Researchers Find Large-Scale Death of Coral in Indonesia

By Chad Bouchard
Jakarta
23 April 2007

Scientists have discovered that an earthquake two years ago in Indonesia lifted hundreds of kilometers of sea floor out of the water, causing the largest death of coral reefs ever recorded. As Chad Bouchard reports from Jakarta, this is only one of several threats facing Indonesia's fragile marine ecosystems.

During a recent survey of Indonesia's Simeulue Island, off the northwest coast of Sumatra, scientists discovered that an earthquake in 2005 had lifted part of the sea floor by more than a meter. The upheaval killed off a massive ring of coral along the island's shores.

Andrew Baird is a scientist with the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. He says the effects of the earthquake were totally unexpected.

"I thought I was ready for what we saw, but the scale of the uplift was quite incredible," he said. "You know every day, every site we went to, there was more reef which had been completely thrust out of the water. The entire perimeter of an island - about 400 kilometers of reef - had been thrust out of the water, literally overnight."

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