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A

FFIRMATIVE

A FFIRMATIVE ................................................................................................................................. 1

Inherency – 1AC ........................................................................................................................ 2

Beach Erosion – 1AC ................................................................................................................. 3

Beach Erosion Extensions ......................................................................................................... 6

Coral Reefs – 1AC ................................................................................................................... 10

Coral Reefs Extensions............................................................................................................ 12

Decline Now .................................................................................................................................................................. 12

Biodiversity.................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Not Resilient .................................................................................................................................................................. 14

Plan ........................................................................................................................................... 15

Solvency – 1AC ........................................................................................................................ 16

Solvency Extensions ................................................................................................................. 18

A2 Other Artificial Reefs Solve..................................................................................................................................... 20

A2 Ecosystems Resilient/Bad to Restore What is Lost ................................................................................................. 21

US Fed Key.................................................................................................................................................................... 22

O CEAN A CIDIFICATION A DD ON ................................................................................................. 23

A2 O FFCASE ................................................................................................................................. 24

Politics ....................................................................................................................................... 25

Private Sector CP .................................................................................................................... 26

T IDAL E NERGY ............................................................................................................................. 27

N EGATIVE ..................................................................................................................................... 29

Privatization CP Solvency ...................................................................................................... 30

Beach Erosion Advantage ....................................................................................................... 31

Coral Reefs Advantage ............................................................................................................ 32

Solvency .................................................................................................................................... 33

US Army Corps of Engineers Bad ................................................................................................................................. 33

Artificial Reefs Bad ....................................................................................................................................................... 34

Tidal Energy ............................................................................................................................. 36

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NHERENCY

– 1AC

B IOROCK

B IOROCK PROJECTS FACE MASSIVE BUREAUCRACY AND ONLY DONE ON A VERY SMALL SCALE

NOW

Furth 13

[Marc Furth, former Lauderdale by the Sea Commissioner; Biorock USA, Reef Restoration and Regeneration Systems; Biorock Reef Project in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea,

Florida ; July 1, 2013; http://www.biorockusa.com/; accessed 14 June 2014; AC]

The first coral reef fisheries habitat and restoration project in America - using a novel technology called Biorock to speed up coral growth and survival and create shelter for fish populations - has just been installed exclusively in Lauderdale-By-

The-Sea!

This will create a new attraction for divers and snorkelers in the town renowned as the "Shore Dive Capital" of Florida.

This pilot project, which will make the town the leader in coral reef restoration in Florida, has taken several years to get all the permits and approvals needed from a host of county, state and federal agencies

. It will be located south of the fishing pier and Lauderdale-by-the-Sea snorkel trail.

What will be visible from the shore will be two buoys covered with solar panels, which will use sunlight to provide a completely safe low voltage trickle charge to six tunnel like open mesh steel structures on the sea floor below

.

The trickle charge will completely prevent any rusting of the steel and cause the slow growth of solid limestone rock over the structures

.

Limestone is the natural mineral that makes up coral skeletons, reefs, tropical white sand beaches and most of Florida.

Limestone is naturally dissolved in the ocean but does not spontaneously grow out of the water. The electrical charge causes it to grow over charged metal surfaces similar to the way that corals use energy to make their skeletons from naturally dissolved chemicals in the sea.

The ingenious Biorock process mimics the natural growth of coral reefs and was invented by a pioneering architect, the late Professor Wolf Hilbertz in the 1970's, as a way of growing natural building materials in the sea. Limestone has been used for construction since the pyramids of ancient Egypt. In the 1980's Hilbertz began working with Dr. Thomas Goreau, a coral reef specialist, to use the process to restore coral reefs.

They and their students have built hundreds of Biorock coral reef and oyster reef restoration projects in more than 20 countries. They found that corals on these structures grow typically two to six times faster than normal and have sixteen to fifty times higher survival following severe high temperature episodes, events that have become more frequent in the last 20 years as the global warming impacts of rising atmospheric CO2 begin to be felt. Furthermore, they find that large schools of fish, especially juveniles, are attracted to them. As a result, Biorock reefs have kept corals alive in places where they would have died and allowed new reefs to be grown back in a few years in damaged areas where no natural recovery have taken place.

Only a handful of the oldest divers now remember the wonderful coral reef that used to stretch along Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach counties, where they would swim among forests of corals grabbing lobsters and conch and spearing big fish. Those habitats have alsmost entirely vanished. That is why this approach is so badly needed in Southeast Florida.

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EACH

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B IOROCK

B EACHES ARE ERODING FAST .

P ROTECTING THESE BEACHES USING CONVENTIONAL METHODS

WOULD COST TRILLIONS

Goreau 13

[Thomas Goreau, PhD from Harvard in Biogeochemistry, president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance; 2013; Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration ;

CRC Press; pp 11-12; AC]

Worldwide, most beaches are suffering from serious and accelerating erosion

(Pilkey and Young 2009)

� Major factors responsible for this erosion include rising sea levels, sand mining

, regional sub- sidence from tectonic causes (amplified in many places by oil and gas extraction), increasing tropical storm intensity driven by global warming, use of groynes that block long-shore sand transport (stealing sand from the neighbors), and seawalls that are built too close to the shoreline

(to protect buildings that should never have been permitted so near the water’s edge) due to lax or irresponsible planning (Pilkey and Wright 1988; Pilkey and Dixon 1996)

�

The only beaches that show clear net growth are a few yellow or brown quartz sand beaches, made up of mineral grains washed into the sea from erosion of rocks on land

�

These are growing in a few places where massive deforestation has greatly increased erosion of soils and rocks, causing increased transport of sand to beaches near river mouths

�

In the tropics, the major factor is death of reef-building corals from global warming, new diseases, pollution, soil erosion, physical damage from human activities, or unsustainable fishing practices

�

In cooler waters, massive loss of oyster reefs from overharvesting is causing the same result; loss of biological reef structures that protect and build beaches

�

This results in loss of the organisms whose dead skeletons make up white beach sand grains, and concomitant loss of growing protective reefs shielding the shore from waves

�

Consequently, beaches suffer from two effects simultane- ously: sand erodes faster due to higher wave energy, while less new sand is available to replace it � The massive worldwide destruction and degradation of coral reefs in the last two decades have resulted in most white limestone sand beaches suffering serious net erosion, shown clearly by trees, buildings, roads, and airport runways collapsing into the sea � ¶ When reefs become degraded and need to be replaced by seawalls in order to keep the beach from washing away, the typical costs for concrete or rock seawalls are about $10–15 million per kilometer � A standard estimate of global coastline length is 350,000 km

(although this surely ignores the fine-scale details), so protecting all of that could cost up to $5.25 trillion �

These estimated costs are for a sea-level rise of about 1 m, but runaway greenhouse warming owing to unabated, increased CO2 levels that melts the ice caps could result in ultimate sea-level rises of up to 100 m

!

Naturally, not all coastlines are eroding, because a small proportion of coasts is actually growing as a result of massive inland soil erosion caused by deforestation and bad land management, and also not all shorelines have inhabited infrastructure that needs to be protected

�

But, to put that crude estimate into perspective, the

(officially revealed) US military budget is less than one trillion dollars, and that makes up roughly half of global military expenses

�

So, protecting coasts against sea level rise of only 1 m might cost more than “national security” from the worst enemies �

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B EACH EROSION HURTS THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

B IOROCK

Houston 08

[James Houston PhD, May 4, 2008; US Army and Engineer Research and Development Center; The Economic Value of Beaches ; Shore and Beach, a peer-reviewed technical journal published quarterly by asbpa, volume 76, number 3; AC]

Beach erosion is the No. 1 concern that beach tourists have about beaches

(Hall and Staimer 1995).

There are 33,000 kilometers of eroding shoreline and 4,300 kilometers of critically eroding shoreline in the U.S. Beach erosion is a serious threat to the nation’s beach tourism and, therefore, a threat to the national economy

(U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers 1994).

Restoring beaches through beach nourishment can greatly increase their attractiveness to tourists.

For example, in 1989, 74 percent of those polled in New Jersey said the New Jer- sey shore was “going downhill.” By 1998, only 27 percent thought the New Jersey shore was in decline with 86 percent saying that the shore was one of New Jersey’s best features (Zukin 1998). The difference between 1989 and 1998 was construction of the beach nourishment project from Sandy Hook to Barnegat Inlet, New Jersey, which is the largest beach nourishment project (in terms of volume) in the world (U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers 2001).

¶ Houston (1996) cites beach nourishment at Miami Beach as a good example of the economic benefits of beach restoration.

Miami Beach had virtually no beach by mid-1970

. As a result, facili- ties were run down, and Miami Beach was not the place to visit.

Beach nourishment in the late 1970’s rejuvenated Miami Beach and opened its beaches to the public

.

Beach attendance, based on lifeguard counts and aerial surveys, increased from eight million in 1978 to 21 million in

1983

(Wiegel 1992).

Tourists now contribute $11 billion annually to the economy

(City of Miami Beach 2007).

Almost 45% of these tourists are international tourists, and they contribute almost $5 billion to the economy (City of Miami

Beach 2007).

¶

The $5 billion annual contribution that international tourists make to the economy is almost 100 times the $52 million cost of the Miami Beach beach- nourishment project that has lasted with minor maintenance over 30 years

(Hous- ton 1996). The capitalized annual cost of the project over its current 30-year life is about $1.7 million. Stronge (2000) re- ports that half of Florida tourists are beach tourists. Assuming half of international tourists to Miami Beach are beach tourists, international beach tourists spend almost $2.5 billion annually in Miami Beach. Using the capitalized annual cost of the Miami Beach project of $1.7 million, this means that for every $1 that has been invested annually to nourish the beaches at

Miami Beach, the U.S. has earned about $1470 annually in foreign exchange. This compares with a return of less than $0.40 in agricultural- trade surplus ($5.5 billion surplus in agricultural commodities 2006) for each $1 of crop subsidy ($20 billion in U.S pro- ducer support in 2006 -- U.S. Department of Commerce 2006; Reuters 2006).

¶ It is instructive to compare the federal investment in beach infrastructure (beach nourishment) versus federal tax revenues from tourists. From 1950-1993 the federal government and its cost-shar- ing partners spent an average of

$34 million (1993 dollars) annually on beach nourishment (U.S. Army Corps of Engi- neers 1994). The federal investment has increased since the mid-1990s and is approximately $100 million a year (Marlowe 1999).

A California study of beach tourism showed that beach tourism in

California provides $8.1 billion in tax revenues

(California Department ¶ of Boating and Waterways and State Coastal Conservancy 2002). If the estimated 2 billion national beach tourists pay proportionately similar taxes as the 567 million California beach tourists and the 11.2% inflation from 2002 to 2006 is considered, beach tourists paid federal taxes of about $32 billion in 2006. There- fore, for every $1 the federal government spends annually on beach nourishment (about $100 million per year), it collects about $320 ($32 billion) in tax revenues from beach tourists.

¶ With over seven times as many annual beach tourist visits (2 billion) as visits to all properties of the National Park Ser- vice (272 million), the recreational value of beaches is clear. However, the annual federal investment in beach maintenance of about $100 million is less than 4% of the $2.65 billion budget of the Park Ser- vice (National Park Service 2007b), which critics maintain is itself inad- equate. The report “Endangered Rang- ers” by the National Parks Conservation

Association noted that national parks are underfunded by $600 million annually (National Parks Conservation Associa- tion 2004). Most Americans support increased funding for the National Park Service with 61% of those surveyed saying they would be willing to donate to the Park Service on their tax returns (Na- tional Parks

Conservation Association 2005). Similarly, many beach visitors would agree with Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. from New Jersey, who noted, “In the same way we look at our national parks as a national treasure

, we should look at our beaches as a national treasure”

(New York Times 2007).

¶ King and

Symes (2003) assert that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) current policy limits the federal interest in California’s beaches. They note that OMB believes visitors who de- cide not to attend California’s beaches will spend their dollars elsewhere in the United States, creating no net economic or tax impact for the federal government. They examine OMB’s assumption and determine there is a significant net loss to the state of California and the U.S. from a failure to maintain

California’s beaches. They surveyed 2719 households in southern California and extended the analysis to all California beaches. Since some of the 567 million visitor days per year include visits to piers and board- walks, to be conservative, they estimated ¶ that there were 232 million visitor days per year to California beaches. They estimated that if California beaches were unavailable for recreation, beach goers would instead spend about $3.1 billion in other states and $2.4 billion outside the

United States. King and Symes (2003) use standard techniques from the U.S. government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis to show that the unavailability of

California beaches would produce an annual economic loss, including indirect and induced effects, to the

California economy of $8.3 billion and there would be a further loss of $6 billion to the U.S. national economy.

