What Have We Done?
before-comp



Creation begins:

   Over millions of years islands, life in the sea including corals, and coral reefs evolved.  The warm waters and sunny days of the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific regions became the homes of amazing, well adapted communities of coral and other plants and animals.  Floating coral larvae which colonized reefs were unable to survive the cold waters that swept around the southern tips of South America and Africa.  Corals in the Caribbean evolved in isolation from those in the Indo-Pacific.  A natural balance was reated.  All worked together.

 

Man Arrives:
        Man too evolved and moved from he cradle of civilization, generally thought to be Africa.  Over thousands of years travel and evolution took place.  In one major area of coral seas in the Pacific, about 3000 oceans.  These were the Polynesians.  They me long sea voyages and relied on the sea for food.  When arriving at land they came with their own support systems and a knowledge of farming.

THEY BEGAN TO CREATE THEIR OWN ENVIRONMENT.  Settling in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, other peoples soon joined them.  Trading was established.  Whaling ships set out for the Pacific from Europe and America.  By the 1840's there was hardly a speck land undiscovered. Cultural evolution soon followed.  Missionaries spread throughout the archipelagoes.  Traditional ways of life were swept away. 

fabric
after-comp

SPIRITUAL
LANDS WITH NATURE WERE SHATTERED.  Colonial rule descended over Pacific
which allowed the resources of the coral
efs to be exploited in a systematic manner, with devastating results.
Today, we seem to have reached the epitome of our exploitation and
attempts to control.  We harvest, we shoot, we inflict blows to the
head.  We dynamite, test, drive pollute, spill,
ump, and overfish.  In addition, we've created global warming with all
its associated effects on the atmosphere, weather, and ocean currents.
We are depleting the WIDESPREAD CORAL MORTALITY.
Now What?


        Included in this web site are things man can do to help preserve the
coral reefs.  The Apostle Paul taught the Romans that "since the
creation of the world, invisible realities, God's external power and
divinity have become visible; recognized through
e things He has made."  Based on this, let us consider the ultimate
holistic approach to savings the reefs.  In a book entitled: THE END OF
NATURE  by Bill McKibben he states, "as birds have flight, our special
gift is reason."  Should we so choose, we
uld exercise our reason to do that no other animal can do:  we could
limit ourselves voluntarily, choose to remain God's creatures instead of
making ourselves gods."

READ MORE:
The Great Barrier Reef -----Maura Gouck; Encyclopedia Britannic  1993
Coral Reefs -----Less Holliday: Tetra Press 1989
The End of Nature -----Bill McKibben:  Random House, Inc., NY  1989

[Home]

[Dan]

[Lois]

[Lavaughn]

[Bonnie]

[Jesse]

[Solutions]

[Aletha]