REEF  (CONT)

pretty good shape. But, he added, "there are 5,000 people living in Christmas and fishing there," enough "to transform the whole ecosystem."

At the moment, the assessment leaves the researchers with questions as well as answers. For example, reefs like Tabuaeran and Kiritimati don't seem to survive as well in episodes of disease or bleaching. Is it because of fishing? To find out, the researchers wrote, they will have to measure how coral growth and fish productivity respond to fishing pressure and how they all interact with episodes of warm water.

But for Dr. Sala, the reefs are like "ecological machines" whose parts include plants, fish, corals and microbes. "You can hit the system with a disturbance, but the system comes back," he said. But if pieces - like big predatory fish - are removed, he said, "the machine is going to malfunction."

As a result, he said, the new work "is an argument for marine reserves large enough to include healthy populations of top predators."

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