Further, they note that, “ These are not economic impact estimates, but instead reflect the decisions of beachgoers to spend their money in other states and countries. Unlike economic impact estimates, where substitu- tion is possible, these estimates represent a net loss to the U.S. and state economy.”

They note that the state of California and federal government would lose $761 million and $738 million respectively in taxes if indirect and induced effects are included. They obtained their estimate of the loss of tax revenues to the federal government by assuming the ratio of lost federal income tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 0.097, the ratio of lost corporate and excise taxes to GDP was 0.027, and they ignored social security taxes. With the annual federal cost of shore protection in California beaches being between $12 and 18 million, for every $1 of federal expenditures on shore protection for California, the federal government avoids tax losses of $41 to

$62.¶ The conclusion by King and Symes (2003) that, “...a significant number of beach visitors would, in fact, travel outside of California and outside of the U.S. if there were no beaches in California” would hold true for beaches throughout the U.S. As a rough estimate, if we as- sume the tax loss to the federal government determined by King and Symes for California beach tourism (232 million beach visits) holds proportionately for national beach tourism (2 billion beach visits), the federal government would lose about $6.4 billion in tax revenues from indirect and induced effects if beaches were unavailable due to erosion ($738 million times 2 billion divided by 238 million). Moreover, under current OMB policy, beach restoration projects have to be justified solely on reduction of storm damage wit h recreational benefits only considered incidental benefits. The inclusion of recreational benefits would produce large benefit/cost ratios.

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C ORNISH TSDC B IOROCK

E CONOMIC DECLINE RISKS MULTIPLE GLOBAL NUCLEAR WARS

O’Hanlon 12

Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at the Brookings

Institution, former Professor at the University of Michigan [“The Real National Security Threat: America's Debt,” Los Angeles Times, July 10th, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon]

Alas, globalization

and automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American dream into question for the working classes.

Another decade of underinvestment in what is required to remedy this situation will make an isolationist or populist president far more likely because much of the country will question whether an internationalist role makes sense for America — especially if it costs us well over half a trillion dollars in defense spending annually yet seems correlated with more job losses. Lastly,

American economic weakness undercuts U.S. leadership abroad. Other countries sense our weakness and wonder about our purported decline.

If this perception becomes more widespread, and the case that we are in decline becomes more persuasive, countries will begin to take actions that reflect their skepticism about America's future.

Allies

and friends will doubt our commitment and may pursue nuclear weapons for their own security

, for example; adversaries will sense opportunity and be less restrained in throwing around their weight

in their own neighborhoods. The

crucial Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions will likely become less stable. Major war will become more likely

. When running for president last time, Obama eloquently articulated big foreign policy visions: healing America's breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change, dramatically curbing global poverty through development aid, moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons. These were, and remain, worthy if elusive goals. However, for Obama or his successor

, there is now a much more urgent big-picture issue: restoring U.S. economic strength. Nothing else is really possible if that fundamental prerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished

.

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B IOROCK

B EACHES KEY TO THE US ECONOMY T OURISM

Haisman 08

[Tina Haisman, Media Relations for ASBPA (American Shore and Beach Preservation Association) wrote this press release about an article that James Houston, PhD, director of R&D for the US Army Corps of Engineers wrote and had published in Shore and Beach ; 2008; http://www.asbpa.org/news/Beach_News/080814Houston.pdf; accessed 13 June 2014; AC]

Healthy beaches mean a healthy tourist economy for this country

, but the lack of investment in both our ¶ coastal infrastructure and international marketing of our coastal assets is undermining the U.S.'s ¶ position as a vacation destination around the world.

This little-known correlation can have serious

¶ economic consequences for our national economy

, according to an article in the most recent issue of ¶ Shore & Beach magazine. ¶ ¶ "

Travel and tourism is America's leading industry, employer and earner of foreign exchange; and

¶ beaches are

America’s leading tourist destination,"

according to author James R. Houston, Ph.D. But ¶ " few Americans realize that beaches are a key driver of America's economy and support U.S.

¶ competitiveness in a world economy.”

¶ ¶ "

Perhaps Americans do not appreciate the importance of tourism to the national economy because 98

¶ percent of the 1.4-million tourism-related businesses in the United States are classified as small

¶ businesses, and this makes the industry extremely fragmented

.

Lacking national advertising from either ¶ this fragmented industry or a national travel office, the importance of travel and tourism to the national ¶ economy has not been communicated to the American people." ¶ ¶ Houston concludes: “

Without a paradigm shift in attitudes toward the economic significance of travel

¶ and tourism and necessary infrastructure investment to maintain and restore beaches, the U.S. will

¶ relinquish a dominant worldwide lead in its most important industry.”

¶ ¶ This article is an update of prior research Houston undertook in 1995 and 2002. In the 2008 findings ¶ Houston, director of research and development for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, presents the ¶ following facts: ¶ •

Travel and tourism is the world's and America's largest employer, with one of every 10

¶

Americans employed in the field.

¶ • International tourists, who represent up to 15% of the U.S. tourism industry, produced ¶ estimated tax revenues of $13.6 billion for this country in 2006 alone -- continuing to be one of ¶ the few bright spots in the country's long-term international trade imbalance. ¶ •

Coastal states receive about 85% of the tourist-related revenues in the U.S. It's estimated that

¶ some 180 million Americans annually make 2 billion visits to ocean, gulf and inland beaches -

-

¶ more than twice as many visitors that go to all the National Park Service properties during the

¶ same period.

¶

• It's estimated that U.S. beaches contribute more than $320 billion annually to the national

¶ economy -- more than 25 times what national parks bring in.

However, the federal contribution ¶ to help maintain and management U.S. beaches amounts to less than 4% of the $2.65 billion

¶ annual budget for the park service. ¶ •

Beach erosion is the No. 1 concern beach tourists have about beaches. And in areas where

¶ eroded beaches have been restored, tourist visits and revenues increase

. At Miami Beach, 6ollowing its successful beach restoration in the late 1970s beach visits jumped 162% and the ¶ annual contribution of tourism to the local economy rose to $11 billion -- with almost $5 billion ¶ of that coming from international tourists. ¶ •

Beaches offer the federal government an incredible return on investment. For every

$1 invested

¶ annually, Washington receives $320 in tax revenues from beach tourists

.

Conversely, however,

¶ should beaches decline the tourism revenue they generate would also slump, having a serious

¶ impact on both state and federal coffers to the tune of billions of dollars each year.

¶ • The infrastructure deficit that's been rising in the national debate needs to encompass beaches ¶ as well -- because our overseas tourism competitors are putting their financial resources into ¶ their coastlines. Germany has spent almost five times what the U.S. to protect its coasts over ¶ the past 40 years -- for a shoreline that's less than 5% the length of the U.S. coast. Japan's ¶ budget for shore protection in a single year topped what the U.S. spent in the past 40 years -- ¶ and Spain, a major competitor for beach tourism, has spent more than that in a five-year plan to ¶ restore and renew its coastline. ¶ • The U.S. currently has no nationally-funded tourism advertising while countries such as ¶ Australia, Canada, France, Greece,

Singapore and Spain each spend $100 million or more ¶ annually on international marketing.

Similarly, if U.S. beaches decline in quality, international

¶ tourists have numerous, more convenient choices in countries eagerly marketing their

¶ coastlines as vacation options.

¶ • There is a world economy in tourism that gives consumers ample choices and produces stiff ¶ worldwide competition. America’s share of the global inbound tourism market has dropped 35 ¶ percent since 1993; the U.S. has lost 18% of its international market share in just five years. The ¶ significant drop in international tourists has cost the American economy $286 billion in the last ¶ 13 years including $44 billion in 2005. ¶

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B EACHES ARE KEY TO NATIONAL ECONOMY AND TOURISM

B IOROCK

Houston 08

[James Houston PhD, May 4, 2008; US Army and Engineer Research and Development Center; The Economic Value of Beaches ; Shore and Beach, a peer-reviewed technical journal published quarterly by asbpa, volume 76, number 3; AC]

Beaches are the key element of U.S.

¶

travel and tourism, since they are the leading tourist destination

(USA Today

1993; Carlson Wagonlit Travel Agent Poll 1998; Washingtonpost.com:Poll 2001; Chivas Poll 2001, TripAdvisor 2007, BusinessWire 2007).

Coastal states receive about 85% of tourist-related revenues in the U.S. largely because beaches are tremendously popular

(World Almanac 2007). Although there are many interior attractions from Yellowstone to the Grand Can- yon and from Las Vegas to Branson, Mis- souri; the popularity of beaches dominates tourism.

For example, a single beach location (Miami Beach) reported more tourist visits (21 million) than were made to any National Park Service property (Wiegel 1992; National Park Service 2007a). Miami Beach has more than twice as many tourist visits as the combined number of tourist visits to Yellowstone (2.9 million), the Grand Canyon (4.3 million), and Yosemite (3.2 million) (National Park Service 2007a). California beaches alone have more tourist visits (567 million) than combined tourist visits (272 million) to all 388 National Park Service properties - including national seashores and monuments and buildings such as the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and White House (King 1999; National Park Service 2007a). It is estimated that each year approximately 180 million Americans make 2 billion visits to ocean, gulf, and inland beaches (Clean Beaches Council 2007). This is almost twice as many visits as the combined 1.06 billion visits made to properties of the National Park Service (272 million), Bureau of Land Management (55 million), and all state parks and recreation areas (735 million) (National Association of State Park Directors 2007, Bureau of Land Management 2007). Moreover, many of these visits to state parks and recreation areas were visits to beaches. For example, state beaches in California account for only 2.7% of California state park holdings, but account for 72% of visits

(King 1999).

The 2 billion beach visits also dwarf the 138 million visitors to all theme parks in the U.S. including properties of Disney,

Six Flags, Universal, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, Paramount, Knotts Berry Farms, HersheyPark, Dollywood, and other theme

Parks

(Theme Park Insider 2005).

¶

Beaches make a large contribution to America’s economy. Beach tourism in Florida made a $52 billion contribution to the economy in 2007 dollars ¶ (Murley et. al 2003, U.S. Department of Labor 2007). Similarly, King (1999) shows that

California beach tourism makes a total direct and indirect contribution of $73 billion to the national economy.

Mul- tiplying the ratio of visitors to national beaches (2 billion) and visitors to Cali- fornia beaches (567 million) by the contribution of California beach visitors to the national economy ($73 billion) in 1999 and adjusting for inflation yields an estimate that

U.S. beaches currently contribute

$322 billion annually to the economy

in 2007 dollars (Clean Beaches Council 2007, King 1999, and U.S. Department of Labor 2007). This is more than twenty five times the $12 billion contribution of the National Park Service system to the national economy (National Park Service 2006).

As was noted to be the case for foreign tourists, most taxes paid by beach tourists also flow primarily to the federal government.

For example, a study of tourism at Huntington Beach, California, showed that the federal government is the main beneficiary of beach tourism with tourism at Huntington Beach gen- erating $135 million in federal revenues, $25 million in state sales tax revenues, and $4.8 million in local revenue sales tax and parking fees (King 1999).

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A ND , ECONOMIC DECLINE INCREASES THE RISK OF WAR

B IOROCK

Royal 10

[Jedidiah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, M.Phil. Candidate at the University of New South

Wales, 2010 (“Economic Integration, Economic Signalling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political

Perspectives , Edited by Ben Goldsmith and Jurgen Brauer, Published by Emerald Group Publishing, ISBN 0857240048, p. 213-215)]

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict

. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next

.

As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power

(see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation

(Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline

, particularly for difficult [end page 213] to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases , as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing . Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict,

which in turn returns the favour . Moreover

, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other

.

(Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89)

Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism

(Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders

and

lead to external tensions .

Furthermore, crises

generally reduce the popularity of

a sitting government . “Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect

. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the U nited

S tates, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force

. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels

.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.

This

observation is not contradictory to

other perspectives that link economic interdependence with a decrease in

the likelihood of external conflict

, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. [end page 214]

Those studies tend to focus on dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically conside r the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises

. As such, the view presented here should be considered ancillary to those views.

8


C ORAL R EEFS ARE THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT BEACHES BUT THEY ARE DYING OUT .

