Coral Reefs Shouldn’t Look Like <em>Finding Nemo</em>
Scientists have devised an ingenious new method to figure out which of these habitats are most worth saving.
When John Bruno sees shark fins circling his boat, he’s happy. They tell him that he’s sitting on top of pristine coral reefs, like the ones he swam among as a child. “When you drop down, there’ll be four to six sharks circling you, bumping you, checking you out,” he says. They’ll be accompanied by six-foot goliath groupers, three-foot snappers, barracuda, and more. Such reefs were the norm for the Caribbean in the 1970s. Now, they’re vanishingly rare. “In 99 percent of the reefs, the predators are absent,” says Bruno. “I
