, which are the primary producers. And the primary productivity on a coral reef is very high, resulting in a typical biomass production of 5-10g C m2 day1.
Tropical waters are often described as crystal clear. This is because they are deficient in nutrients and drifting plankton. The sun shines year round in the tropics, warming the surface ocean layer so it is less dense than subsurface layers. The warmer water is separated from the cooler water by a stable thermocline, where the temperature makes a rapid change. This keeps the warm surface waters floating above the cooler deeper waters. There is little exchange between these layers. Organisms that die in aquatic environments generally sink to the bottom where they decompose. This decomposition releases nutrients in the form of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These nutrients, N, P and K, are necessary for plant growth, but in the tropics they are not directly recycled back to the surface.
Plants are the base of the food chain, and need sunlight and nutrients if they are to grow. In the ocean these plants are mainly a type of plankton, microscopic phytoplankton which drift in the water column. They need sunlight for photosynthesis, which powers carbon fixation, so they are found only in the surface waters. But they also need nutrients. Phytoplankton rapidly use any nutrients in the surface waters, and in the tropics these nutrients are not usually replaced because of the thermocline.
Coral polyps
The situation with coral reefs is different. The lagoons that are formed by the upward growth of coral reefs fill in with material eroded from the reef and the island. They become havens for marine life, providing protection from waves and storms.
Most importantly, nutrients are recycled, and not lost like they are in the open ocean. In coral reefs and lagoons, the producers include phytoplankton as well as marine worms, seaweed, and coralline algae, especially small types called turf algae, which pass their nutrients to the corals. The phytoplankton are eaten by fish and crustaceans, who also pass nutrients along the food web. Recycling ensures that fewer nutrients are needed overall to support the community.
Corals harbour numerous symbiotic organisms. In particular, there is a remarkable symbiosis between coral and a microscopic algae, the single cell dinoflagellate known as a zooxanthella. The zooxanthella forms an endosymbiosis with a coral polyp, that is, it lives within the tissues of the polyp. There it absorbs solar energy with special pigments, using photosynthesis to supply the polyp with organic nutrients in the form of glucose, glycerol, and amino acids. Zooxanthellae can provide up to 90% of a coral energy requirements. In return, as an example of mutualism, the coral provides the zooxanthellae, averaging one million for every cubic centimetre of coral, with a relatively safe place to live and a constant supply of the carbon dioxide it needs for photosynthesis.
Corals are nocturnal feeders. Here, in the dark, coral polyps have extended their tentacles to feed on zooplankton
The colour of corals depends on the type zooxanthella they host
Corals also absorb nutrients, including inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus, directly from the water. Many corals extend their tentacles at night to catch zooplankton that brush them when the water is agitated. Zooplankton provides the polyp with nitrogen, and the polyp shares some of the nitrogen with the zooxanthellae, which also require this element. The pigments in different species of zooxanthellae give corals their different colours. Coral which loses its zooxanthellae becomes white and is said to be bleached, a condition which unless corrected can lead to the death of the coral.
A 2001 paper reported that sponges are another key to explaining Darwin paradox. These sponges live in crevices in the coral reefs. They are efficient filter feeders, and in the Red Sea they consume about sixty percent of the phytoplankton that drifts by. The nutrients the sponges absorb from the phytoplankton are then excreted in a form the corals can use.
Researchers in 2002 explained why coral thrives better in agitated waters. They found the roughness of coral surfaces is the key. Normally there is a boundary layer of still water around a submerged object which acts as a barrier. But when waves break on the extremely rough edges of corals the boundary layer is disrupted, allowing the corals access to the few nutrients that are there. The researchers claim that turbulent water promotes rapid reef growth and lots of branching. Although coral ecosysemss are great at recycling, with the wastes of one species becoming the food of another, the researchers also claim that, without the nutritional gains achieved by rough coral surfaces, even the most effective recycling would leave corals wanting in nutrients.
In 2004, another symbiotic organism, a bacteria called Cyanobacteria, was discovered to provide soluble nitrates for the reef via nitrogen fixation.
Coral reefs also often depend on other habitats, such as seagrass meadows and mangrove forests in the surrounding area for the supply of nutrients. Seagrass and mangroves supply dead plants and animals which are rich in nitrogen and also serve to feed fish and animals from the reef by supplying wood and vegetation. Reefs in turn protect mangroves and seagrass from waves and produce sediment for the mangroves and seagrass to root in.
Zones
Coral reef ecosystems contain a number of distinctive zones that represent different kinds of habitats for fishes and invertebrate animals. Usually, three major zones are recognized: the fore reef (outermost and deepest part of the reef), reef crest (shallowest and narrowest zone over which ocean waves break), and the back reef (behind the reef crest and closest to shore, with calm protected waters) which is also frequently referred to as the reef lagoon.
All three zones are physically and ecologically interconnected to some extent, with reef life and oceanic processes creating ample opportunities for exchange of ocean water, sediments, nutrients, and marine life between one another.
Thus, they should properly be viewed as integrated components of the coral reef ecosystem, each playing a role in the support of the abundant and diverse fish assemblages that characterize coral reefs.
Most coral reefs exist in shallow waters less than fifty metres deep. Some are found on tropical continental shelves where cool, nutrient rich upwelling does not occur, such as Great Barrier Reef. Others are found in the deep ocean surrounding islands or as atolls, such as in the Maldives. The reefs surrounding islands form when islands subside into the ocean, and atolls form when an island subsides below the surface of the sea.
Moyle and Cech distinguish six major zones, though most reefs posses only some of the zones.
Water in the reef surface zone is often agitated. This diagram represents a reef on a continental shelf. The water waves at the left travel over the off-reef floor until they encounter the reef slope or fore reef. Then the waves pass over the shallow reef crest. When a wave enters shallow water it shoals, that is, it slows down and the wave height increases.
The reef surface is the shallowest part of the reef. It is subject to the constant surge of waves and the rise and fall of tides. When water waves pass over shallow areas, they shoal, as shown in the diagram at the right. This means that the water in the reef surface zone is often agitated. These are the precise condition under which coral flourish. Shallowness means there is plenty of light for photosynthesis, and agitated water promotes the ability of coral to feed on plankton. However other organisms, such as fish and invertebrates, must be able to withstand the robust conditions to flourish in this zone.
The off-reef floor is the shallow sea floor surrounding a reef. This zone applies to reefs on continental shelves. Reefs around tropical islands and atolls drop abruptly to great depths, and don’t have an off-reef floor. Usually sandy, the off-reef floor often supports seagrass meadows which are important foraging areas for reef fish.
The reef drop-off is, for its first 50 metres, habitat for many reef fish who find shelter on the cliff face and plankton in the water nearby. The drop-off zone applies mainly to the reefs surrounding oceanic islands and atolls.
The reef face is the zone above the reef floor or the reef drop-off. “It is usually the richest habitat for fish and invertebrates. Its complex growths of coral and calcareous algae provide innumerable cracks and crevices for protection, and the abundant invertebrates and epiphytic algae provide an ample source of food.”
The reef flat sandy bottomed flat can be behind the main reef, containing chunks of coral. “The reef flat may be a protective area bordering a lagoon, or it may be a flat, rocky area between the reef and the shore. In the former case, the number of fish species living in the area often is the highest of any reef zone.”
The reef lagoon “many coral reefs completely enclose an area, thereby creating a quiet-water lagoon that usually contains small patched of reef.”