S EAWALLS AND BREAKERS DESTROY BEACHES AND COST ASTRONOMICAL AMOUNTS OF

MONEY

Goreau 13



The fundamental strategy behind almost all shore protection projects is “hard” protection: building a solid wall to reflect waves backward and protect the land behind it (Wiegel 1992; Schiereck 2004) This hard protection suffers from an intrinsic and unavoidable physical flaw; all or most of the wave energy is concentrated onto the plane of the wall In fact, the wave is reflected backward from a vertical wall with the same speed and energy with which it came in, so the force on the wall itself is twice the energy of the wave due to reversing the energy flow vector

Solid breakwaters protect land immediately behind them, but focus wave energy in one plane, eroding all sand in front of them and causing intense scour that undermines the breakwaters, ultimately causing settling, collapse, failure, and endless cycles of rebuilding This causes higher-velocity currents to form in front of such walls, eroding sand in front and underneath the structures, with impacts on downstream near shore marine ecosystems (Airoldi et al 2005) Current methods of shore protection have largely proven to be very costly long-term failures Solid breakwaters, made from cement, rocks, or geotextile rubber tubes filled with sand, typically cost in the range of $10,000–$15,000 per meter of shoreline, or $10–$15 million per kilometer In the March 11, 2011 Japan tsunami, almost every tsunami barrier, constructed at the cost of billions of dollars, was ripped apart, collapsed, or fell over and proved not fit for the purpose (Cyranoski 2011) This tremendous concentration of energy in a small area is very different from the way that a sloping beach gradually shoals and slows down waves, breaking the biggest waves farther offshore

Hard seawalls and breakwaters therefore cause all the sand in front of them to be washed away, speeding up erosion and resulting in inevitable scouring of sediment under the structure, causing it to be undermined, settle, crack, and collapse As a result, all such structures must be constantly rebuilt every time they fail, as they all do sooner or later

People selling such hard “engineering solutions” know that they have a guaranteed repeat business, forever, solving their own financial problems, but not those of their customers, who in desperation are forced to endlessly repeat their expenditures or lose their shorefront investments!

A classic example of such failures is Galveston, Texas After the worst loss of life in a hurricane in US history in 1900, a massive seawall was built

This was extended along the shoreline of Galveston Island later

The beach in front of it immediately washed away Every year, vast sums of money is spent in dumping sand in front of the seawall so that there is a beach for tourism, and every year it disappears Now there is no more sand in the region left to dredge, because so much has been swept out to deeper water and lost As waves hitting the wall form an intense coastal long-shore current, they greatly increase the erosion downstream

Time series aerial images show the vast bulk of erosion down-current took place immediately after the wall was built

(Figure 31) It was later increased when sand was excavated from large pits in downstream beaches to dump in front of the wall These borrow pits were then breached in subsequent hurricanes

Recently, Rice University issued a major report summarizing all of the geological data and past shoreline information and concluded that it was now so hopeless to protect west Galveston Island from sea-level rise that they should not even waste any money trying—they should just abandon the place immediately and move to higher ground (Hight et al 2011) That same week, Texas governor Rick Perry ordered removal of the words “global sea level rise,” and “global warming” from all official Texas State environmental assessment and planning documents, even though while Texas suffered from record high temperatures and drought

Soft” shore protection works in a very different way, the way that natural coral reefs and oyster reefs act to grow beaches

“Permeable” barriers are built which are open structures, rather than monolithically solid

They dissipate a portion of the wave energy through friction and allow some to pass through, gradually reducing wave energy

Instead of reflecting waves, they refract them, so very different physical principles are involved

When the waves reach the shoreline, they have much less force, depositing sand instead of eroding it

(Figures 32 and 33)

Coral reefs form nature’s best shore protection

(Munk and Sargent 1948)Pacific atoll islanders stand on the outer edge of windward reef flats in waters that are calm and only ankle deep and toss fishing lines into huge pounding waves breaking only meters away The energy of large ocean swells is attenuated and can be completely dissipated by the complex structures of the coral reef in front of them, though attenuation is a complex function of the wave field, depth, and tidal height (Wolanski 1994; Hardy and Young 1996; Gourlay and Colleter

2005)

If corals are broken by exceptional wave events, they grow right back Coral reefs have evolutionarily optimized the art of maximizing the flow and energy dissipation through them, bringing food to reef organisms and flushing out their wastes, with minimal damage to the structure itself Intense roughness and complexity on all scales is the fundamental base of the extraordinary productivity of coral reefs But their hydrodynamics remain poorly described or understood (Monismith 2007) As long as reef corals are alive and able to recover, they protect the shore for free, better than any other alternatives

Sadly, most reef corals worldwide are now dying or dead During the December

26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, wherever the coral reefs were intact, there was a minimal damage and loss of life, but in nearby places where reefs had been destroyed by mining or other causes, waves went much further inland, and there was a massive loss of life (Samarawickrama et al 2008) There was very little physical damage to coral reefs from the tsunami; most damage took place in coastal fringing reefs, and that was not owing to the wave forces but to the backwash of water containing smashed buildings and human construction debris The waves were less threat to the corals than trash was! Thomas Sarkisian took photographs of coral reefs on the offshore Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea the week before and the week after the tsunami, and most of the sites suffered little or no visible damage, even to brittle branching corals There were small local areas with heavy physical damage, but these were all on promontories and headlands that focused wave energy onto them It is often not appreciated that a tsunami has only a few very large waves, well separated in time, and causes far less damage to coral reefs than a hurricane, where big waves can strike every few seconds for days on end

9

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C ORAL R EEFS ARE IN DECLINE

Belwood et al 04

[D.R. Belwood, T. P. Hughes, C. Folke, and M. Nystrom; Confronting the Coral Reef Crisis ; 24 June 2004; Nature; International Weekly journal of science; http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6994/full/nature02691.html; accessed 13 June 2014; AC]

The overall goal of coral reef management is to sustain the ability of tropical reefs to provide the ecosystem goods and services

(for example, fisheries, tourism, aesthetic and cultural values), upon which human welfare depends

1. Although there have been some local successes

, current management of reefs has failed to achieve this goal at a regional or global scale.

Instead, coral reefs worldwide are in serious decline

, owing primarily to over-harvesting2, 3, pollution4, 5, disease6 and climate change7, 8, 9.

Even the Great Barrier Reef, widely regarded as one of the most 'pristine' coral reefs in the world, shows system-wide decline

(Fig. 1). In many locations around the world, man-made stresses to coral reefs have exceeded their regenerative capacity, causing dramatic shifts in species composition and resulting in severe economic loss.

C ORAL REEF DECLINE LEADS TO DECLINE IN BIODIVERSITY

–

MARINE RESERVES DO NOT

CHECK

Jones et al 04

[Geoffrey Jones, School of Marine Biology and Aquaculture, James Cook University, Mark McCormick; Maya Srinivasan, and Janelle Eagle; May 18, 2004;

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America vol. 101, no 21; http://www.pnas.org/content/101/21/8251.full; accessed 13 June

2014; AC]

The worldwide decline in coral cover has serious implications for the health of coral reefs

. But what is the future of reef fish assemblages?

Marine reserves can protect fish from exploitation, but do they protect fish biodiversity in degrading environments? The answer appears to be no

, as indicated by our 8-year study in Papua New Guinea.

A devastating decline in coral cover caused a parallel decline in fish biodiversity, both in marine reserves and in areas open to fishing

. Over 75% of reef fish species declined in abundance, and 50% declined to less than half of their original numbers. The greater the dependence species have on living coral as juvenile recruitment sites, the greater the observed decline in abundance.

Several rare coral-specialists became locally extinct. We suggest that fish biodiversity is threatened wherever permanent reef degradation occurs and warn that marine reserves will not always be sufficient to ensure their survival.

Many ecologists have expressed concern over the worldwide decline in coral cover due to global warming and associated coral bleaching, overfishing, and coastal pollution (1–5

). Coral reefs support a high diversity of fishes that may ultimately depend on corals for their survival

; however, the impact of long-term reef degradation on fish populations is unknown. Most attention to the protection of marine fish populations has focused on the benefits of controlling exploitation by establishing “no-take” marine reserves (6–8). However, comprehensive strategies for protecting marine biodiversity also require an understanding of how species respond to degradation of their habitats.

10


C ORAL REEF LOSS RISKS EXTINCTION , DESTROYS OCEAN ECOSYSTEMS , CRUSHES THE

ECONOMY , CAUSES POLITICAL INSTABILITY , IMMENSE FAMINE AND PREVENTS SOLUTIONS TO

DISEASES

.

Skoloff 10

(Brian, correspondent @ associated press, 3/25/10, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/26/coral-reef-extinction-cou_n_514742.html)

Coral reefs are dying

, and scientists and governments around the world are contemplating what will happen if they disappear altogether. The idea positively scares them.

Coral reefs are part of the foundation of the ocean food chain

.

Nearly half the fish the world eats make their homes around them

.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide – by some estimates,

1 billion across Asia alone – depend on them for their food and their livelihoods.

If the reefs vanished

, experts say, hunger, poverty and political instability could ensue.

"

Whole nations will be threatened in terms of their existence,

"

said

Carl Gustaf Lundin of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Numerous studies predict coral reefs are headed for extinction worldwide, largely because of global warming

, pollution and coastal development, but also because of damage from bottom-dragging fishing boats and the international trade in jewelry and souvenirs made of coral. At least

19 percent of the world's coral reefs are already gone

, including some 50 percent of those in the Caribbean

.

An additional 15 percent could be dead within 20 years

, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Old Dominion University professor Kent Carpenter, director of a worldwide census of marine species, warned that if global warming continues unchecked, all corals could be extinct within 100 years. "You could argue that a complete collapse of the marine ecosystem would be one of the consequences of losing corals,

"

Carpenter said

. "

You're going to have a tremendous cascade effect for all life in the oceans."

Exotic and colorful, coral reefs aren't lifeless rocks; they are made up of living creatures that excrete a hard calcium carbonate exoskeleton. Once the animals die, the rocky structures erode, depriving fish of vital spawning and feeding grounds.

Experts say cutting back on carbon emissions to arrest rising sea temperatures and acidification of the water, declaring some reefs off limits to fishing and diving, and controlling coastal development and pollution could help reverse, or at least stall, the tide.

Florida, for instance, has the largest unbroken "no-take" zone in the continental U.S. – about 140 square miles off limits to fishing in and around Dry Tortugas National Park, a cluster of islands and reefs teeming with marine life about 70 miles off Key West.

Many fishermen oppose such restrictions. And other environmental measures have run into resistance at the state, local, national and international level. On Sunday, during a gathering of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of

Wild Fauna and Flora, restrictions proposed by the U.S. and Sweden on the trade of some coral species were rejected.

If reefs were to disappear, commonly consumed species of grouper and snapper could become just memories. Oysters, clams and other creatures that are vital to many people's diets would also suffer

.

And experts say commercial fisheries would fail miserably at meeting demand for seafood. "Fish will become a luxury good," said Cassandra deYoung of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

"You already have a billion people who are facing hunger

, and this is just going to aggravate the situation," she added.

"

We will not be able to maintain food security around the world."

The economic damage could be enormous. Ocean fisheries provide direct employment to at least

38 million people worldwide

, with

an additional

162 million people indirectly involved in the industry, according to the U.N.

Coral reefs draw scuba divers, snorkelers and other tourists to seaside resorts in Florida, Hawaii, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean and help maintain some of the world's finest sandy beaches by absorbing energy from waves.

Without the reefs,

hotels, restaurants and other businesses that cater to tourists could suffer financially.

Many

Caribbean countries get nearly half their g ross n ational p roduct from visitors

seeking tropical underwater experiences. People all over the world could pay the price if reefs were to disappear, since some types of coral and marine species that rely on reefs are being used by the pharmaceutical industry to develop possible cures for cancer, arthritis and viruses

. "A world without coral reefs is unimaginable," said Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist who heads NOAA. "

Reefs are precious sources of food, medicine and livelihoods for hundreds of thousands around the world. They are also special places of renewal and recreation for thousands more. Their exotic beauty and diverse bounty are global treasures."

B IODIVERSITY IS KEY TO HUMAN SURVIVAL

Freiburg 11

[Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. "Biodiversity key to Earth's life-support functions in a changing world." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 August 2011.

<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110811084513.htm>, accessed 16 June 2014; AC]

The biological diversity of organisms on Earth is not just something we enjoy when taking a walk

through a blossoming meadow in spring; it is also the basis for countless products and services provided by nature, including food, building materials, and medicines

as well as the self-purifying qualities of water and protection against erosion.

These

so-called ecosystem services are what makes Earth inhabitable for humans.

They are based on ecological processes, such as photosynthesis, the production of biomass, or nutrient cycles. Since biodiversity is on the decline, both on a global and a local scale, researchers are asking the question as to what role the diversity of organisms plays in maintaining these ecological processes and thus in providing the ecosystem's vital products and services.

¶ In an international research group led by Prof. Dr. Michel Loreau from Canada, ecologists from ten different universities and research institutes, including Prof. Dr.

Michael Scherer-Lorenzen from the University of Freiburg, compiled findings from numerous biodiversity experiments and reanalyzed them. These experiments simulated the loss of plant species and attempted to determine the consequences for the functioning of ecosystems, most of them coming to the conclusion that a higher level of biodiversity is accompanied by an increase in ecosystem processes.

However, the findings were always only valid for a certain combination of environmental conditions present at the locations at which the experiments were conducted and for a limited range of ecosystem processes.

