Status of Coral Reefs of the World 2000

5. STATUS OF CORAL REEFS OF THE SOUTHERN
INDIAN OCEAN: THE INDIAN OCEAN COMMISSION
NODE FOR COMOROS, MADAGASCAR, MAURITIUS,
REUNION AND SEYCHELLES
Lionel Bigot, Loic Charpy, Jean Maharavo, Fouad Abdou Rabi,
Naidoo Paupiah, Riaz Aumeeruddy, Christian Villedieu and
Anne Lieutaud
ABSTRACT
There were few baseline data on coral reef status across the 5 Indian Island nations of
Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and France/La Reunion when the catastrophic
1998 El Niño associated coral bleaching and mortality hit. Just as the bleaching impacts
were varied across this region, so are the condition of the reefs and how they are impacted
by human activities. Reefs off the large island of Madagascar show distinct signs of human
damage, with few reefs in good condition and even fewer protected. Likewise there is
evidence of damage from the land to reefs on Mauritius and Reunion, but there are more
efforts to conserve the reefs in protected areas; bleaching on these three countries was
relatively minor. Prior to the 1998 bleaching, the reefs of Comoros and the Seychelles were
in good to excellent condition except for some damage near centres of population and
some over-fishing. But bleaching devastated these reefs with large scale mortalities leaving
many reefs with less than 5% coral cover (down from levels over 50%). The 1998
bleaching event occurred just when the Regional Environmental Programme of the Indian
Ocean Commission (REP-IOC) was establishing a coral reef monitoring programme in the
Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, La Reunion and Seychelles, building on mandates already
established by the IOC since its inception in 1982 for regional cooperation in economic,
social and cultural fields. The REP-IOC programme aims to support national policies on
Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) for long-term sustainable development of the
region’s coral reefs for future generations, including the establishment of permanent
monitoring stations (of which there are now 44) in the 5 countries.
INTRODUCTION
The 5 IOC member states have large areas of coral reefs, therefore a unifying theme was the
need to develop ‘reef status monitoring’ within a regional network. All countries are
experiencing extremely strong human growth pressures that are resulting in reef
deterioration and losses in reef resources that will have severe economic losses in fisheries,
tourism, and shoreline protection, as well as losses in biodiversity heritage. Through REP-
IOC, a regional reef network was fully endorsed by April 1998 to assist local, national or
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