However, the “topography of coral reefs is constantly changing. Each reef is made up of irregular patches of algae, sessile invertebrates, and bare rock an sand. The size, shape and relative abundance of these patches changes from year to year in response to the various factors that favour one type of patch over another. Growing coral, for example, produces constant change in the fine structure of reefs. On a larger scale, tropical storms may knock out large sections of reef and cause boulders on sandy areas to move.” (Connell 1978)
Biodiversity
Tube sponges attracting cardinal fishes, glassfishes and wrasses
Reefs are also home to a large variety of other organisms, including fish, seabirds, sponges, Cnidarians (which includes some types of corals and jellyfish), worms, crustaceans (including shrimp, cleaner shrimp, spiny lobsters and crabs), molluscs (including cephalopods), echinoderms (including starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers), sea squirts, sea turtles and sea snakes. Aside from humans, mammals are rare on coral reefs, with visiting cetaceans such as dolphins being the main exception. A few of these varied species feed directly on corals, while others graze on algae on the reef and participate in complex food webs.
Researchers have found evidence of algae dominance in locations of healthy coral reefs. In surveys done around largely uninhabited US Pacific islands, algae inhabit a large percentage of surveyed coral locations. The algae population consists of turf algae, coralline algae, and macroalgae.
Fish
Main article: Coral reef fishes
Coral reefs are home to a variety of tropical or reef fish which can be distinguished. These include:
fish that adjust the coral (such as Labridae and parrotfish) These types of fish feed either on small animals living near the coral, seaweed, or on the coral itself. Fish that feed on small animals include cleaner fish (these fish feed between the jaws of larger predatory fish), bullet fish and Balistidae (these eat sea urchins) while seaweed eating fish include the Pomacentridae (damselfishes). Serranidae cultivate the seaweed by removing creatures feeding on it (as sea urchins), and they remove inedible seaweeds. Fish that eat coral include parrotfish and butterflyfish.
fish that swim nearby the reef. These include predatory fish such as pompanos, groupers, Horse mackerels, certain types of shark, Epinephelus marginatus, barracudas, snappers, …) They also include herbivorous and plankton-eating fish. Fish eating seagrass include Horse mackerel, snapper, Pagellus, Conodon, … Fish eating plankton include Caesio, manta ray, chromis, Holocentridae, pterapogon kauderni, …
Organisms can cover every square inch of a coral reef,
Generally, fish that swim in coral reefs are as colourful as the reef itself. Examples are the beautiful parrotfish, angelfish, damselfish, Pomacanthus paru, Clinidae and butterflyfish. At night, some change to a less vivid color. Besides colorful fish matching their environment, other fish (e.g., predatory and herbivorous fish such as Lampanyctodes hectoris, Holocentridae, Pterapogon kauderni, …) as well as aquatic animals (Comatulida, Crinoidea, Ophiuroidea, …) emerge and become active while others rest.
Other fish groups found on coral reefs include groupers, grunts and wrasses. Over 4,000 species of fish inhabit coral reefs. It has been suggested that the fish species that inhabit coral reefs are able to coexist in such high numbers because any free living space is inhabited by the first planktonic fish larvae that find it in what has been termed “a lottery for living space”.
Seabirds
Coral reef systems provide important habitats for seabird species, some endangered. For example, Midway Atoll supports nearly three million seabirds, including two-thirds (1.5 million) of the global population of Laysan Albatross, and one-third of the global population of black-footed albatross. Each seabird species have specific sites on the atoll where they nest. Altogether, 17 species of seabirds live on Midway. The short-tailed albatross is the rarest, with fewer than 2,200 surviving after excessive feather hunting in the late nineteenth century.
Invertebrates
Invertebrates have their part in the food-chain of the reef. For example, sea urchins, Dotidae and sea slugs eat seaweed. Some species of sea urchins, such as Diadema antillarum, can play a pivotal part in preventing algae overrunning reefs. Hawksbill turtles, Nudibranchia and sea anemones eat sponges.
A number of invertebrates, collectively called cryptofauna, inhabit the coral skeletal substrate itself, either boring into the skeletons (through the process of bioerosion) or living in pre-existing voids and crevices. Those animals boring into the rock include sponges, bivalve molluscs, and sipunculans. Those settling on the reef include many other species, particularly crustaceans and polychaete worms.
Other
Sea snakes feed exclusively on fish and their eggs. Many tropical birds forage on reef fish, such as herons, gannets, pelicans and boobies. Some land based reptiles can be intermittently associated with reefs, such as monitor lizards, the marine crocodile and semi-aquatic snakes like Laticauda colubrina.
Soft coral, cup coral, sponges and ascidians
Crown-tipped coral fungus
Eastern coral snake
Banded coral shrimp
Caribbean reef squid
Giant clam
Green turtle
Shoaling reef fish
Economic value
Coral reefs deliver ecosystem services to tourism, fisheries and coastline protection. The global economic value of coral reefs has been estimated at billion. Coral reefs protect shorelines by absorbing wave energy, and many small islands would not exist without their reef to protect them. According to the WWF, the economic cost over a 25 year period of destroying one kilometre of coral reef is somewhere between 7,000 and ,200,000. About 6 million tons of fish are taken each year from coral reefs. Well managed coral reefs have an annual yield of 15 tons seafood on average per square kilometre. Southeast Asia’s coral reef fisheries alone yield about $ 2.4 billion annually from seafood.
Issues
Island with fringing reef off Yap, Micronesia. Coral reefs are dying around the world.
Coral reefs are dying around the world. Human activity may represent the greatest threat to coral reefs. In particular, coral mining, pollution (organic and non-organic), overfishing, blast fishing and the digging of canals and access into islands and bays are serious threats to these ecosystems. Coral reefs also face high dangers from pollution, diseases, destructive fishing practices and warming oceans.” In order to find answers for these problems, researchers study the various factors that impact reefs. The list of factors is long, including the ocean’s role as a carbon dioxide sink, atmospheric changes, ultraviolet light, ocean acidification, biological virus, impacts of dust storms carrying agents to far flung reefs, pollutants, algal blooms and others. Reefs are threatened well beyond coastal areas.
Southeast Asian coral reefs are at risk from damaging fishing practices (such as cyanide and blast fishing), overfishing, sedimentation, pollution and bleaching. A variety of activities, including education, regulation, and the establishment of marine protected areas are under way to protect these reefs.
Indonesia, is home to a third of the world’s total corals and a quarter of its fish species, nearly 33,000 square miles (85,000 km2). Indonesia’s coral reefs are located in the heart of the Coral Triangle and have fallen victim to destructive fishing, unregulated tourism, and bleaching due to climatic changes. Data from 414 reef monitoring stations in 2000 found that only 6% are in excellent condition, while 24% are in good condition, and approximately 70% are in poor to fair condition (2003 The Johns Hopkins University).
In 2007, Reef Check, the world largest reef conservation organization, stated that only 5% of Philippines 27,000 square-kilometers of coral reef are in “excellent condition”: Tubbataha Reef, Marine Park in Palawan, Apo Island in Negros Oriental, Apo Reef in Puerto Galera, Mindoro, and Verde Island Passage off Batangas. Philippine coral reefs is second largest in Asia.
General estimates show approximately 10% world’s coral reefs are already dead. It is estimated that about 60% of the world’s reefs are at risk due to destructive, human-related activities. The threat to the health of reefs is particularly strong in Southeast Asia, where 80% of reefs are endangered.
Fishing practices
See also: Overfishing and Environmental effects of fishing
Many valuable fishery species live around coral reefs. Shark and reef fish are fished intensively for fish markets. Seahorses and sea cucumbers are harvested for Chinese pharmacopeia. Lobster are sought for the tourist industry, and shrimp for the export trade.
