You’re going snorkeling along a coral reef. This is biodiversity on over-drive: Every square centimeter is covered with hundreds of little creatures. You see millions upon millions of tentacle-rimmed mouths—each feeding a tiny individual coral polyp—guarded savagely by resident crabs, fish, and shrimp. Right next door, a myriad of other coral species, with added choice residents and predators, sway in the waves. Algae—the sugar-producing pals of corals—grow in and around these polyps, exchanging sugars, oxygen, and other nice things.

Long story short, even if you spent your entire life only looking at coral reefs, you’d see tens of thousands of species.

But coral reefs are in danger. Many have died completely. Seventy five percent of the remaining coral reefs are threatened. And why does any of this even matter in the first place? Because without coral reefs, we’re in deep, deep trouble.

The obvious problem is that losing coral reefs means losing sea turtles, mollusks, and one third of fish species. Less obvious is the danger we are causing our own wellbeing: even though coral reefs cover less than 1 percent of the Earth’s surface, they provide goods and services worth USD 375 billion each year!

In some countries, one out of four fish catches depends on coral reefs, providing food for tens of millions of people. In the U.S., fisheries that depend on coral reefs are worthUSD 100 million. In addition, many drugs for cancer, arthritis, and infectious diseases are being developed from reef animals and plants.

Read the entire article by Gaelle Gourmelon, originally published on the Worldwatch Institute blog: http://blogs.worldwatch.org/you-me-and-the-sea-coral-reefs-and-our-lives/