Megatourism, intensive fishing, and sewage, sewage, sewage

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Brazil
Brazil's corals form the world's only South Atlantic reefs, but they're stressed by silt from deforestation, and farm runoff of herbicides and fertilizers. Further damage has been wrought by spearfishing and overfishing, which has given competitive advantage to algae.

Fortunately, there are some protections for the reefs in the National Marine Park of Fernando de Noronha, a 180-square-km area encompassing 20 islands off Brazil's Atlantic coast that has been a preserve since 1988. Brazil allows no more than 420 tourists in the area at once, and charges a separate fee for overnight stays, from $18 for three nights to $1,800 for a month.

Chile
Cold water and the Andes' steep plunge to oceanic depths prevent Chile from having extensive reefs in latitudes where they normally would form. The few reefs the country does have are threatened by silt from deforestation and agricultural runoff of herbicides and fertilizers.

Colombia
Colombia's tourist-driven coastal development has depleted mangroves, while spearfishing, overfishing, silt from deforestation, and herbicide and fertilizer runoff further threaten its coral reef ecosystems. All of Gorgona Island's reefs were damaged by the 1982-83 El Niño, and reefs near Santa Maria have declined because of pollution and runoff.

In February 1994, Colombia created a regional environmental protection agency called CORALINA to administer the nation's reef-rich San Andres islands off the Nicaraguan coast. Though initially it seemed toothless, in March 1997 CORALINA ordered the temporary closure of the Hotel Decameron San Luis for continually thumbing its nose at rules prohibiting the discharge of waste water into the delicate mangrove ecosystem that fronts the hotel. The fast-growing Decameron's 24 discharge pipes had carried used oil and industrial and municipal wastes, including detergents, cleaning fluids, and other toxic substances, into the mangroves. Another encouraging sign: Colombia kicked off 1997's Year of the Reef by announcing the discovery of a new species of black coral.

Ecuador
Ecuador contains South America's major coral reefs, which have been damaged by spearfishing and overharvesting of reef resources, and by the clearing of coastal mangroves for shrimp farms. Tourism is a growing threat, and weather is another: Ecuadoran corals have been hardest hit by the 1982-83 and 1997-98 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, when Pacific waters off South America were far warmer than normal for far longer than normal.

Besides becoming a headline-writer's code-phrase for "large, occasionally weather-related event," El Niño killed corals, which can tolerate only a narrow range of water temperatures. With temperatures consistently above their normal highs for months on end, coral bleaching, particularly off the Galapagos Islands, has been the result. In the 1982-83 El Niño, all known Galapagos reefs and 80 percent of mainland reefs were damaged; in 1997-98 bleaching hit the archipelago again amid persistent temperatures 3-5 degrees F above normal.

Legendary as the scene of Charles Darwin's studies of evolution, the Galapagos have also suffered from the growth of tourism, now up to 60,000 visitors a year. The government has been no help; Ecuador introduced a Galapagos management plan in 1981, but didn't finally adopt one until a decade later—when it abolished the limit on annual tourist visits. Most of the area is technically a national park, but enforcement is weak; a 1997 report found a sharp increase in "organized bands of illegal fishing workers" who, when they're not busy shooting it out with the park staff, are poaching tuna, lobsters, sharks, and sea cucumbers, which are already in danger of extinction around the islands.

Venezuela
Tourist-driven coastal development has depleted mangroves and threatens reefs as well. Spearfishing, overharvesting of reef resources, siltation from deforestation, and herbicide and fertilizer runoff add to the list of threats to Venezuela's coral-reef ecosystems.

Some threats are more mysterious: In January 1996 a "cream-colored, jellylike slick" devastated Morrocoy National Park, 195 km west of Caracas, killing corals as well as fish, crabs, lobsters, and sea urchins. The slick remains unexplained, but theories range from oil refinery or tanker discharges to a type of oxygen-destroying algae bloom called "marine snow."