Overfishing, particularly selective overfishing, can unbalance coral ecosystems by encouraging the excessive growth of coral predators. Predators which eat living coral, such as the crown-of-thorns starfish, are called corallivores. Coral reefs are built from stony coral, which evolved with large amounts of the wax cetyl palmitate in their tissues. Most predators find this wax indigestible. The crown-of-thorns starfish is a large (up to one metre) starfish protected with long, venomous spikes. It has an enzyme system which dissolves the wax in stony corals, and allows the starfish to feed on the living coral. Normally the starfish are kept under control by the giant triton sea snail. However, the giant triton is valued for its shell, and has been severely overfished. As a result, crown-of-thorns starfish populations can periodically explode without check, devastating coral reefs.
The overfished giant triton eats the crown of thorns starfish
The crown of thorns starfish eats coral
Although some aquarium fish species can reproduce in aquaria (such as Pomacentridae), most (95%) are collected from coral reefs. Intense harvesting, especially in South-East Asia (including Indonesia and the Philippines), damages the reefs. This is aggravated by destructive fishing practices, such as cyanide and blast fishing. Most (8090%) aquarium fish from the Philippines are captured with sodium cyanide. This toxic chemical is dissolved in sea water and released into fish shelters. It narcotizes fish, which are then easily captured. However, most fish collected with cyanide die a few months later from liver damage. Moreover, non-marketable species die in the field. A major catalyst of cyanide fishing is poverty within fishing communities. In areas like the Philippines where the cyanide is regularly used, the percentage of the population below the poverty line is 40%. In such developing countries, a fisherman might resort to such practices in order to protect his family from starvation.
Dynamite fishing is another destructive method for gathering fish. Sticks of dynamite, grenades, or home-made explosives are simply thrown in the water. This method of fishing kills the fish within the main blast area, along with many inedible and/or unwanted reef animals. The blast also kills the corals in the area, eliminating the very structure of the reef, destroying the habitat for fish and other animals important for the maintenance of a healthy reef. Other destructive fishing methods, such as muroami and kayakas, kill all fish in certain areas, causing havoc on the ecosystem of the reef.
Hughes, et al., (2003), wrote that “with increased human population and improved storage and transport systems, the scale of human impacts on reefs has grown exponentially. For example, markets for fish and other natural resources have become global, supplying demand for reef resources.”
Pollution
Main article: Marine pollution
This image of an algae bloom off the southern coast of England, though not in a coral region, shows what a bloom can look like from a satellite remote sensing system
Runoff caused by farming and construction of roads, buildings, ports, channels, and harbours, can carry soil laden with carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and minerals. This nutrient-rich water can cause fleshy algae and phytoplankton to thrive in coastal areas, known as algal blooms, which have the potential to create hypoxic conditions by using all available oxygen. Some algae are toxic, and both plants reduce the levels of sunlight and oxygen, killing marine organisms such as fish and coral. The addition of too many nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates, a process known as eutrophication, is very damaging to reefs. High nitrate levels are toxic to corals, while phosphates slow down the growth of coral skeleton.
Reefs in close proximity to human populations can be faced with local stresses, including poor water quality from land-based sources of pollution. Copper, a common industrial pollutant has been shown to interfere with the life history and development of coral polyps. Poor water quality has also been shown to encourage the spread of infectious diseases among corals.
Barbados dust graph
In addition to soil runoff, additional soil and sand is blown in from other regions. Dust from the Sahara moving around the southern periphery of the subtropical ridge moves into the Caribbean and Florida during the warm season as the ridge builds and moves northward through the subtropical Atlantic. Dust can also be attributed to a global transport from the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts across Korea, Japan, and the Northern Pacific to the Hawaiian Islands. Since 1970, dust outbreaks have worsened due to periods of drought in Africa. There is a large variability in dust transport to the Caribbean and Florida from year to year; however, the flux is greater during positive phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation. The USGS links dust events to a decline in the health of coral reefs across the Caribbean and Florida, primarily since the 1970s. Studies have shown that corals can incorporate dust into their skeletons as identified from dust from the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia in the annular bands of the reef-building coral Montastraea annularis from the Florida reef tract.
Climate change
See also: Coral bleaching
Unbleached and bleached coral
Any rise in the sea level due to climate change would effectively ask coral to grow faster to keep up. Also, water temperature changes can be very disturbing to the coral. This was seen during the 1998 and 2004 El Nio weather phenomena, in which sea surface temperatures rose well above normal, bleaching or killing many coral reefs. High seas surface temperature (SSTs) coupled with high irradiance (light intensity), triggers the loss of zooxanthellae, a symbiotic algae, and its dinoflagellate pigmentation in corals causing coral bleaching. Zooxanthellae provides up to 90% of the energy to the coral host. Reefs can often recover from bleaching if they are healthy to begin with and water temperatures cool. However, recovery may not be possible if CO2 levels rise to 500 ppm because there may not be enough carbonate ions present. Refer to Hoegh-Guldberg 1999 for more information.
Warming may also be the basis of a new emerging problem: increasing coral diseases. Warming, thought to be the main cause of coral bleaching, weakens corals. In their weakened state, coral is much more prone to diseases including black band disease, white band disease and skeletal eroding band. If global temperatures increase by 2 C, coral may not be able to adapt quickly enough physiologically or genetically. It has been estimated that, in order to counter the threat of ocean acidification through global warming, a reduction of up to 40% of current emissions is needed, and up to 95% by 2050. This requires emission reductions larger than the reductions currently proposed for these dates by the EU.
Ocean acidification
Main article: Ocean acidification
Bamboo coral is an early harbinger of ocean acification
Another problem related to climate change is ocean acidification. Ocean acidification results from increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide, which increases the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans. The dissolved carbon dioxide gas reacts with the water to form carbonic acid, and thus acidifies the ocean. This decreasing ocean surface pH is another long-term concern for the survival of coral reefs.
Ocean surface pH is estimated to have decreased from about 8.25 to 8.14 since the beginning of the industrial era, and it is estimated that it will drop by a further 0.30.4 units by 2100 as the ocean absorbs more anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Normally, the conditions for calcium carbonate production are stable in surface waters since the carbonate ion is at supersaturating concentrations. However, as ocean pH falls, so does the concentration of this ion, and when carbonate becomes under-saturated, structures made of calcium carbonate are vulnerable to dissolution. Research has already found that corals experience reduced calcification or enhanced dissolution when exposed to elevated CO2.
Bamboo coral is a deep sea coral which produces growth rings similar to a tree. The growth rings picture how growth rates change as deep sea condition change over time, and can also record changes due to ocean acidification. This coral is especially long-lived. Coral specimens as old as 4,000 years old have given scientists “4,000 years worth of information about what has been going on in the deep ocean interior”.
Other issues
Eroded coral
Within the last 20 years, once prolific seagrassbeds and mangrove forests, which absorb massive amounts of nutrients and sediment, have been destroyed. Both the loss of wetlands, mangrove habitats and seagrassbeds affect the water quality of inshore reefs.
Coral mining is another threat. Both small scale harvesting by villagers and industrial scale mining by companies are serious threats. Mining is usually done to produce construction material which is valued as much as 50% cheaper than other rocks, such as from quarries. The rocks are ground and mixed with other materials, like cement to make concrete. Ancient coral used for construction is known as coral rag. Building directly on the reef also takes its toll, altering water circulation and the tides which bring the nutrients to the reef. The pressing reason for building on reefs is simply lack of space.