¶ In a study published in the current issue of the journal Nature, the research group investigated the extent to which the positive effects of diversity still apply under changing environmental conditions and when a multitude of processes are taken into account. They found that 84 percent of the 147 plant species included in the experiments promoted ecological processes in at least one case.

¶

The more years, locations, ecosystem processes, and scenarios of global change -- such as global warming or land use intensity -- the experiments took into account, the more plant species were necessary to guarantee the functioning of the ecosystems

. Moreover, other species were always necessary to keep the ecosystem processes running under the different combinations of influencing factors.

These findings indicate that much more biodiversity is necessary to keep ecosystems functioning in a world that is changing ever faster. The protection of diversity is thus a crucial factor in maintaining Earth's life-support functions.

11

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C ORAL R EEFS ARE IN DECLINE BUT COLLAPSE IS AVOIDABLE

Briggs 13

[Michael Briggs; May 10, 2013; Coral Reef in Danger, but Not Doomed; Local, Global Action needed: Study; Design & Trend; http://www.designntrend.com/articles/4266/20130510/coral-reef-danger-doomed-local-global-action-needed.htm; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

Scientists agree that coral reefs are in decline, but according to a new study, the collapse of the underwater ecosystems could still be avoided

.

¶

An integral part of coastal ecosystems, coral reefs will continue to provide fish and other sea creatures with habitat and provide a natural buffer zone as long as local and global action is taken to prevent their collapse

.

¶ "People benefit by reefs' having a complex structure - a little like a Manhattan skyline, but underwater," Peter Mumby of The University of Queensland said in a news release. "

Structurally complex reefs provide nooks and crannies for thousands of species and provide the habitat needed to sustain productive reef fisheries.

They're also great fun to visit as a snorkeler or diver. If we carry on the way we have been, the ability of reefs to provide benefits to people will seriously decline." ¶ Mumby also noted that local efforts can still have a major impact on the future of the reefs.

¶

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B IOROCK

C ORAL R EEFS ARE THE MOST VALUABLE BIODIVERSITY SPOTS ON E ARTH

National Ocean Service 08

[National Ocean Service, March 25, 2008; US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Importance of Coral Reefs ; http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/corals/coral07_importance.html; accessed 13 June 2014; AC]

Coral reefs are some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. Coral reefs support more species per unit area than any other marine environment, including about 4,000 species of fish, 800 species of hard corals and hundreds of other species

.

Scientists estimate that there may be another 1 to 8 million undiscovered species of organisms living in and around reefs

(Reaka-Kudla, 1997).

This biodiversity is considered key to finding new medicines for the 21st century. Many drugs are now being developed from coral reef animals and plants as possible cures for cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, viruses, and other diseases

. Storehouses of immense biological wealth, reefs also provide economic and environmental services to millions of people.

Coral reefs may provide goods and services worth $375 billion each yea r. This is an amazing figure for an environment that covers less than 1 percent of the Earth’s surface (Costanza et al., 1997).¶

R EEFS ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

–

MEDICINE , ECONOMY , AND BIODIVERSITY

The Nature Conservatory No Date

[The Nature Conservatory, no date provided, copyrighted 2007-2014; Value of Coral Reefs ; Coral Reefs; The Reef Resilience Program; http://www.reefresilience.org/Toolkit_Coral/Resilience/Resilience_Value.html; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

Healthy coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse and economically valuable ecosystems on the planet, providing important services to human communities

.

¶

Coral reefs provide the spawning and nursery grounds that economically important fish populations need to thrive. Coral reefs help to protect coastal communities from storm surges and, erosion from waves, both of which are likely to increase in the face of sea-level rise. Coral reefs provide millions of jobs to local people

through tourism, fishing, and recreational activities.

Coral reefs are also the Earth’s “medicine cabinet.” Many medicines have been derived from coral reef organisms, including antiviral drugs

Ara-A and AZT and the life-saving anticancer agent

Ara-C.

Thousands of other useful compounds may still be undiscovered, however their discovery depends on the survival of reefs. Additionally, coral reef ecosystems are important sites of cultural heritage in many regions of the world,

and cultural traditions for millions of people are intimately tied to coral reefs.

13

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B IOROCK

C ORAL R EEFS ARE INCREDIBLY DIVERSE BUT NOT RESILIENT AND 50% ARE IN DANGER OF

BEING DESTROYED NOW

Grimsditch and Salm 06

[Gabriel Grimsdith and Henry Salm; Coral Reef Resilience and Resistance to Bleaching; The World Conservation Union; 2006; http://icriforum.org/sites/default/files/2006-042.pdf; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

Coral reefs are vital ecosystems, providing a source of income, food and coastal protection for millions of people; and recent studies have shown that coral reef goods and services provide an annual net benefit of US$30 billion to economies worldwide

(Cesar et al, 2003). Coral reefs are composed mainly of reef-building corals: colonial animals (polyps) that live symbiotically with the single- celled microalgae (zooxanthellae) in their body tissue and secrete a calcium carbonate skeleton. Coral reefs are formed by hundreds of thousands of these polyps and are found in warm, shallow, ¶ clear, low-nutrient tropical and sub-tropical waters, with optimum temperatures of 25-29oC, although they exist in ranges from 18oC (Florida) to

33oC (Persian Gulf) (Buddemeier and Wilkinson, 1994).

They are incredibly diverse, covering only 0.2% of the ocean’s floor but containing 25% of its species and they are often dubbed the ‘tropical rainforests of the oceans’

(Roberts, 2003).

¶

Unfortunately, coral reefs are also among the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world. Disturbances such as bleaching, fishing, pollution, wastedisposal, coastal development, sedimentation,

¶

SCUBA diving, anchor damage, predator

¶ outbreaks, invasive species and epidemic diseases

¶ have all acted synergistically to degrade coral reef

¶ health and resilience. Today, an estimated 20% of

¶ coral reefs worldwide have been destroyed, while

¶

24% are in imminent danger and a further 26% are

¶ under longer term danger of collapse (Wilkinson,

¶

2004).

R EEFS ARE NOT RESILIENT

–

W ARMING AND ACIDIFICATION

Anthony et al 11

[Kenneth R Anthony*, Jeffrey Maynard+, Guillermo Diaz-Pulido#, Peter Mumby*, Paul Marshall§, Long Cao}, and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg*; *Global Change Institute, and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072,¶ Australia, +Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk

Analysis, School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010,¶ Australia, #Griffith School of Environment and Australian Rivers Institute – Coasts &

Estuaries, Nathan Campus, Griffith¶ University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia, §Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville QLD 4810,¶

Australia, }Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; Ocean Acidification and warming will lower coral reef resilience; Global

Change Biology; http://www.reefresilience.org/pdf/Anthony_etal_2011.pdf; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

Ocean warming and acidification from increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 represent major global threats to coral

¶ reefs, and are in many regions exacerbated by local-scale disturbances such as overfishing and nutrient enrichment.

¶ Our understanding of global threats and local-scale disturbances on reefs is growing, but their relative contribution to ¶ reef resilience and vulnerability in the future is unclear. Here, we analyse quantitatively how different combinations of ¶ CO2 and fishing pressure on herbivores will affect the ecological resilience of a simplified benthic reef community, as ¶ defined by its capacity to maintain and recover to coral-dominated states. We use a dynamic community model ¶ integrated with the growth and mortality responses for branching corals (Acropora) and fleshy macroalgae (Lobophora).

¶ We operationalize the resilience framework by parameterizing the response function for coral growth

(calcification) by ¶ ocean acidification and warming, coral bleaching and mortality by warming, macroalgal mortality by herbivore ¶ grazing and macroalgal growth via nutrient loading. The model was run for changes in sea surface temperature and ¶ water chemistry predicted by the rise in atmospheric CO2projected from the IPCC’s fossil-fuel intensive A1FI scenario ¶ during this century.

Results demonstrated that severe acidification and warming alone can lower reef resilience

¶

(via impairment of coral growth and increased coral mortality) even under high grazing intensity and low nutrients.

¶

Further, the threshold at which herbivore overfishing (reduced grazing) leads to a coral–algal phase shift was lowered

¶ by acidification and warming. These analyses support two important conclusions: Firstly, reefs already subjected to

¶ herbivore overfishing and nutrification are likely to be more vulnerable to increasing CO2

. Secondly, under CO2 ¶ regimes above

450–500ppm, management of local-scale disturbances will become critical to keeping reefs within an ¶ Acropora-rich domain.

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The United States Army Corps of Engineers should build artificial reefs along the beaches of the United States using

Biorock material.

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– 1AC

B IOROCK

B IOROCK IS REALLY AWESOME

–

IT DOESN

’

T RUST , CORRODE , OR CRUMBLE , AND IT COSTS

LESS THAN OTHER CONVENTIONAL MATERIALS

Goreau 13


CRC Press; pp 22; AC]

A superior material for construction would be one that does not rust, corrode, or crumble, that can be grown in place from seawater, costs less than conventional construction materials like steel, concrete, or reinforced rubber mats, and is self-repairing and self-attaching � The only construction material known that meets these criteria is Biorock material

(Hilbertz 1992; Goreau 2012)

� ¶ Biorock materials were invented by an architect, the late Professor Wolf Hilbertz, who called the ocean “the world’s largest mine � ” Inspired by the fact that corals, snails, and other marine organisms could convert dissolved minerals in the ocean into precisely shaped skeletons and shells, he developed the methods to grow prefabricated construction materials from these natural materials in any form or dimension (Hilbertz

1979)

� ¶ Biorock material is composed of natural calcium and magnesium minerals dissolved in seawater that crystallize out on top of conductive metal surfaces that are given a small electrical charge � By maintaining this charge, structures of any size or shape can be grown out of seawater � When the charging rate is kept sufficiently low, and the rock is grown at rates of less than about 2 cm per year, they are predominantly made up of calcium carbonate, or limestone �

Limestone has been used as a construction material since the first pyramids of ancient Egypt

� ¶

Engineering tests of mature Biorock material show that they have compressive (or load-bearing) strength of about 80 N/mm2

(MegaPascals), about three times that of concrete

made from Portland cement, the most widely used building material in the world � The metal frameworks on which Biorock is grown are completely protected from all rusting and corrosion by the electrical charge, so they never deteriorate, unlike reinforcing bars in concrete

, which rust, expand, and crack and stain concrete, limiting its lifetime � ¶ Furthermore,

Biorock materials in the ocean are uniquely “selfrepairing” (Figures 3 � 4 through 3 � 7): if the Biorock material is broken off, the damaged areas grow back preferentially � No other marine construction material has these properties, making them ideal for breakwaters and submerged structures � Also, the affordable cost of the electricity needed to grow them from seawater makes them considerably more economical than concrete structures of the same dimensions,

although the extent depends on local electricity, labor, and cement transport costs (Goreau and Hilbertz 2005)

�

B IOROCK REEFS REGROW BEACHES FASTER , CHEAPER , AND BETTER THAN ANY OTHER

METHOD

Goreau 14

[Thomas Goreau, PhD, President of the Global Coral Reef Alliance; January 22, 2014;

BIOROCK® TECHNOLOGY: Cost-effective solutions to major marine resource

¶ management problems including construction ¶ and repair, shore protection, ecological ¶ restoration, sustainable aquaculture, and climate ¶ change adaptation; http://www.globalcoral.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Biorock_Benefits.pdf; accessed 14 June 2014; AC]

BIOROCK®

shore protection reefs naturally re-grow severely eroded beaches

¶ faster and more cheaply than any other method.

The vast majority of beaches

¶ worldwide are disappearing due to global sea level rise and increased storm

¶ wave energy caused by global warming. BIOROCK® reefs have the best,

¶ cheapest, and fastest results growing these beaches back

. For example in the

¶

Maldives, one of the lowest lying countries in the world, a BIOROCK® coral reef

¶ was grown in front of a beach that had disappeared

. Trees were falling into the ¶ sea and buildings about to collapse.

A new beach 50 feet (15 meters) wide grew

¶ behind the BIOROCK® reef in 2-3 years, and has remained stable for more than

¶

15 years.

The beach and reef were not damaged by the Asian Tsunami, which ¶ washed right over the island.

BIOROCK® shore protection structures on a

¶ severely eroding low island in Indonesia caused new beach growth that could be

¶ clearly seen on Google Earth satellite images after only 8 months.

A sea wall that ¶ was undermined and about to fall was half buried in new sand a year after the ¶ BIOROCK® shore protection structures were placed offshore, while new sea ¶ walls on nearby properties that were not protected by Biorock reefs were ¶ undermined and collapsed in a year.

16


B IOROCK IS THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE CORAL REEFS FROM EXTINCTION

Goreau 14




BIOROCK® technology is the only sustainable method of protecting coral reefs

¶

from mass extinction from global warming

.

