HONOLULU, July 21 -- The University of Hawaii issued the following news release:
Human activities are fundamentally altering the chemical makeup of local coral reefs, according to a study led by the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and published in Nature Communications. The research team discovered that 25 contaminants from agricultural, industrial and pharmaceutical sources accumulated in the soft tissues of coral around Maui. Additionally, in areas impacted by human activities, the energy and nutrient availability within the coral's tissue decreases, making them significantly less resilient to environmental stressors such as warmer or acidic waters.
"Our findings suggest that monitoring the pool of chemicals within the coral tissues, cal...