Boats and ships require access points into bays and islands to load and unload cargo and people. For this, parts of reefs are often chopped away to clear a path. Although this may seems a minor destruction of the reef, negative consequences can include altered water circulation and altered tidal patterns which result in a turnaround in the reef’s supply of nutrients; sometimes destroying a great part of the reef. Fishing vessels and other large boats occasionally run aground on a reef. Two types of damage can result. Collision damage occurs when a coral reef is crushed and split by a vessel’s hull into multiple fragments. Scarring occurs when boat propellers tear off the live coral and expose the skeleton. The physical damage can be noticed as striations in the reefs. Mooring also causes damage which can be reduced by using mooring buoys.
Threatened species
The global standard for recording threatened marine species is the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This list is the foundation for marine conservation priorities worldwide. A species is listed in the threatened category if it is considered to be critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable. Other categories are near threatened and data deficient. By 2008, the IUCN had assessed all known reef-building corals species as follows
Group
Species
Threatened
Near threatened
Data deficient
Reef-building corals
845
27%
20%
17%
The coral triangle (Indo-Malay-Philippine archipelago) region has the highest number of reef-building coral species in threatened category as well as the highest coral species diversity. The loss of coral reef ecosystems will have devastating effects on many marine species, as well as on people that depend on reef resources for their livelihoods.
Protected areas
Main article: Coral reef protection
Coral reefs and fish in Papua New Guinea
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have become increasingly prominent for reef management. MPAs in Southeast Asia and elsewhere around the world attempt to promote responsible fishery management and habitat protection. Much like national parks and wild life refuges, MPAs prohibit potentially damaging extraction activities. The objectives of MPAs are both social and biological, including reef restoration, aesthetics, increased and protected biodiversity, and economic benefits. Conflicts surrounding MPAs involve lack of participation, clashing views and perceptions of effectiveness, and funding.
Biosphere reserves are other protected areas that may protect reefs. Also, Marine parks, as well as world heritage sites can protect reefs. World heritage designation can also play a vital role. For example the Chagos archipelago, Sian Ka’an, the Great Barrier Reef, Henderson Island, the Galapagos islands, Belize’s Barrier reef and Palau have been designated as protected by nomination as a world heritage site.
In Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and is the subject of much legislation, including a Biodiversity Action Plan.
Inhabitants of Ahus Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, have followed a generations-old practice of restricting fishing in six areas of their reef lagoon. Their cultural traditions allow line fishing but not net and spear fishing. The result is that both the biomass and individual fish sizes are significantly larger in these areas than in places where fishing is unrestricted.
Restoration technologies
Main article: Coral reef restoration
Low voltage electrical currents applied through seawater crystallize dissolved minerals onto steel structures. The resultant white carbonate (aragonite) is the same mineral that makes up natural coral reefs. Corals rapidly colonize and grow at accelerated rates on these coated structures. The electrical currents also accelerate formation and growth of both chemical limestone rock and the skeletons of corals and other shell-bearing organisms. The vicinity of the anode and cathode provides a high pH environment which inhibits the growth of filamentous and fleshy algae, which compete with coral for space. The increased growth rates cease when the mineral accretion process stops.
During mineral accretion, the settled corals display an increased growth rate, and size, and density, but after the process is complete, growth rate and density return to levels that are comparable to naturally growing corallites, and are about the same size or slightly smaller.
In large restoration projects, depending on the type of coral, placement of propagated hermatype coral unto substrate is often done with metal pins, superglue or milliput. Needle and thread can also attach A-hermatype coral to substrate. Concrete has also been used to restore large sections of broken coral reef. Finally, special structures as reef balls can be placed to provide corals a base to grow on.
Organizations
Organizations which currently undertake coral reef/atoll restoration projects using simple methods of plant propagation:
Coral Cay
Counterpart
U.S. Coral Reef Task Force (CRTF)
National Coral Reef Institute (NCRI)
US Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): Coral Reef Conservation Program
National Center for Coral Reef Research (NCORE)
Reef Ball
Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative (SEFCRI)
Foundation of the peoples of the South Pacific
WorldFishCenter: promotes sustainable mariculture techniques to grow reef organisms as tridacnidae
Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF) : Adopt a Coral
Organizations which promote interest, provide knowledge bases about coral reef survival, and promote activities to protect and restore coral reefs:
Australian Coral Reef Society
Biosphere Foundation
Chagos Conservation Trust
Conservation Society of Pohnpei
Coral Reef Care
Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL)
Coral Reef Targeted Research and Capacity Building for Management
Coral Triangle Initiative
Cousteau Society
Crusoe Reef Society
CEDAM International
Earthwatch
Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Solutions International
Friends of Saba Marine Park
Global Coral Reef Alliance (GCRA)
Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
ICRAN Mesoamerican Reef Alliance
International Marinelife Alliance
International Society for Reef Studies
Intercoast Network
Kosrae Conservation and Safety Organization
Marine Conservation Group
Marine Conservation Society
Mesoamerican Reef Tourism Initiative (MARTI)
NSF Moorea Coral Reef Long-term Ecological Research site
Nature Conservancy
Ocean Voice International
PADI
Planetary Coral Reef Foundation
Practical Action
Project Reefkeeper
ReefBase
Reef Check
Reef Relief
Reefwatch
Seacology
SECORE
Singapore Underwater Federation
Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology
Tubbataha Foundation
Wildlife Conservation International
WWF
Reefs in the past
Ancient coral reefs
Throughout Earth history, from a few thousand years after hard skeletons were developed by marine organisms, there were almost always reefs. The times of maximum development were in the Middle Cambrian (513-501 Ma), Devonian (416-359 Ma) and Carboniferous (359-299 Ma), due to Order Rugosa extinct corals, and Late Cretaceous (100-65 Ma) and all Neogene (23 Ma – present), due to Order Scleractinia corals.
Not all reefs in the past were formed by corals: in the Early Cambrian (542-513 Ma) resulted from calcareous algae and archaeocyathids (small animals with conical shape, probably related to sponges) and in the Late Cretaceous (100 – 65 Ma), when there also existed reefs formed by a group of bivalves called rudists; one of the valves formed the main conical structure and the other, much smaller valve acted as a cap.
See also
Ecology portal
Marine biology
List of environmental issues
Notes
^ Mulhall M (2007) Saving rainforests of the sea: An analysis of international efforts to conserve coral reefs Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 19:321351.
^ “Corals reveal impact of land use”. ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. http://www.coralcoe.org.au/news_stories/landimpacts.html. Retrieved 12 July 2007.
^ Coral reef The Encyclopedia of Earth, Updated February 27, 2009.
^ Darwin, Charles (1842), The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs. Being the first part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. Fitzroy, R.N. during the years 1832 to 1836, London: Smith Elder and Co, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F271&pageseq=1
^ a b Gordon Chancellor (2008), Introduction to Coral reefs, Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Chancellor_CoralReefs.html, retrieved 2009-01-20
^ Animation of coral atoll formation NOAA Ocean Education Service. Retrieved 9 January 2010.
^ a b c Anderson, G (2003) Coral Reef Formation Marine Science.
^ Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (2006). “A “big picture” view of the Great Barrier Reef” (PDF). Reef Facts for Tour Guides. http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/12437/Reef-Facts-01.pdf. Retrieved 18 June 2007.
^ a b Tobin, Barry (1998, revised 2003). “How the Great Barrier Reef was formed”. Australian Institute of Marine Science. http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/research/project-net/reefs/apnet-reefs00.html. Retrieved 22 November 2006.
^ CRC Reef Research Centre Ltd. “What is the Great Barrier Reef?”. http://www.reef.crc.org.au/discover/coralreefs/coralgbr.html. Retrieved 28 May 2006.
^ Four Types of Coral Reef Microdocs, Stanford Education. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
^ MSN Encarta (2006). “Great Barrier Reef”. Great Barrier Reef. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761575831/Great_Barrier_Reef.html. Retrieved 11 December 2006.