Every coral reef region of the world

¶

has already suffered from severe high temperature coral bleaching

and mortality, ¶ and any further warming will destroy the little coral that is left.

C orals growing on

¶

BIOROCK® reefs have 1600% to 5000% times higher survival after severe

¶

bleaching than corals on nearby reefs.

There is no other method known to protect ¶ corals from global warming, which is worsening as governments fail to reduce ¶ atmospheric greenhouse gases. BIOROCK® Coral Arks, designed to save coral ¶ reef species from local extinction, are currently growing around 80% of all the ¶ coral reef genera in the world.

There is an urgent need to establish them in all

¶

major reef areas and include all coral reef species, as this may be the only hope

¶

when global warming intensifies.

¶

B IOROCK REEFS INCREASE TOURISM

Goreau 14




BIOROCK® reefs attract tourists from all over the world to see beautiful corals

¶ and fishes right in front of hotel beaches; they come back again and again to see

¶ them evolve, and tell family and friends. BIOROCK® projects have won many

¶ major international ecotourism and environmental awards.

Almost all tropical ¶ tourist resorts have unattractive dead reefs in front of their beach, and guests go ¶ hours by boat to see corals and fishes.

If hotels grew BIOROCK® reefs in front of

¶ their beaches they would attract guests, grow back their beaches, and help

¶ restore the fisheries of surrounding areas, eliminating conflicts with displaced

¶ local fishermen. BIOROCK® reefs can be at any depth, and can be designed for

¶ snorkelers or for SCUBA divers.

Shipwrecks, the most common tourist dive sites,

¶ are all rusting and collapsing, and rarely turn into what any marine biologist would

¶ call a coral reef. BIOROCK® technology can stop their deterioration and turn

¶ them into real coral reefs and extraordinary dive attractions.

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B IOROCK REEFS PROMOTE CORAL GROWTH UP TO 8 TIMES FASTER THAN NORMAL AND ARE

MUCH MORE RESILIENT THAN NATURAL REEFS

Goreau 13



Biorock reefs promote amazing growth of corals and other marine organisms, typically two to eight times faster than normal, depending on the species and the conditions, so they rapidly create lush coral reefs, or oyster reefs in colder waters, that are swarming with fish � Furthermore, the corals growing on Biorock reefs are found to have 16–50 times higher survival from severe high temperatures than corals in surrounding reefs � This means that coral reefs and oyster reefs, nature’s best shore protection, can be kept alive where they would die, and restored in a few years in places where no natural recovery is taking place, making them not only shoreprotection devices but also providing highly valued fisheries habitat and ecotourism resources in front of the beaches they protect

(Hilbertz and Goreau 1996; Goreau and Hilbertz 2005)

� Although growth of corals and oysters make

Biorock reefs much more effective more quickly, Biorock reefs can also provide shore protection without them in places where corals or oysters will not grow due to excessive physical or chemical stresses �

¶

Hard structures from steel, rock, or concrete cause water flow to diverge around them, speeding it up and causing erosive scour of sediments around them

�

Even those concrete structures that have holes in them, like reef balls, pyramids, and cubes, cause severe scour of sediments around them to a horizontal distance away from them roughly equal to the height of the structure, and to a depth of half the height (Shyue and Yang 2002)

�

In sharp contrast, open frame Biorock structures show no scour around their bases; instead, the sediment builds up around and under them as water velocity slows due to surface friction interactions � It makes far more sense to design seawalls to mimic the shape of coral reefs than of buildings � ¶ Biorock structures are able to survive severe hurricane wave forces that would destroy or move solid structures �

For example, structures in 5–7 m of water in Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Islands, survived the two most severe hurricanes in their history, which hit a few days apart and damaged or destroyed 80% of all the other buildings on the island

�

Even though the Biorock structures were sitting unattached on bare sand and were weakly built, they suffered only minor structural damage, only the electrical cables had to be replaced as the insulation was sandblasted off � Thousands of corals had been transplanted onto them a few weeks before from an area where corals were dying from sedimentation caused by dredging for a cruise ship terminal, and although many of these corals were only loosely attached, the vast majority survived the two hurricanes unharmed

(Wells et al

�

2010)

�

About one-fourth to one-third of a meter of sand built up around the base, but the structures did not sink into the sand

�

In dramatic contrast, concrete reef balls nearby caused scour and undermining that made them dig their way down through the sediment, and many of them sank down and were almost completely buried

� ¶ The forces on a structure can be calculated from the Universal Drag Equation: Fd =0.5CdDAV2¶ where Fd is the drag force in the direction of the flow, Cd is the drag coefficient, D is the density of the liquid, A is the cross-sectional area perpendicular to the direction of flow, and V is the velocity

�

To compute the forces on the entire structure, one needs to compute the forces on each element and integrate them

� element mathematical analysis

�

When the drag force exceeds the shear strength of the structure, it breaks or bends depends strongly on the shape and orienta- tion of each structural element

� and 0

�

005 for turbulent flow, but for one perpendicular to the flow it is 1

Building and the Eiffel Tower are in the range of 1

�

This can be done with numerical finite

� ¶ The key parameter is the drag coefficient, which

3–2 (http://en

�

�

The drag coefficient for a flat sheet or plate parallel to the flow is 0

28, roughly a thousand times higher wikipedia

� org/wiki/Drag_coefficient)

�

�

�

001 for laminar flow

For example, the drag coefficient of the Empire State

On land, the stresses are predominantly the vertical force of gravity, and horizontal wind forces are small because the density of air is about 90 times less than water

�

In the ocean, where gravitational forces are reduced by buoyancy, and horizontal forces of breaking waves are orders of magnitude higher, most buildings would be knocked flat

�

During Hurricane Andrew, every conventional artificial reef made from sunken ships in southern Florida was destroyed, even in deep water, and the fragments scattered over huge distances

�

In contrast, the volume of the Biorock reefs were over 99% water, and the drag forces were minor as the wave surge passed through the structures without destroying them

�

If the Biorock reef had been a solid structure, it would have been ripped apart

�

18


B IOROCK WORKED IN THE M ALDIVES TO REBUILD A BEACH AND WAS 1/10 TH

THE COST OF A

CONCRETE WALL

Goreau 13



¶ The Maldives is one of the lowest-lying countries in the world,

and will be one of the first to be lost in case global sea level rises

�

Every one of the 1200 islands has erosion problem

� The capital island, Male, is surrounded by a rock wall, since all the beaches vanished after the nearby reefs were mined for construction material �

Every resort island is surrounded by a rock wall made from a living reef that was mined and killed, or by sandbags

� The rock walls rapidly fail and need constant rebuilding, while the sandbags are ripped apart by waves, leaving shredded plastic on the beach, and must be constantly replaced with new ones (

Figures 3

�

8 through 3

�

11)

� ¶ A 50 m long Biorock shore protection project was constructed in the

Maldives in front of a severely eroding beach

with a 1 m (3–4 ft

�

) high erosion scarp, with trees falling into the sea and buildings and decks threatened with imminent collapse (Figures 3

�

12 and 3

�

13)

�

The Biorock reef was an open mesh framework made of welded steel bars, with corals transplanted on top, but almost entirely empty inside

� When it was built, waves passed through it as if it were not there, but as the minerals and corals grew, the waves interacted visibly with the structure, slowing down as they passed through it and depositing sand around it and on the formerly eroding beach � Within three years, the beach grew by 15 m

(50 ft

�

)

� The cost of the project was around one-tenth of what a concrete wall the same dimensions would have cost �

Photographs showing the evolution of this project can be found at Goreau et al

�

(2004)

� The Biorock reef had 50 times higher survival of corals than the surrounding reef after the cata- strophic heat stroke mortality of 1998, attracting dense fish populations from surrounding newly dead reefs, and making it a huge tourism attraction, which a rock wall would not have done �

The Biorock reef, and the beach behind it, suffered no loss of corals or sand from the December 26, 2004 tsunami, which passed right over the island

(Figures 3

�

14 through 3

�

18)

T HE ENERGY REQUIREMENT OR B IOROCK INSTALLATIONS IS VERY SMALL AND THE BEST TYPE

OF ENERGY TO USE IS EXTREMELY SITE SPECIFIC

Cabow 11

[Lauren Cabow, July 11, 2011; Questions and Answers about Biorock installations ; Global Coral Reef Alliance; http://www.globalcoral.org/questions-and-answersabout-biorock-installations/; accessed 14 June 2014; AC]

7) What is the most suitable system to provide energy for the coral structure

?

¶ This is very site specific.

We have used transformers to power projects where there is electricity at the shore, but we are now building our own proprietary power supplies that are more efficient, allowing larger projects to be built further away.

We have done many solar projects

(but this is the most expensive option unless there is no alternative), and wind powered projects

.

Much of our focus now lies in using ocean currents and wave energy to make power on site,

but the first is very site specific.

¶ 8

) What is the estimated energy consumption of structure

?

¶ That depends on the amount of steel and how fast one wants it to grow, but we often grow structures say 6-7 meters in diameter using around 30-50 watts, or like a dim light bulb. Large structures, say

20 m across, will use a few hundred watts, like a bright light bulb. We can grow a reef the whole length of a beach for around as much electricity as the shore lights, or a couple of air conditioners worth of electricity.

19

C ORNISH TSDC

A2 O THER A RTIFICIAL R EEFS S OLVE

B IOROCK

B IOROCK REEFS ARE UNIQUELY RESILIENT TO NON IDEAL CONDITIONS

Goreau 14

[Thomas Goreau, PhD, President of the Global Coral Reef Alliance; January 22, 2014; BIOROCK® TECHNOLOGY: Cost-effective solutions to major marine resource


BIOROCK® coral reefs turn barren dead and dying areas into pristine reefs

¶ swarming with fishes in a few years, even where natural recovery is impossible.

¶

All other coral reef restoration methods work well only under perfect water quality

¶ conditions ( but BIOROCK® grows coral 2-10 times faster) , but all fail when water

¶ becomes too hot, muddy, or polluted.

BIOROCK® corals continue to thrive when

¶ others die, and BIOROCK® reefs cost less than other methods

.

BIOROCK®

¶ technology greatly accelerates coral settlement, growth, healing, survival, and ¶ resistance to environmental stresses such as high temperature, sediment, and ¶ pollution

. All other marine organisms examined also benefit. These amazing ¶ results happen because the

BIOROCK® process creates the ideal biophysical ¶ conditions that all forms of life use to make biochemical energy.

This also has ¶ enormous implications for medicine and agriculture that we will develop.

20


A2 E COSYSTEMS R ESILIENT /B AD TO R ESTORE W HAT IS L OST

E COSYSTEMS ARE NOT RESILIENT AND IT IS GOOD PRACTICE TO RESTORE WHAT IT LOST .

A NYONE WHO CLAIMS THE OPPOSITE IS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS .

Goreau 13



Reversing these looming catastrophes cannot be solved by the conventional solution to all marine management problems: marine-protected areas (MPAs) that exclude fishermen

� The widely touted claims that these ecosystems are “resilient” and “will bounce back all by themselves,” thanksto the sagacity of their managers, is in fact almost never observed in practice because most MPAs are intrinsically incapable of reversing the root causes of the major threats that are laying waste our habitats � Every coral reef MPA is full of dead or dying corals that no local management can prevent � But so strong is the lobby of governments, funding agencies, and big international nongovernmental organizations

(BINGOs) for MPAs that their failure cannot be admitted �

Active restoration solutions are rejected out of hand, because to admit their need would be an admission that money has been wasted and that existing policies are futile and will fail even more in the future as global warming, sea-level rise, and pollution escalate � ¶ These man-made threats are based in our unwise overexploitation and disruption of the natural mechanisms that regulate our atmosphere, ecosystems, soils, water, and climate

� While it is a wonderfully praiseworthy task to protect the few healthy marine ecosystems that still survive, if they cannot be protected from the real causes of mass mortality, they will die anyway, perhaps only a little later � And if we don’t restore the vast majority of the ecosystems that we have already destroyed or severely damaged, where will future fisheries come from? We are often told that restoration is pointless, because we can’t possibly restore it all � We answer that “we certainly can’t restore it all, but if we don’t restore all that we can, what else will we leave for future generations?”¶ Even more bizarre is the claim often thrown at restoration experts

by the BINGOs, who say that it is very dangerous to say you can restore anything, because then you are encouraging people to destroy it! The perversity of this argument is staggering; in effect, they are accusing people who spend all their time planting trees of aiding, abetting, and rationalizing the destruction of the rain forests! In fact, they are doing the very opposite: restoring badly degraded areas that have not recovered by themselves, so that they can become a productive source of ecosystem services; growing them back by actively undoing the damage wrought by others, so they can be sustainably harvested � ¶ There is a wellestablished lobby for continuing business as usual, and honest admission of the MPA strategy failures would threaten more money flowing to those whose only vision is to repeat yet again the traditional mistakes of the past and expect a different result �

But one could eliminate all the subsistence fishermen, and the fish won’t come back wherever the habitats that supported them are largely gone

�

They are simply not recovering by themselves, despite what the politically motivated dogma of “resilience” so popular with governments, funding agencies, and

BINGOs dictates

� The sooner self-deception is discarded, the sooner we can start growing back what we have lost �

21

C ORNISH TSDC

US F ED K EY

B IOROCK

T HE C ORPS OF E NGINEERS HAS AUTHORITY OVER ARTIFICIAL REEFS

NOAA 07

[US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, February 2007; National Artificial Reef Plan (as Amended): Guidelines for Siting,

Construction, Development, and Assessment of Artificial Reefs; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/PartnershipsCommunications/NARPwCover3.pdf; accessed 1 July 2014;

AC]

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) ¶

In addition to the Corps’ responsibilities for permitting the construction of artificial reefs under

¶ the NFEA, the Corps is responsible for regulating certain activities in waters of the United

¶

States under Sections

9, 10, 11, 13, and 14 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 (RHA)

(33 ¶ U.S.C. §401 et seq.).

