According to a report released Wednesday, parrotfish and sea urchins could help bring back the Caribbean's declining coral reefs population.

The report, titled "Status and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012," was issued by International Union for Conservation of Nature, United Nations Environment Program and Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network and analyzed research for over three years from over 90 experts. According to the report, since the 1970s Caribbean coral reef population has decreased over 50 percent.

"The Caribbean coral reefs thread along thousands of kilometers of coastline, providing a source of food and livelihood for millions," Achim Steiner, U.N. Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said in a press release. "Unfortunately, these valuable ecosystems are under mounting pressures from human activities which contribute to the degradation and damage of sediment and pollution to coastal waters. Coral bleaching caused by the rising sea temperature adds to the challenge ..."

Although global warming has been said to contribute to this decline, the report says that a decrease in the number of parrotfish and sea urchins is also to blame. The sea creatures eat seaweed, and without them, seaweed numbers have increased, suffocating coral reefs.

"The situation is truly horrific in the sense that you have all these places that are desperately overfished," Jeremy Jackson, lead author of the report and IUCN senior adviser, told Associated Press. "Climate change for me so far is 10 percent of the story."

"Barbuda is about to ban all catches of parrotfish and grazing sea urchins, and set aside one-third of its coastal waters as marine reserves," Ayana Johnson of the Waitt Institute's Blue Halo Initiative, which is working with Barbuda, said in the release. "This is the kind of aggressive management that needs to be replicated regionally if we are going to increase the resilience of Caribbean reefs."

In addition to overfishing, Jackson named coastal degradation and diseases as reasons for dropping coral reef numbers.

Currently, the Caribbean has almost 8,000 square miles of coral reefs, AP reports. In addition to being valuable to the ecosystem, they are also valuable to economies as they create $3 billion from tourism and fishing every year.

"Coral reef degradation and mortality will significantly impact the region's economy through reduced habitat for fish and shellfish, diminished tourism and reduced capacity to protect the shoreline against rising sea levels," Steiner continued. "We need strong collaboration at the local, national and regional levels to build resilience and reduce threats to coral reefs and the livelihoods of those who depend on them."

The report says there is still hope in saving the coral reefs if issues like global warming are addressed with "concrete steps."
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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