^ Smithers, S.G. and Woodroffe, C.D. (August 2000). “Microatolls as sea-level indicators on a mid-ocean atoll.”. Marine Geology 168 (14): 6178. doi:10.1016/S0025-3227(00)00043-8. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V6M-40WDSPX-4&_user=10&_coverDate=08/15/2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=summary&_orig=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=844934e86d603e4aa8f0c42faa6b42ef.
^ a b c d Spalding, Mark, Corinna Ravilious, and Edmund Green. 2001. World Atlas of Coral Reefs. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press and UNEP/WCMC.
^ Achituv, Y. and Dubinsky, Z. 1990. Evolution and Zoogeography of Coral Reefs Ecosystems of the World. Vol. 25:1-8.
^ a b The Greenpeace Book of Coral Reefs
^ a b Nybakken, James. 1997. Marine Biology: An Ecological Approach. 4th ed. Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley.
^ Ultra Marine: In far eastern Indonesia, the Raja Ampat islands embrace a phenomenal coral wilderness, by David Doubilet, National Geographic, September 2007
^ Sherman, C.D.H. “The Importance of Fine-scale Environmental Heterogeneity in Determining Levels of Genotypic Diversity and Local Adaption.” University of Wollongong Ph.D. Thesis. 2006. Accessed 2009-06-07.
^ Stacy, J., Marion, G., McCulloch, M. and Hoegh-Guldberg, O. “Long-term changes to Mackay Whitsunday water quality and connectivity between terrestrial, mangrove and coral reef ecosystems: Clues from coral proxies and remote sensing records – Synthesis of research from an ARC Linkage Grant (2004-2007).” University of Queensland – Centre for Marine Studies. May 2007. Accessed 2009-06-07.
^ Nothdurft, L.D. “Microstructure and early diagensis of recent reef building scleractinian corals, Heron Reef, Great Barrier Reef: Implications for palaeoclimate analysis.” Queensland University of Technology Ph.D. Thesis. 2007. Accessed 2009-06-07.
^ Wilson, R.A. “The Biological Notion of Individual.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. August 9, 2007. Accessed 2009-06-07.
^ Paul Marshall and Heidi Schuttenberg.; Marshall, Paul; Schuttenberg, Heidi. (2006). A Reef Manager Guide to Coral Bleaching. Townsville, Australia: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority,. ISBN 1 876945 40 0. http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/corp_site/info_services/publications/misc_pub/a_reef_managers_guide_to_coral_bleaching.
^ Rougerier, F The functioning of coral reefs and atolls: from paradox to paradigm ORSTOM, Papeete.
^ Sorokin, Y. I. Coral Reef Ecology. Germany. Sringer-Herlag, Berlin Heidelberg. 1993.
^ a b c Castro, Peter and Michael Huber. 2000. Marine Biology. 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
^ A Reef Manager Guide to Coral Bleaching. Townsville, Australia: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority,. 2006. ISBN 1 876945 40 0. http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/corp_site/info_services/publications/misc_pub/a_reef_managers_guide_to_coral_bleaching.
^ Rich Coral Reefs in Nutrient-Poor Water: Paradox Explained? National Geographic News, November 7, 2001.
^ Corals play rough over Darwin’s paradox New Scientist, 21 September 2002.
^ Wilson E (2004) “Coral Symbiotic Bacteria Fluoresce, Fix Nitrogen” Chemical and engineering news, 82(33): 7.
^ Greenpeace Book of Coral Reefs
^ a b c d Moyle and Cech, 2003, p. 556.
^ Vroom, Peter S.; Page, Kimberly N.; Kenyon, Jean C.; Brainard, Russell E. (2006), “Algae-Dominated Reefs”, American Scientist 94 (5): 430437 .
^ Coexistence of coral reef fishes lottery for living space PF Sale 1978 – Environmental Biology of Fishes, 1978
^ “U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service – Birds of Midway Atoll”. http://www.fws.gov/midway/midwaywildlifebirds.html. Retrieved August 19, 2009.
^ Osborne, Patrick L. (2000). Tropical Ecosystem and Ecological Concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 464. ISBN 0 521 64523 9.
^ Testimony of Dr. Lara J. Hansen before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, May 10, 2007.
^ a b The Importance of Coral to People WWF. Retrieved 12 January 2009.
^ a b Coral reefs around the world Guardian.co.uk, 2 September 2009.
^ Space Daily etal. (2009). “Coral reefs tough it out against seaweed.”science””.
^ Abs-Cbn Interactive, “RP coral reefs, second largest in Asia, in bad shape”
^ a b Kleypas, J.A., R.A. Feely, V.J. Fabry, C. Langdon, C.L. Sabine, and L.L. Robbins, 2006, Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers: A guide for Future Research, NSF, NOAA, & USGS, 88 pp.
^ Save Our Seas, 1997 Summer Newsletter, Dr. Cindy Hunter and Dr. Alan Friedlander
^ Tun, K., L.M. Chou, A. Cabanban, V.S. Tuan, Philreefs, T. Yeemin, Suharsono, K.Sour, and D. Lane, 2004, p:235-276 in C. Wilkinson (ed.), Status of Coral Reefs of the world: 2004.
^ Benson AA and Muscatine L (1974) Wax in Coral Mucus: Energy Transfer From Corals to Reef Fishes Limnology and Oceanography, 19 (5) 810-814. Download
^ Predators and Prey PBS.org. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
^ “CRC Reef Research Centre Technical Report No. 32 Crown-of-thorns starfish(Acanthaster planci) in the central Great Barrier Reef region. Results of fine-scale surveys conducted in 1999-2000.”. http://www.reef.crc.org.au/publications/techreport/techrept32.htm. Retrieved 7 June 2007.
^ CRC Reef Research Centre. “Crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef”. http://www.reef.crc.org.au/publications/brochures/COTS_web_Nov2003.pdf. Retrieved 28 August 2006. (PDF)
^ “David LECCHINI, Sandrine POLTI, Yohei NAKAMURA, Pascal MOSCONI, Makoto TSUCHIYA, Georges REMOISSENET, Serge PLANES (2006) “New perspectives on aquarium fish trade” Fisheries Science 72 (1), 4047″. Blackwell Synergy. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1444-2906.2006.01114.x. Retrieved 16 January 2007.
^ “CIA The World Factbook Philippines”. CIA. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rp.html. Retrieved 2 November 2006.
^ a b McClellan, Kate and Bruno, John (2008) Coral degradation through destructive fishing practices Encyclopedia of Earth. Retrieved 25 October 2008.
^ Hughes etal. (2003). “Climate Change, Human Impacts, and the Resilience of Coral Reefs. Science. Vol 301 15 August 2003”. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/301/5635/929. Retrieved 3 June 2008.
^ a b http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/visions/coral/side.html
^ Eutrofication and corals
^ Emma Young (2003). “Copper decimates coral reef spawning”. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4391. Retrieved 26 August 2006.
^ Rachel Nowak (11 January 2004). “Sewage nutrients fuel coral disease”. New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4539. Retrieved 10 August 2006.
^ Duce, R.A., Unni, C.K., Ray, B.J., Prospero, J.M., Merrill, J.T. 1980. Long-range atmospheric transport of soil dust from Asia to the tropical North Pacific: Temporal variability. Science 209:15221524.
^ Usinfo.state.gov. Study Says African Dust Affects Climate in U.S., Caribbean. Retrieved on 10 June 2007.
^ Prospero, J.M., Nees, R.T. 1986. Impact of the North African drought and El Nio on mineral dust in the Barbados trade winds. Nature 320:735738.