The Corps also has permit authority under Section 404 of the Clean Water

¶

Act

(CWA) (33 U.S.C. §1344

), and Section 103 of the Marine Protection,

Research and

¶

Sanctuaries Act

(MPRSA) (33 U.S.C. §1413).

The Corps regulates work on structures under

¶ the RHA and the transport of dredged material under the MPRSA. The Corps has very specific

¶ regulatory authorities under the CWA and retains responsibility for processing and issuing

¶ permits under Section 404 of the CWA

except where regulatory authority has been delegated to ¶ the states.

Specifically, the Corps is the lead federal agency responsible for permitting artificial

¶ reef development under authority of the National Fishing Enhancement Act of 1984

. Pursuant ¶ to Section 203 of the Act, the Corps promulgated rules for permitting artificial reef development ¶ activities in 33 CFR, Parts 320 through 330, November 13, 1986. ¶ ¶

The Corps has responsibility for the protection of submerged archaeological resources

. One key ¶ piece of protective legislation for archaeological resources is the National Historic

Preservation ¶ Act (NHPA) (16 U.S.C. §470 et seq.). The Corps is responsible for assessing potential reef sites ¶ for possible impacts to submerged archaeological resources under section106 of the NHPA

22


O

CEAN

A

CIDIFICATION

A

DD

-

ON

B IOROCK REEFS REVERSE OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

Goreau 14

[Thomas Goreau, PhD, President of the Global Coral Reef Alliance; January 22, 2014; BIOROCK® TECHNOLOGY: Cost-effective solutions to major marine resource


The BIOROCK® process reverses ocean acidification by creating alkaline high

¶ pH local conditions. It is the best way to grow acid-vulnerable species at

¶ accelerated rates.

Acidification is killing oyster larvae in the northeast Pacific,

¶ severely damaging the oyster industry on the west coast of North America.

In ¶ New York City 93% of control oysters died over winter, and the few survivors ¶ shrank because cold acidic water dissolved their shells

. BIOROCK® oysters

¶ nearby had 100% survival, grew over the winter when they would have otherwise

¶ been dormant, and their shells were shiny with no signs of dissolution.

O CEAN A CIDIFICATION CAUSES COLLAPSE OF THE FOOD WEB

PMEL Carbon Group No Date

[PMEL Carbon Group, NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; What is Ocean Acidification; http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

Ocean acidification is expected to impact ocean species to varying degrees. Photosynthetic algae and seagrasses may benefit from higher CO2 conditions in the ocean, as they require CO2 to live just like plants on land. On the other hand, studies have shown that a more acidic environment has a dramatic effect on some calcifying species, including oysters

, clams, sea urchins, shallow water corals, deep sea corals, and calcareous plankton.

When shelled organisms are at risk, the entire food web may also be at risk. Today, more than a billion people worldwide rely on food from the ocean as their primary source of protein. Many jobs and economies in the U.S. and around the world depend on the fish and shellfish in our oceans.

W E HAVE A MORAL OBLIGATION TO STOP HUNGER

Andre and Velasquez 92

[Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez; World Hunger: A Moral Response; Santa Clara University; Spring 1992; http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n1/hunger.html; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

Giving aid to the poor in other nations may require some inconvenience or some sacrifice of luxury on the part of peoples of rich nations, but to ignore the plight of starving people is as morally reprehensible as failing to save a child drowning in a pool because of the inconvenience of getting one's clothes wet.

¶ In fact, according to Singer, allowing a person to die from hunger when it is easily within one's means to prevent it is no different, morally speaking, from killing another human being.

If I purchase a VCR or spend money I don't need, knowing that I could instead have given my money to some relief agency that could have prevented some deaths from starvation, I am morally responsible for those deaths.

The objection that I didn't intend for anyone to die is irrelevant. If I speed though an intersection and, as a result, kill a pedestrian, I am morally responsible for that death whether I intended it or not.

23

C ORNISH TSDC

A2 O

FFCASE

B IOROCK

24

C ORNISH TSDC

P

OLITICS

B IOROCK

B EACH FUNDING IS POPULAR

Ludden 13

[Jennifer Ludden, January 30, 2013; Debate Over Rebuilding Beaches Post-Sandy Creates Waves; NPR; http://www.npr.org/2013/01/30/170301306/debate-overrebuilding-beaches-post-sandy-creates-waves; accessed 1 July 2014; AC]

For a half-century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been in the beach business, dredging up new sand as shorelines wash away

. Federal disaster aid for Superstorm Sandy could provide billions more for beach rebuilding, and that has revived an old debate: Is this an effective way to protect against storms, or a counterproductive waste of tax dollars?

¶ On a recent blustery day at Virginia Beach, the latest beach nourishment project is in full swing.

A bulldozer smooths out pyramids of sand, and on the horizon, a large, black hopper dredge appears with another load.

¶ It has sucked up the sand like a giant vacuum cleaner, from five to 10 miles offshore, and is now pumping it into a large metal pipe that runs up onshore. The pipe feeds into a boxy yellow filter, from which a mudgray mix of sand and water sprays out.

¶ By late spring, Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager Jennifer Armstrong says, a total of 1.25 million cubic yards of sand will be spread along this strip, making the beach hundreds of feet wider.

¶ The Inception Of The Program ¶ "These are the Ash Wednesday Storm photos," explains Phil

Roehrs, Virginia Beach's water resources engineer, showing framed photos of the same hotel strip after a devastating storm in 1962.

¶ "During the height of the storm," he says, "large segments of the seawall were completely blown out, exposing the hotels to direct wave attack." ¶ That storm kicked off the Army Corps' replenishment program in earnest, all along the East Coast. Roehrs says beaches are just like roads or bridges — public infrastructure that needs routine repair. And that maintenance, he says, has helped prevent untold damage. He points at New Jersey after Sandy for an example.

¶ "Township A had a protection plan in place, and Township B, right next door, didn't, and township B suffered tragically," he says. "It's better to pay for a little protection than a whole lot of cleanup." ¶ Federal- Or Local-Level

Subsidization?

¶ Some coastal geologists aren't convinced, suggesting there were many factors that could have made a difference in how towns weathered Sandy.

Congressional disaster aid allocates money to study what worked.

But there is criticism, regardless.

¶ "This is a particularly silly form of disaster relief," says Eli Lehrer of the libertarian R Street Institute. He's also co-founder of SmarterSafer, a Washington, D.C., coalition of environmental groups and budget watchdogs. "Beach renourishment creates a false sense of security that tends to induce development in the very areas where it's most likely to be destroyed by nature's worst," he says.

¶ In other words, create a wide swath of sand, and people will build there — even if it would otherwise be deemed folly. Lehrer says replenishing remote barrier islands is the most egregious waste of taxpayer money. For a tourism-dependent place like Virginia Beach, he concedes it makes economic sense for that particular town.

¶ "If it's going to be paid for with public dollars at all, those public dollars ought to be collected very much at the local level," he says

.

¶

Currently, the federal government pays 65 percent of beach nourishment projects, while local communities finance the rest. President

Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush tried — and failed — to reduce the federal share. President Obama has tightened regulations for which projects qualify. But Congress approves the funding, and it turns out beach nourishment is a pretty popular program.

25

C ORNISH TSDC

P

RIVATE

S

ECTOR

CP

B IOROCK

T HE CP IS NORMAL MEANS AND STILL LINKS TO POLITICS

–

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT STILL

HAS TO ISSUE PERMITS

Dodrill 14

[Jon Dodrill, 2014, Environmental Administrator in the Division of Marine Fisheries Management – Artificial Reef Program; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation

Commission; Artificial Reef Program ; http://myfwc.com/conservation/saltwater/artificial-reefs/ar-program; accessed 17 June 2014; AC]

The

FWC artificial reef program does not issue permits for artificial reef sites. This regulatory responsibility is carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

(ACOE) for proposed artificial reef areas in federal waters and by both the ACOE and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in state waters.

Both of these regulatory agencies accept comments from FWC and other interested parties during the artificial reef application review process. Due to liability issues, associated with siting and placing materials on the sea floor, permits are not issued directly to private individuals or clubs for building artificial reefs.

The local coastal governments who are applicants for new reef sites undergo a rigorous individual permit application process that may span a 6-12 month period.

¶

26

C ORNISH B IOROCK TSDC

T

IDAL

E

NERGY

T IDAL ENERGY IS PREDICTABLE AND EASILY MANAGED , PLUS AESTHETICALLY PLEASING

Holzman 07

[David C. Holzman, December 2007; Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol 115, No 12, pp A590-A593; Blue Power:

Turning Tides into Electricity ; Brogan and Partners; JSTOR; AC]

The zero-emission cleanliness of wave and

¶ tidal energy technologies is comparable to that of

¶ wind, and marine energy is arguably the least aes-

¶ thetically disruptive method of producing elec-

¶ tricity.

Unlike the proposed Cape Wind offshore

¶ wind farm, for example, which currently has

¶ some legislators in Massachusetts saying "not in

¶ my backyard," wave and tidal technologies are

¶ often invisible from shore

. ¶ For purposes of energy capture, water is similar to wind

, except that seawater is more than

¶

800 times denser than air, essentially making it

¶ easier to capture energy

. Moreover, whereas the

¶ wind can come from any direction, in most locations the

tides flow only in and out, reducing the

¶ complexity of the mechanisms required to harvest that energy.

¶

Tidal power is readily predictable, which

¶ makes coordinating the flow of electricity in the

¶ grid quite manageable

.

The keys to a strong tidal

¶ current are a large rise and fall in the tides and geo-

¶ graphical features that funnel the water through a

¶ narrow channel.

As with wind, the energy available ¶ in a tidal current varies as the cube of the current's ¶ speed. Six knots (about 6 mph) is the threshold ¶ for economic viability, according to the 2006 ¶ EPRI report North America Tidal In-stream ¶ Energy Conversion Technology Feasibility Study. ¶

But tides this swift are uncommon. Viable wave ¶ resources are more widely distributed.

F ISH WON

’

T BE HARMED

–

THEY HAVE A NATURAL AVERSION TO BEING NEAR THE TURBINES

Copping 2013

[Andrea Copping, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington, USA, January 2013; Annex IV Final Report; Ocean Energy Systems; Environmental

Effects of Marine Energy Development ; Seagen observations of Marine mammals in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland; http://tethys.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Final%20Annex%20IV%20Report%202013%20v2.pdf; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]

The SeaGen project provides limited information about the direct effects of marine mammal ¶ encounters with turbine blades because the turbines were initially shut down when seals were ¶ detected within 200 m of the devices. Although the shutdown distance has been reduced to 30 m and ¶ this particular mitigation has been successful in protecting the species under special conservation, the ¶ animals never had the opportunity to interact with the turbines while they were operating, thereby ¶

36 ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ implying that it is unclear whether they were at risk.

The ORPC tidal demonstration project provides ¶ important information about fish interactions with horizontal turbines;

over the short periods of ¶ observation, no fish strike was observed.

The Verdant RITE project detected no direct interactions ¶ with fish or diving birds, but the short deployment time and limited scope of the acoustic ¶ measurements cannot definitively rule out the occurrence of direct interactions.

Interaction ¶ experiments around the HGE turbine indicated that sizable fish passing through the turbine were not ¶ harmed

.

Video footage of fish interacting with the face of the

OpenHydro turbine at the EMEC ¶ provides no indication that there will be deleterious effects on the fish because they were seen to ¶ move away from the turbine when the cut-in speed of the tidal current was reached.

