TOAMASINA, Madagascar — Abraham Botovao, a boat skipper and the president of the Association of Progressive Fishers of Toamasina, has become accustomed to seeing an unusual activity while out at sea. Every day, people in boats plunder a local reef for hundreds of kilograms of coral to sell at the market. There, locals buy the coral in large blocks to use in building septic tanks. Toamasina, located around 350 kilometers (220 miles) east of Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, is one of the country’s main coastal cities, with a population of around 529,500. It’s also home to Madagascar’s largest and most important port, which handles 90% of the country’s international trade. The city is surrounded by a series of coral reefs: Hastie Reef, Bain des Dames Reef, Grand Reef, Petit Reef, and the reef at L’île aux Prunes, an island known locally as Nosy Alanana. The corals on these reefs include near-threatened species such as Pavona decussata, P. cactus and Acanthastrea brevis, according to Jean Maharavo, a marine biologist and vice president of the NGO Tany Ifandovana, which is working to transplant corals slated for destruction by the port’s expansion to L’île aux Prunes. Like most of the world’s tropical reefs, these corals are under threat from bleaching due to global warming. However, those on the east coast of Madagascar are relatively unaffected by this phenomenon, compared with reefs in the Mozambique Channel on the west coast, according to WWF. Despite this, Toamasina’s corals are under considerable anthropogenic pressure, from both unregulated…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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