^ U. S. Geological Survey. Coral Mortality and African Dust. Retrieved on 10 June 2007.
^ Merman, E.A. 2001. Atmospheric inputs to the tropical oceannlocking the record in annually banded corals. Master thesis. University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.
^ Leahy, Stephen(2007). “Environment: Between a Reef and a Hard Place.” NoticiasFinancieras.
^ P.W.Glynn “Coral Reef Bleaching: Ecological Perspectives” Earth and Environmental Science. Vol 12:1 March 1993.
^ Ocean acidification emission levels decrease
^ “The Ocean and the Carbon Cycle”. NASA Oceanography (science@nasa). 21 June 2005. http://science.hq.nasa.gov/oceans/system/carbon.html. Retrieved 4 March 2007.
^ Jacobson, M. Z. (2005). Studying ocean acidification with conservative, stable numerical schemes for nonequilibrium air-ocean exchange and ocean equilibrium chemistry. J. Geophys. Res. Atm. 110, D07302.
^ Orr, J. C. et al. (2005). Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437, 681-686.
^ Gattuso, J.-P., Frankignoulle, M., Bourge, I., Romaine, S. and Buddemeier, R. W. (1998). Effect of calcium carbonate saturation of seawater on coral calcification. Glob. Planet. Change 18, 37-46.
^ “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – New Deep-Sea Coral Discovered on NOAA-Supported Mission”. www.noaanews.noaa.gov. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090305_coral.html. Retrieved 11 May …
I am a professional editor from China Product, and my work is to promote a free online trade platform.
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Here is a question for you. If I were to go after five of your employees in different areas about your business strategy and goals – would they all tell me the same story?
Being ‘empathetic’ is such an obvious foundation of effective leadership that you might assume that there would be little need to highlight its importance today. Yet, even though it is well established that this characteristic adds greatly to a leader’s ability to engage others, some ‘leaders’ seem clueless as to where other people are coming from, or show a complete lack of concern for their employees.
In this article Leanne explores the challenges thrown up by change and the need for resilience as an alternative to bleak wistful reminiscence about what could have been.
A start up business, growth company and established firm all will have a different focus. The focus of the new business is to find customers and conserve cash. A growth company will need more emphasis on management building and financial sytems.
Several people fail online despite what the Internet offers today in terms of information. Doesn’t this make no sense? Why does it keep occurring? What have successful people done or do that is different? Read on for more
Our addiction to performance appraisals prevents most companies from doing the right thing, i.e. changing to a better way. We continue using a tool that doesn’t work well and often damages trust.
“10 minutes to remove bags under the eyes, do not cut”??? Recently, Ms. Chen had trusted beauty salons Advertisement Do photorejuvenation beauty to the eye bag, the results become a “green eye”
The star is the new BMW 320i. As a BMW for young people and launched a successful model. The new BMW 3 Series (more pictures quotes) is more dynamic in appearance
Although venture capital is very attractive, but a lack of experience and performance of the company, received venture capital is unlikely. Would like Business Easy to some people to start small
Adult, the acne is the best test to prove your daily life, this time to give it to debug some of my habits and processes of conservation. Of course, against the naughty stuff you may also be overnight
By using the classification, can be divided into seasonal water heaters, water heaters, as well as year-round all-weather auxiliary heat source Solar Energy Water heater
China’s national industry has undergone a century of vicissitudes, interpretation of the speculative real heavy, difficult transformation, change and revitalization of the exciting boom
I am a professional editor from China Product, and my work is to promote a free online trade platform.
http://www.himfr.com/ contain a great deal of information about 50cc pocket bike , dual purpose motorcycle
welcome to visit!
The good old game of the last decade, or maybe more than that. But it is known that still, there are people who run competitions over this game, and bets fly like eagles lowering down on their prey. Everyone stops and stirs with past memories of victory or shame, when word of this game passes. In all of last generation strategy game players, there is certainly a long desired – but cannot be reached – passion of defeating a certain player in this game, which is, with no wonder, someone they once lost the game against, someone who have defeated them once or more in it. Since there are still people who play this game, and still people who are willing to play the game, has their hands and mind functionable, it is likely that you may find your opponents for your empire, on the ultimate field of battle, computers!
But since you aim to sate the hunger inside you that grew so huge over those hopeless years of waiting for the right opponent whose demise might be satisfying, you ought to know, how to gain victory first. Theres a latin proverb which says, learn to obey, before you command. Therefore, if you need win, a battle when your forces are thin, you have to know your opponent, and hit him across the chin. Every player has their own style of playing, and your tactics should be adjusted depending on his actions. However, this applies only if it is your opponent who has the upper hand. Now, through proper enthusiasm and determination, you can, in fact, attain a pace in the game, where your foes need catch with you first, apropous, dependant tactic adjustments taken by them instead. But right again we came stumbling in the same question, how?
Let me tell and guide you through this adventurous process. First, when your forces are laid down on the field of battle, which matters little if aim and way known and comprehended well enough, you have to identify the strenght of what you have, and what may come handy. In most ocasions, you start with a town centre, and a few villagers around it. Lumber is the source you have to focus on, as to build an empire, first you need more than a town centre as in buildings. Meanwhile, with your given meat, order your town centre to begin researchs of next age. Establish the base of your economy strong, that when time comes and immediate replenishment become impending necessity, your economic properties must be willing and able to support your corps. Go ahead with building a quick-gather post for all of resources avalible. Then select a resource and a way to gather it, according the the map, this can be lumber, food, maybe even gold. You need to rush on that particular resource while keeping a safe balance of other resources aswell, when you are at feudal age and built a market. Build many command posts and economic buildings around so you may always have alternate ways o survival if required. Vary the type of your forces along in light infantry, heavy infantry and cavalry, archers, and siege equipment. March cadenced, divided, and fight concentrated. Always try to provoke your enemy to lure him to where your forces are able to rout them en-de mass. Interrupt their resource outposts and intercept any attempts on your own. These trivial occurances are most oftenly those who turn the tides and write the fate of the battle. Followed all these instructions it is most unlikely that you might still loose. Eventhough, it is a bad plan, that cannot be altered.
Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited relaunches the D&D Online experience as a free-to-play game available as a digital upgrade to existing subscribers as well as newcomers. (01:19)
CCP createst quite possibly the greatest explanation of the beauty of playing an massively multiplayer online game and how dynamic emerging gameplay can occur within a realm like EVE Online. (02:39)
Blackjack is one of the few games which offers players a unified sense of excitement, anxiety, and comradeship. Blackjack is a unique game which keeps players excited for the next ‘hit’ but at the same time, has them feeling contempt for their opponents.
This has been a terrible question in everyone’s heads that whether the most popular thing on the internet is either flash games or online games, apart from porn of course heh. Well although there have never made a scientific research about it but i have been apt to think of…
Now more than ever playing free games in the internet is easier than ever before. With new developments of in flash, coding games websites has become faster and easier, and thus cheaper and more attractive for game websites to sponsor and offer for free.
Online Casino games are vastly popular and making waves around the globe. Thanks to the popularity of the Internet, more and more people are enjoying these online casino games. They are just like the real games, and the best thing is you don’t have travel to the casinos to play them. Apart from offering lucrative prize money, many casino sites also offer free games online to play.
Playing online role playing games for a fee is a thing of the past. With the amount of free online games being developed and offered for free, game fans now have options for free online games.
