By Sid Perkins
The fires that swept through Indonesian rain forests late in 1997 apparently laid waste to some marine ecosystems in the area, as well.
Before 1997, more than 100 species of hard corals made up the reefs surrounding the Mentawai Islands, an archipelago that runs parallel to the southwestern coast of Sumatra. In December of that year, a massive bloom of phytoplankton known as a red tide occurred in the region, says Nerilie J. Abram of the Australian National University in Canberra. After the bloom had run its course, the phytoplankton’s rapid decomposition robbed the water of its dissolved oxygen. The effect asphyxiated almost all the fish and corals in the reefs fringing a 400-kilometer-long stretch of the Mentawai Islands.