There is little ¶ reason for fish or other animals to remain in high-speed tidal currents because the bioenergetics cost ¶ of maintaining their position is high

(Forward et al. 1999; Arnold et al. 1994; Webb 1994; McCleave ¶ and Kleckner 1982). However, it is important to note that fish commonly use tidal currents to assist ¶ with transiting an area; the very high-energy tidal races where energy production is preferred present ¶ a bioenergetics challenge that will not encourage fish or other animals to remain in these areas unless ¶ they have a specific reason to do so. This natural aversion to being in the vicinity of operating turbines ¶ may act as a natural deterrent to being harmed

. ¶

27

C ORNISH TSDC

T IDAL T URBINES DON

’

T HARM MARINE LIFE

–

CASE STUDY PROVES

B IOROCK

Copping 2013

[Andrea Copping, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington, USA, January 2013; Annex IV Final Report; Ocean Energy Systems; Environmental

Effects of Marine Energy Development ; Seagen observations of Marine mammals in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland; http://tethys.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Final%20Annex%20IV%20Report%202013%20v2.pdf; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]

Baseline conditions and pre-installation environmental monitoring began approximately four years ¶ prior to turbine installation.

After installation, three years of monitoring was carried out,

including aerial ¶ and shore-based surveys of marine mammals and seabirds by marine mammal observers; aerial, ¶ satellite, and boat surveys to follow telemetry data from tags placed on selected individual seals; ¶ passive acoustic monitoring for harbor porpoise clicks using

TPODs deployed in the Lough; and ¶ monitoring of underwater turbine noise from a device mounted on the pile holding the turbine.

The ¶ presence and movement of marine mammals when the turbine was operating and when it was still ¶ were correlated with the rotational speed and acoustic output of the turbine to determine the effect of ¶ the turbine operation on the animals. ¶ ¶ The turbine shutdown procedures did not allow for observations of direct interactions of the animals ¶ with turbine blades, and post mortem evaluation of all recorded marine mammal carcasses did not ¶ reveal any evidence of fatal strike to a marine mammal by the SeaGen device

. However, the ¶ monitoring program was also designed to document effects outside the immediate vicinity of the ¶ blades, and it showed no major impacts on marine mammals, birds, or benthic habitat from the tidal ¶ turbine.

Harbor seals and porpoises were seen to swim freely in and out of the Lough while the ¶ turbine was operating and they were not excluded from the waterbody

, a phenomenon commonly ¶ known as the barrier effect.

Similarly, no significant displacement of seals or porpoises was observed, ¶ although the marine mammals appeared to avoid the center of the channel when the turbine was ¶ operating. Harbor porpoises were temporarily displaced from the Narrows during construction, but ¶ other areas around the project site maintained baseline abundance, and porpoises returned to normal ¶ baseline in the Narrows once construction was complete . SeaGen did not cause a significant change ¶ in the use of harbor seal haulout sites. Harbor seals exhibited some redistribution on a small scale (a ¶ few hundred meters) during turbine operation. Seal telemetry data showed that seals transited farther ¶ away from the center of the Narrows after SeaGen installation

.

Seabirds were also seen to avoid the ¶ immediate vicinity of the turbine, but no changes in overall bird populations occurred, nor did the ¶ device displace foraging birds from important feeding areas.

28

C ORNISH TSDC

N

EGATIVE

B IOROCK

29

C ORNISH TSDC

P

RIVATIZATION

CP S

OLVENCY

B IOROCK

S TRENGTHENING PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF ARTIFICIAL REEFS WOULD SOLVE FOR LONG TERM

CARE AND STEWARDSHIP

Alessi 97

[Michael De Alessi, February 01, 1997; How Property Rights can Spur Artificial Reefs; FEE; http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/how-property-rights-can-spurartificial-reefs; accessed 18 June 2014; AC]

Many of the privately created reefs off the coast of Alabama were formed by sinking old autos. While this may not initially seem prudent, the cars are well cleaned of any noxious chemicals before they are carried out to sea. Even without stringent regulations, many of the people who fish around these reefs eat what they catch, so it is also in their best interests to keep fish free from toxic chemicals

. The main problem with cars is that they do not last very long, but without secure private property rights, there is little interest in finding more durable materials.

¶ Legal, private reef creation began in Alabama in 1987 when the Department of Conservation and

Natural Resources created the first of two large areas where people are allowed to sink acceptable objects (those passing a state inspection to ensure that no toxic materials remain). The measure came in response to the artificial reef creation that was already going on illegally. Recreational fishers had figured out the benefits of small artificial reefs and had been sinking objects on their own for many years. Eventually the commercial fishing industry grew tired of stray shopping carts damaging their nets, so they convinced the state to take action.

¶

Because the jurisdiction over artificial reef creation rested with the U.S. Army

Corps of Engineers, Alabama arranged for a large permit from the Corps, then issued its own permits to the public

.

As part of this arrangement, the state assumed all of the liability resulting from these reefs, which encouraged their creation but discouraged any private interest in the long-term effects of the reefs.

Strengthening ownership rights to artificial reefs and returning liability to their owners would encourage long-term care and stewardship.

¶

Once reef creation was sanctioned by the state, the numbers of reefs took off, and so did entrepreneurial activity

. One company has specialized in preparing old cars to meet state standards, then delivering them to a specified and confidential location. Since 1987 it is estimated to have placed over 5,000 cars and 300 school buses underwater.[3] As a result of this kind of activity, in 1992, with only a fraction of the Gulf Coast shoreline, the recreational catch of red snapper in Alabama was two to five times higher than those of the other Gulf states.[4] ¶

P RIVATE R IGHTS TO SEA BEDS ARE VIRTUALLY NON EXISTENT IN THE US

Alessi 97

[Michael De Alessi, February 01, 1997; How Property Rights can Spur Artificial Reefs; FEE; http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/how-property-rights-can-spurartificial-reefs; accessed 18 June 2014; AC]

Small fishing communities knew what they were doing when they created the first artificial reefs out of rocks and logs hundreds of years ago. When large, heavy objects are dropped into the sea, they attract and propagate large numbers of fish.

In Japan, traditional fishing communities have evolved into cooperatives that own the reefs outright, and this secure ownership is the reason why their reefs are well-protected, productive resources.

¶

Unfortunately, private rights to the seabed are virtually nonexistent in the United States.[

1]

Artificial reef creation has generally been the province of state conservation departments since the 1950s. These departments have made artificial reefs offshore out of everything from old tires, coal ash blocks, and automobiles to decommissioned ships and oil rigs. Often, this is at the behest of private sports fishing or diving interests.

¶

But in one state, Alabama, artificial reefs can be privately owned—sort of. Private citizens are allowed to create artificial reefs. The state provides no defense of this ownership, however. If others learn about the reef, they can use it, too, so the property right is marginal at best. Even so, the most tenuous private property right related to reefs—simply having proprietary information on the exact location of a reef—results in a tremendous private initiative to create such reefs

.

¶

30

C ORNISH TSDC

B

EACH

E

ROSION

A

DVANTAGE

B IOROCK

B EACH EROSION IS IRREVERSIBLE , THE ONLY THING THAT CAN STOP IT IS GLOBAL COOLING

Scientific American 08

[The Scientific American; December 17, 2008; What Causes Beach Erosion ; http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-causes-beach-erosion/; accessed 6 June

2014; AC]

Unfortunately for beach lovers and owners of high-priced beach-front homes

, coastal erosion in any form is usually a one-way trip. Man-made techniques such as beach nourishment—whereby sand is dredged from off-shore sources and deposited along otherwise vanishing beaches—may slow the process, but nothing short of global cooling or some other major geomorphic change will stop it altogether.

¶ According to Stephen Leatherman (“Dr. Beach”) of the National Healthy Beaches Campaign, beach erosion is defined by the actual removal of sand from a beach to deeper water offshore or alongshore into inlets, tidal shoals and bays.

Such erosion can result from any number of factors, including the simple inundation of the land by rising sea levels resulting from the melting of the polar ice caps

.

¶

Leatherman cites U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades.

In many of these cases, individual beaches may be losing only a few inches per year, but in some cases the problem is much worse. The outer coast of Louisiana, which Leatherman refers to as “the erosion ‘hot spot’ of the U.S.,”

is losing some 50 feet of beach every year.

¶ Of particular concern is the effect climate change, which not only causes sea levels to rise but also increases the severity and possibly the frequency of harsh storms, has on beach erosion. “While sea level rise sets the conditions for landward displacement of the shore, coastal storms supply the energy to do the ‘geologic work’ by moving the sand off and along the beach,” writes Leatherman on his DrBeach.org website. “Therefore, beaches are greatly influenced by the frequency and magnitude of storms along a particular shoreline.” ¶

S OIL E ROSION IS A NATURAL PHENOMENON

Ontario Ministry of Agrcultural, food, and rural affairs 2003 (Soil Erosion, causes and effects, http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/engineer/facts/87-040.htm)

Soil erosion is a naturally occurring process on all land. The agents of soil erosion are water and wind

, each contributing a significant amount of soil loss each year in Ontario.

Soil erosion may be a slow process that continues relatively unnoticed,

or it may occur at an alarming rate causing serious loss of topsoil. The loss of soil from farmland may be reflected in reduced crop production potential, lower surface water quality and damaged drainage networks.

N ON -UQ H UMANS ALWAYS INDUCE S OIL C HANGE

Yaalon 2007 (Dan H., is professor emeritus in the Institute of Earth Sciences at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel,

Human-induced Ecosystem and Landscape Processes Always Involve Soil Change.)

Soil

, the living skin of Earth derived from weathered rock materials and surficial biota, has been dubbed "Earth's critical zone" by the US National Research Council

.

It

is an inseparable part of nature's dynamic ecosystems, yet it is frequently disregarded when discussing landscape processes or resources and the consequences of land-use or land-cover change

(Lambin et al. 2003). A recent review of domesticated nature (Kareiva et al. 2007)--which now encompasses about 50 percent of Earth's surface--also disregards

Soil

changes, although it does point out that when humans change nature's landscapes, whether for agriculture or new housing developments, the trade-offs between the resulting benefits and harms must be understood and managed. Understanding the consequences of humans' domestication of ecosystem services will be incomplete, however, unless the effects of soil changes--and not only in the realm of agriculture--are also considered.

31

C ORNISH TSDC

C

ORAL

R

EEFS

A

DVANTAGE

B IOROCK

C ORAL R EEFS ARE RESILIENT

–

GOOD MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Florida Institute of Technology 07

[Florida Institute of Technology. "Coral Reefs May Be More Resilient Than Expected." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 May 2007. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070515151135.htm; accessed 19 June; AC]

Coral reef bleaching, believed to be one of the detrimental effects of climate change, may receive a welcomed "buffer" through effective local management

, according to new research by a team of scientists recording the long-term recovery of coral reefs in Palau and elsewhere.

"It appears that coral reefs are very resilient and can bounce back magnificently if subjected to good management practices

and 10 years or so of pristine conditions," says Robert van Woesik, one of the authors of a new study showing that reefs off Palau, Micronesia, have recovered surprisingly well from a 1998 "bleaching" event, caused by high sea water temperatures. "

The rare piece of good news in the problem of climate change is that good local management practices might aid recovery of coral reefs."

¶ Van Woesik, a professor of biological sciences at Florida Institute of Technology, examined the recovery rates of reefs in Palau during three different periods following the 1998 bleaching -- in late

2001/early 2002, late 2002/early 2003, and late 2004/early 2005. Global climate models suggest that Micronesia is particularly vulnerable to climate change over the next millennia, and will be likely subjected to repeated thermal stress events and water temperatures considerably higher than historical averages.

¶

C ORAL R EEFS ARE NOT IN DANGER AND BLEACHING IS A NATURAL PROCESS

–

ALSO , YOUR

SOURCES ARE BIASED

Ulrich 10

[Edward Ulrich, creator and editor of NewsofInterest.tv; A Reexamination of Climate Change Issues ; http://www.newsofinterest.tv/global_warming/effects/extinction/coral_reefs.php; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

The Book ”Unstoppable Global Warming— Every 1,500 Years” explains numerous scientific studies showing that

”bleaching” coral is an entirely natural occurrence for adapting to temperature changes of the surrounding water— through the coral expelling the current algea associated with it in order to accumulate new strains of algea with are better suited for the newer temperature of water. Studies cited include ”The Acquisition of Exogenous Algal Symbionts by an Octocoral After Bleaching" by

Cynthia L. Lewis and Mary Alice Coffroth. Following is an excerpt from the book: ¶

The claim that higher temperatures will kill off the world’s corals is irresistible to global warming activists. They understand the emotional appeal of the reefs and their brightcolored fishes

. Greenpeace, perhaps predictably, has been quick to play this card: ¶ ”The Philippine coral reefs, among the most diverse and largest in the world, may not be around for long. ... On the last day of the symposium [at Bali] the environmental group Greenpeace released a new coral reef study showing that, because of the global warming, the Pacific Ocean could lose most of its coral reefs by the end of the current century.” (385) ¶

The only problem with the

”disappearing coral” theory is that it is false. Corals date back 450 million years, and most of today’s coral species date back at least 200 million years. Just in the last two million years, coral reefs have been through at least seventeen glacial periods, interspersed with their warm interglacial periods

. These glacial-interglacial shifts imposed repeated dramatic temperature changes, along with sea level changes as drastic as four hundred feet.