I was racing my boss. We were in Method A single race automobiles at a higher-tech video arcade and it was critical. I wanted to broaden my product sales group and he’d been dragging his toes on approving the extra head count I essential to hit my gross sales numbers. I challenged him to this auto race to settle the subject. If I won, I acquired my added individuals. If I misplaced, I acquired zip and had to make do with the revenue reps I had. 2nd put didn’t count. Make it or break it…
Most men and women suppose that indoor social gathering games are meant for youthful get-togethers. Young children particularly appreciate a assortment of video games at their celebrations, and there are a number of video games that you can choose from to have wonderful parties. Nonetheless, many children’s get together video games are performed at teenage or even grownup events. While far more regular households prefer to have games this kind of as “musical chairs” and “passing the…
Back when the first notebook computers came out, they were big clunky and heavy machines with a 30 minute battery life. Nevertheless, it was an exciting step forward and one that very few ever anticipated would lead us to today’s technology.
One other recognized effect that spyware has is tampering with a pc’s safety settings, thus permitting extra infections to attack. There are a great number of methods to remove spyware but the one certain solution to finally eliminate it is to format the computer and reinstall the working system. For this reason it’s a good idea to arrange restore factors once in a while in an effort to avoid having to start from scratch.
Dub Turbo is software which accomplish apparatus to actualize a appropriate appearance beneath your ascendancy. Of advance, it is music assembly software which has new acid bend technology out.
Every year as Thanksgiving approaches, I would like to watch a good movie about the holiday; and this year, with the new iPad gadget and iPhone, Watch the best Thanksgiving movies on them will surely make the holiday more colorful.
Every year as Thanksgiving approaches, I would like to watch a good movie about the holiday; and this year, with the new iPad gadget, Watch the best Thanksgiving movies on iPad will surely make the holiday more colorful. The below are five films that have a Thanksgiving weekend release date and can be packed into your iPad to truly enrich your holiday life.
So far, we have only learned about how to play with general infantry plus light cavalry. However, we have not learned maybe one of the most important unit type in Napoleon Total War, which are cavalry. Even that to imply the importance of Cavalry in Napoleonic wars, i would like…
All the parts we have mentioned before are useless compared to this particular one. For here, we are going to learn the basis of combat between eighteenth century and twentieth century. This basis, consists of one core unit and few other side units which are almost as important as that…
As you might already have figured, the slider that indicates the chance to win, if we happen to automatically resolve the battle, turns in the favour of the one who has more artillery. This factor is more important than any other factor, including the skill of the general. As we…
The trick in selecting the best cavalry unit for your demand is to check their abilities before recruiting. There are in fact two types of heavy cavalry. The ones with spear and the ones with sword. The sword ones tend to expand more and more as your technology advances, but…
The newest game that is released, about star wars. In this game aswell, you play as a jedi. In fact a sith. Upon being sent to Kashyyk to kill one of the remaining jedis, Darth Vader encounters a boy who is strong in the force, the son of the jedi…
How many more Star Wars games are they going to be in the future for gods sake! But bloody hell, this one is really a piece of art. There have been what, at least a hundred different star wars games that were created either just on the star wars film…
Medieval first total war was quite fail in means of graphic. Even the soil looked like a pile of sand with green spices on it. So no one expected any water graphics from that game. Then came rome total war. Which had decent graphics at least, but still, maybe it…
Probably you all have already bought and played the new total war game, Napoleon Total War. Let us see in what ways it is good and it what ways it is bad. First of all, we have to have a general information and knowledge about past total war games, in…
TechnologyOne posts full year revenue of 5.8 million
A number of customer wins and sector specific software development has boosted TechnologyOne’s (ASX:TNE) full year results for the year ended 30 September. Read more on CIO
Australian telcos fail to appease customers: ACCAN
One in two telco customers have experienced problems with their phone in the past year, with customer service, complaint handling and technical glitches topping the list, according to research. Read more on CIO
NBN assumptions independently tested
The Department of Finance and Deregulation is expected to receive today draft results from an independent review into NBN Co’s business plan. Read more on CIO
Scattered across a quarter of the earth’s surface, The Pacific Islands is divided in to sub-regions of Melanesia (West), Polynesia (South-East) and Micronesia (North). The division is based on the their ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences.
The islanders speak nearly a quarter of the total languages in the world. Most of the islands in this group were once ruled by several imperial powers. Therefore there is great variety of culture, environment and demographic conditions. The members of Pacific Islands are Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Most of the tour operators often focus on Australia and New Zealand for arranging vacation for their customers. But the fact is that these counties are very different from the tropical Pacific Islands.
People all over the world consider Pacific Islands as a remote area; there is no meaning in this because you can reach the Pacific Island by traveling just 2 hours from Los Angeles via air to Tahiti. Fiji is situated to the west of Tahiti, midway between Hawaii and New Zealand. Most of the people consider South Pacific Islands as a best place for romantic getaway, weddings and honeymooners.
Most of the major destinations in South Pacific are now marketing themselves as a perfect wedding and honeymoon destination. Fiji and Cook Islands are considered as the most winning destination for weddings. Weddings can be arranged here in these locations with a little excitement.
Things are different in French Polynesia; there marriages can only be performed for those who stay there for at least 30 days. Apart from this, French Polynesia is also an excellent honeymoon destination too. Most of the people around the world like to have their wedding and honeymoon in one of these wonderful islands.
Rarotonga in the Cook Islands is the best place for a romantic getaway. Lot of people from around the world visits this place annually. There are several places which are very best for sightseeing and prices are also less when compared to other tourist destinations.
During the months of December to April it is not worthy to visit South Pacific Islands because it is the time of hurricane season. Winter season in South Pacific will be cooler, drier and less humid; this is the best time to visit the region.
From the month of May to August it is off-season in Australia and New Zealand. You will get considerable reduction in this period in air fare and all. So don’t wait to book your ticket to any of the South Pacific Islands in this off-season. You can enjoy the fantastic weather in South Pacific at a lowest price.
South Pacific is very safe for travelers because there is nothing to worry regarding terrorists and all. Like other places, simple theft will occur sometimes. Nothing will go off track if a few easy safety measures are taken.
Most of the people choose Tahiti and its neighbors Moorea and Bora Bora as their first choice for their vacation. In the case of Polynesia, the high green peaks and luminous reefs of these island is supreme.
The exotic French atmosphere joins well with the attraction of Polynesia. Fiji is considered as the place with stunning variety of places and the people of Fiji is famous for their friendliness. For New Zealanders, Rarotonga is the most favorite holiday destination. This is small in area and you can explore Rarotonga in a weeks’ time. Rarotonga is very famous for the facilities provided to the visitors.
Easter Island is best for hiking or archaeology. Most of the travel agents suggest a short stay in Easter Island. Then you can’t explore the place much, if it is a short stay. You can enjoy something really different in Vanuatu. You can enjoy scuba diving and tribal culture there in Vanuatu. Here you can also see active volcanoes and Port Vila – the capital city of South Pacific.
The South Pacific is considered as the best and trouble-free destination for visitors. Problems like unreliable pricing, dishonest officials, aggressive crime, and safety glitches are generally absent here. This fantastic place is best characterized by its remarkable variety, with different culture, histories, cuisines and fantastic environments to experience and take pleasure in.
From Africa to Europe to the Pacific Islands, healers have known for centuries how to direct vital life energy through their hands and into those in need. Perhaps in no other part of the world is this skill more refined than in China. (04:43)
From Africa to Europe to the Pacific Islands, healers have known for centuries how to direct vital life energy through their hands and into those in need. Perhaps in no other part of the world is this skill more refined than in China. (03:41)
Hop aboard with the Russell Brothers as they reveal The Bahamas by sea. Travel to Leaf Cay in the Excuma Islands for a glimpse of the South American Rock Iguana, and boat a little further to the serene Saddleback Cay for its stunning white sand dollars. (04:30)
Are you newly weds who want to begin your wedding life in such a way whose memories lasts for a lifetime or a couple looking for some unique ways to revamp and rekindle your marriage life? Then, answer would be to visit Bora Bora, one of the most intriguing destinations on the planet.
