The Kane‘ohe Bay story is far fromunique. Most of the world’s tropicalcoasts are undergoing increasing develop-ment and population growth. As a result,more and more nutrients are ending up inthe waters that support coral reefs, andthere are many reports of reefs beingthreatened by eutrophication. On theother hand, new research is showing thatthe effects of added nutrients on coralreefs are much more complicated than weonce thought. A few experiments have in-dicated that algal growth is not nutrient-limited on at least some reefs. There areeven suggestions that in some cases addednutrients may be good for the zooxanthel-lae and help corals grow faster. The bulk of the evidence, however, is that eutrophi-cation is damaging, especially when popu-lations of algal grazers are reduced. Many reef biologists consider it one of the mostserious threats to the world’s coral reefs.