Temperatures across the Pacific change sharply with the El Nino-Southern

Oscillation (ENSO)-which causes a major Pacific temperature change every four to seven years. The 1998 El Nino boosted sea surface temperatures all over the Pacific, causing massive coral bleaching, especially in the Indian Ocean.

That’s when Mark Spalding, supposedly a coral expert, claimed that the vast majority of the corals had died out. (386)

Bleaching is a part of corals’ strategy for adapting to their almost-constant temperature changes. (387)

32

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S

OLVENCY

B IOROCK

US A RMY C ORPS OF E NGINEERS B AD

T HE US A RMY C ORPS OF E NGINEERS CATERS TO LOBBYISTS AND USES FAULTY SCIENCE , NOT

TO MENTION IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISASTER OF N EW O RLEANS

McQuaid 07

[John McQuaid, August 26, 2007; Broken: The Army Corps of Engineers ; Motherjones.com/Environment; http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2007/08/brokenarmy-corps-engineers; accessed 1 July 2014; AC]

Hurricane Katrina exposed terrible flaws not just in the New Orleans levees, but within the agency that designed and built them, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After the storm, investigators discovered that design errors were to blame for the collapse of several floodwalls—breaches that accounted for most of the flooding of the city.

For the first time in its storied history, which dates to the Revolutionary War, the Corps admitted to committing fundamental engineering mistakes. The Corps' internal investigation also found the city's levees and floodwalls riddled with problems,

"a system in name only" whose individual elements were sloppily constructed and didn't even fit together— a big problem when you're surrounded with rising water.

¶ Corps officials say they've learned their lesson. But it's not clear they've had the opportunity do so, or the inclination. The Corps has been handed billions of dollars in emergency appropriations and has been working flat out since Katrina—first to clean up its own mess, then repairing and upgrading the levee system to meet the most basic safety standards, so New Orleans won't get washed away this year or next.

¶ Of course, those tasks are simple compared to the longer-term challenges the agency faces.

It will have to figure out how to protect sinking, exposed New Orleans in an era of global warming, rising seas, and, according to some scientists, bigger hurricanes. It will have to fortify other coastal communities as they too grow more vulnerable to high water. In its current form, the Corps isn't up to these tasks.

But right now it's all we've got.

¶ Here are four problems with the Corps that led to the near-destruction of New Orleans—and four obstacles the Corps must overcome in order to face its future challenges.

¶ Skewed priorities. The

Corps' traditional domestic mission is to aid navigation, and for more than a century its bread and butter has been big-ticket projects that promoted shipping: river levees, locks, dredging harbors, and channels. Not surprisingly, these are also the projects most favored by shipping-industry lobbyists—and members of Congress eager to get federal money spent in their districts.

Hurricane levees, by contrast, have no political constituency except the public. Their principal economic benefit is warding off total destruction, something people and politicians often don't fully appreciate until it's too late.

The Corps squabbled endlessly with other agencies over the levees, all losing sight of the bottom line: safety. At one point, for example, the Corps could not agree with the New

Orleans Sewerage and Water board on how to join a canal floodwall to a pumping station. So they simply stopped building the wall 200 feet short of the station, leaving a gap—a man-made breach.

¶ Backward science.

The Corps designed the hurricane levee system in the 1960s and never updated its basic layout, despite 40 years of progress in hurricane forecasting and computer modeling that revealed many weaknesses in those designs. Meanwhile, Corps officials also downplayed the mounting data that showed just how easily New Orleans could be destroyed. They even managed to ignore their own experiments. A group of Corps scientists did a study in the

1980s that predicted exactly how the New Orleans floodwalls could breach if not anchored firmly enough—but few in the agency paid attention and the results were all but forgotten.

¶

33

C ORNISH TSDC

A RTIFICIAL R EEFS B AD

B IOROCK

A RTIFICIAL R EEFS CAUSE OVERFISHING

Gravitz 00

Lauren Gravitz, August 3rd, 2000; Debate Over Artificial reefs; ABC News; http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=120057&page=1&singlePage=true; accessed

17 June 2014; AC]

Fish Sponges ¶

Artificial reefs draw large numbers of fish for the same reasons natural reefs do: They provide shelter, food, and a place for some species to spawn

. They have holes and crevices in which both predator and prey can hide.

But as with natural reefs, many of the commercially desirable fish do not actually use the reefs to reproduce. So instead of helping to increase fish populations, artificial reefs

— like natural ones — only concentrate fish at a given site.

¶

Fish often occur in even greater densities at artificial reefs than at natural ones, because the man-made reefs tend to be larger and provide more shelter. Most fishermen know this and, looking to increase their daily catch, carefully note the latitudes and longitudes of the reefs and set their lines directly above them.

¶

Some experts

, engaged in what they call the production vs. aggregation debate

, say that artificial reefs are less a solution to the problem of overfished waters and more a contributing factor.

According to James Bohnsack, a research fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, artificial reefs are “a solution that’s obvious, simple, and wrong.”

¶ Many people think that because they are catching more fish, the artificial reefs replenish depleted fishing stocks, says Dr. Bohnsack. Instead, they may be making the problem worse than it already is. An artificial reef concentrates fish that had previously been spread out over a large area, he explains. The fishermen catch them, the reef attracts new fish, then the fishermen catch those, too.

¶

“It’s like a sponge,” he notes. “Squeeze out the water, and it’ll soak up more.”

¶ Populations Shifting, Not Growing ¶ Other scientists disagree. David Parker, a senior biologist in the marine section of California’s Department of Fish and Game, says that artificial reefs may actually help distribute the fishing effort over a larger area. In

California, he points out, “a lot of natural reef populations are widely known and are being fished day after day, so the artificial reefs reduce that pressure on a daily basis.”

¶

Even with the reduced pressure, many researchers say that the fish most likely to benefit from these new reefs are those species that need reefs to reproduce and whose populations are limited by the number of reefs in an area. But most of these species are not what sport or commercial fishermen are interested in. Most commercially viable fish — snappers, jacks, and some groupers — are simply migrating from natural to artificial reefs. Thus, their populations are being redistributed, not replenished.

¶

A RTIFICIAL REEFS ARE HARMFUL TO FISH

Eilperin 11

[Juliet Eilperin, July 17, 2011 ; Artificial Reef Projects Raise Environmental Questions; The Washington Post; http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/national/healthscience/artificial-reef-projects-raise-environmental-questions/2011/07/13/gIQAmIRRKI_story.html; accessed 19 June 2014; AC]

In the midst of an economic downturn, sinking naval vessels for artificial ¶ reefs aims to achieve multiple goals. It creates new ocean habitat and a ¶ tourist destination, while also ridding the Navy of outdated ships.

Half of all

¶

U.S. coastal states have created artificial reefs or have plans to do so.

¶

But some environmentalists, as

¶ well as federal and independent

¶ scientists, question whether the program provides ecological benefits.

¶

“They’re throwing debris down there and saying it’s an economic

¶ opportunity, but they’re not looking into the environmental impacts ,” said

¶ Colby Self, who is the green shiprecycling coordinator for the Basel Action ¶ Network and coauthored a recent report on the

Navy’s sinking program.

¶ Follow @eilperinOnly a few studies have examined the impact on the ocean of artificial reefs.

¶ The Army Corps of Engineers must approve the projects, and the ¶ Environmental Protection Agency inspects each vessel before it’s sunk and ¶ can provide advice on where to place it.

But state and federal officials are

¶ exploring issues such as whether traces of remaining toxic chemicals pose a

¶ hazard and whether the ships concentrate fish in areas where they’re more

¶ likely to be caught

.

¶ The question of whether artificial reefs provide ecological benefits has “been ¶ out there for 50 years or more,” said Tinsman, of Delaware’s Department of

¶ Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “If that was any easy ¶ question, it would have been answered long ago.”

¶

Some studies indicate that these humanmade reefs may harm ocean

¶ species, even as they provide clear economic benefits.

¶ “

Adding more habitat is not the issue, ” said James A. Bohnsack, a research

¶ fishery biologist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration ¶ Fisheries. “

You need to protect the fish populations.”

34

C ORNISH TSDC

A RTIFICIAL R EEFS CONTRIBUTE TO OCEAN GARBAGE

B IOROCK

MBARI 14

[MBARI and NOAA, Motherboard, “What Seven Years at the Bottom of the Sea Does to a Shipping Container,” May 9, 2014, http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-seven-years-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea-does-to-a-shipping-container][LG]

Four months later, though, during a routine research dive using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Ventana, scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) discovered one of these containers on the seafloor, 4,200 feet below the surface. As its a national marine sanctuary, the shipping company responsible was sued for $3.25 million in compensation. The MBARI research team found a silver lining and used the lost shipping container as a sort of case study.

How does the ocean ecosystem adapt to an intrusion from above?

As anyone who has seen underwater shipwrecks can tell you, the ever-vital ocean can make habitats of what its given, which is why things like old subway cars, aircraft carriers, and tanks make for viable artificial reefs. Still, that doesn't mean

that submerged shipping containers are a desirable outcome.

¶ Apart from the contents not making it to their destination—be it shoes, or in the marine sanctuary, steel belted radial tires— shipping containers, especially well-sealed refrigerated ones, sometimes become low-lying artificial icebergs, and hazards for other ships.

¶

Sometimes their contents contribute the growing clouds of the artificial flotsam and jetsam made of floating ocean garbage, or the sunken ocean garbage litter the ocean floor. Sometimes the escaped contents are

something like batteries or pesticides, and hazardous to their new ecosystem.

Sometimes the outsides of the containers themselves are, covered in toxic anti-corrosive paint. In March 2011, a research team from MBARI completed another ROV dive at the container.

During this dive, they took the footage that became the video seen above. Josi Taylor, the lead author on the findings publis hed in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, said that she was surprised to see how little the container had corroded in the seven years since it sank to the seafloor. The near-freezing water and low oxygen concentrations in the deeper sea seems to have slowed the processes that might degrade sunken containers in shallower water.

¶

A RTIFICIAL R EEFS ARE BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

Lane 10

[TS Lane, Discover Oceans, “Artificial Reefs: The Good, The Bad, The Controversial,” January 15, 2010, http://www.discover5oceans.com/2010/01/artificial-reefs-the-good-the-bad-the-controversial/][LG]

Articial reef initiatives aren’t always successful , however, and the practice has critics. According to the Surfrider Foundation a 10-year experimental project at El Segundo near Los Angeles failed to produce desired outcomes and is now being removed. Washington-based Ocean Conservancy suggests that while some projects may benefit some species of fish, others represent an inexpensive way to dispose of trash, which can introduce toxins and other pollutants into the ocean.

¶

“Although most artificial reefs offer potential habitat for certain kinds of marine life, these are not always happy homes. Artificial reefs can cause damage to natural habitats during their construction and can displace naturally occurring species and habitats ,” says the Ocean Conservancy web site. “ They also tend to concentrate fish unnaturally, making them more vulnerable to overfishing.

”

¶

35

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T

IDAL

E

NERGY

B IOROCK

T IDAL POWER IS NOT EFFICIENT

Global Greenhouse Warming 14

[2014; Tidal Power ; http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/tidal.html; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]

Tidal power schemes do not produce energy 24 hours a day

. A conventional design, in any mode of operation, would produce power for 6 to 12 hours in every 24 and will not produce power at other times.

As the tidal cycle is based on the period of rotation of the Moon

(24.8 hours) and the demand for electricity is based on the period of rotation of the earth (24 hours), the energy production cycle will not always be in phase with the demand cycle. This causes problems for the electric power transmission grid, as capacity with short starting and stopping times ( such as hydropower or gas fired power plants) will have to be available to alternate power production with these power schemes.

36

DEBATE TEMPLATE HOW TO:

FFIRMATIVE

NHERENCY

EACH

ROSION

EACH

ROSION

XTENSIONS

Royal 10

ORAL

EEFS

ORAL

EEFS

XTENSIONS

LAN

OLVENCY

OLVENCY

XTENSIONS

CEAN

CIDIFICATION

DD

ON

FFCASE

OLITICS

RIVATE

ECTOR

IDAL

NERGY

EGATIVE

RIVATIZATION

OLVENCY

EACH

ROSION

DVANTAGE

ORAL

EEFS

DVANTAGE

OLVENCY

MBARI 14

Lane 10

IDAL

NERGY

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