Bora Bora is a love at first sight. No wonder, why honeymooners, lovers, and couples flock here throughout the year to renew their marriage vows as well as to rekindle their romantic feelings.
Bora Bora is unquestionably the most romantic as well as the mythical of all islands in the South Pacific. Located about 250 kilometers North West of Papeete, Tahiti, Bora Bora is one of the prominent islands in French Polynesia, situated in the Society Archipelago’s Leeward Group.
Are you a vacationer looking for how to make your Christmas truly memorable this time or a newly wed looking for how to cheer your other half and begin a new life, or just a nature lover who want to explore something new during this time? Then answer is one, ie to take a tour to Bora Bora, one of the most scenic vacation spots on the planet.
Bora Bora is such an enchanting island destination that words are not enough to describe its magical beauty. Situated about 150 miles north-west of Tahiti in the Society Archipelago, Bora Bora is much famed as a mystical isle of the French Polynesia.
Located about 250 km northwest of Tahiti, Bora Bora is an exotic volcanic island in the Leeward group of the Society archipelago in French Polynesia. Founded in 1722 by Roggeveen – a Dutch navigator, Bora Bora’s history is marked by several wars held between several clans of the island.
Bora Bora, acknowledged as the ‘Jewel of the South Pacific,’ is one of the most famous among the Polynesian islands in the Pacific Ocean. Situated about 150 km north-west of Tahiti in the Society Archipelago of French Polynesia, this small idyllic island boasts of some of the best beaches and lagoons in the Pacific.
There are many places on earth that you can visit on your vacations and family holidays, but Australia tops the list for places with unusual animals. There are some of the strangest animals living in this part of the world.
Moving can be stressful, but if you have a plan in place, it can be a pleasant experience. Think about your moving day before it arrives and have a plan in place.
If you are traveling to the Cleveland, OH locale and require 1 of the many Cleveland Airport hotels. In that case at that moment this particular listing of hotels near Cleveland Airport can aid you to find our cheap hotels nearby the airport.
Caribbean Cruise Line is pleased to bring you this guide to help you avoid falling victim to any travel scam. Travel scams are all around us and unfortunately, travel scams tend to be near the top of the heap. It seems that for every legitimate travel offer there is one that isn’t.
Vietnam has a lot to offer those who wish to go there. You will be able to experience a culture that you cannot find anywhere else. Read all about what Vietnam has to offer you and indulge in a trip of a lifetime.
memphis citynews Right here the history of Memphis is introduced. From the Chickasaw to the great New Madrid earthquake of 1811 on to the land’s obtain by John Overton and Andrew Jackson, followed by incorporation and Civil War occupation. Picking up with the yellow fever adopted by the surrender of the metropolis charter and the tenure of the former city as a taxing district of Shelby County and the state of Tennessee. We carry on …
The hip joint is the most flexible free-moving joint in the body, as well as one of the large weight-bearing joints. If any part of the hip is damaged or degenerated, movement can be limited. Even without injury, cartilage can crack and wear away in time. The ball of the hip joint begins to grind against the socket, bone against bone, causing stiffness and pain.
There is a lot of differences between living in the East and West. Numerous issues have to be considered, like cost of living, weather, people, culture, and so on. Big distinction in either side makes alterations in people’s “lifestyle”. It is widely accepted that most foreigners visiting Thailand choose Thai way of living.
Uterus tumor is non-harmful tumor caused by abnormal growth of uterus wall. This growth is the result from 1 body hormone enhancement and it can vary in size from one inch to more than ten inches long.
What are varicose veins?. They are twisted, enlarged, worm-like marks (often dark blue in color) near the surface of the skin on either the legs or knees. They are often a symptom of an underlying condition called venous insufficiency.
Most travelers try to reach destinations during day-time, but the delay is unavoidable. Sometimes you only have to suffer short breaks between flights. If it is a half an hour or one hour break you will not get enough time to do anything serious. Actually most of the travelers prefer short layovers to get over that lazy feeling during traveling.
There is an unbound joy when you are able to purchase cheap airline tickets for your next journey. It is a great feeling realizing that you are able to save money and it is even real fun to brag about your abilities on achieving such a superb deal.
The moment you decide to go for a vacation, the first thing that strikes your mind is the expense for air travel. No matter whether you are looking for a weekend trip or thinking about a family vacation, this article will help you to find inexpensive flights and the most economical budget air travel.
There are some ways to keep yourself secure and safe while traveling through air. The key of keeping safe and secure is that the passenger should be very careful and keep focus on things which are happening around them.
Aitutaki is listed in some books as one of the 50 places everyone should see before they die. The island and its stunning, turquoise blue lagoon has been the location for the US TV series “Survivor Cook Islands” and the UK TV series “Shipwrecked”. This video takes you on a tour of the island and that lagoon. This is the third in a series of short films about the Cook Islands. Find out more about the islands at www.cookislands.org.uk – the only independent, non-commercial guide on the internet to all of the Cook Islands Video Rating: 4 / 5
Home Page > Computers > Software > Remove all Traces of AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac – How to Uninstall AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac Completely?
Remove all Traces of AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac – How to Uninstall AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac Completely?
Free download Best Uninstall Tool here at http://www.uninstallhelp.com/ to help you fully remove any programs with great success and make sure all the now-defunct Registry entries and related files are eliminated automatically with a few clicks. Aside from this software, it can also completely remove other programs like Authentium, Norton, Trend Micro antivirus, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and similar programs.
You may not be interested in continuing AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac and want to uninstall AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac from their PC / Laptop. However, you should have known better than me that the Add/Remove Programs function in Control Panel will not delete the related files, folders, directories and the registry entries even if the AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac has been uninstalled successfully with make your computer run quite slowly. In this case, if you want to uninstall AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac by any reason, you can perform the following actions:
Uninstall AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac by using its Setup Wizard.
Step 1 Close all programs including AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac. If the AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac application is running, please right-click the AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac icon in the left bottom corner, and then select Exit.
Step 1 Click Start, Click All programs and find the AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac.
Step 2 Click Modify, Repair or Remove.
Step 2 Select Remove in the open dialog window of the Setup Window
Step 3 Uninstall AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac
Step 4 In the Confirm window confirm or cancel the application uninstallation. Click Remove to continue Step 5 Wait till program files and registry keys are removed
Step 6 PC should be restarted after removal of AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac to finish the uninstallation process correctly.
I have seen lots of users are facing issues while uninstalling AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac with the methods above because it’s really too complicated. Even if you are a computer geek, it will take you a lot of time to completely get AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac deleted from the computer.
Fortunately, there is a very useful tool called Best Uninstall Tool that can easily uninstall AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac in seconds. Not only AVG LinkScanner Free Edition for Mac can be simply removed, but also all other unwanted programs and applications that are very hard to get rid of completely. Best Uninstall Tool can help you to uninstall them easily and quickly through the step-by-step wizard.
Free download Best Uninstall Tool here at http://www.uninstallhelp.com/ to help you fully remove any programs with great success and make sure all the now-defunct Registry entries and related files are eliminated automatically with a few clicks. Aside from this software, it can also completely remove other programs like Authentium, Norton, Trend Micro antivirus, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and similar programs.
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Protect everything you care about online with new AVG 9 Free Edition at free.avg.com – Basic antivirus and antispyware protection for Windows available to download for FREE (license key included in download) with LinkScanner Active Surf-Shield that checks web pages for threats at the only…
