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WHY GOLF COURSES ARE INCOMPATABLE WITH CORAL REEFS
The flow of underground water is into the sea.
Golf courses flood nutrients into the nearby ocean.
Phosphorous and nitrogen are basic elements in plant food – fertilizer.
All fertilizer is organic. To claim that someone uses “organic fertilizer” is a game with words.
Trees in a forest remove phosphorous and nitrogen from the soil and store it in the tree. This keeps the sea nutrient-free – a requirement for healthy coral reefs.
To make a golf course it is necessary to remove the forest. Thus, the natural control on nutrients is destroyed.
Then grass is planted. To make the grass green and healthy, fertilizer is added. This is the reverse of what happens in the forest that was removed.
The grass is watered and the water dissolves some of the fertilizer and carries it to the phreatic zone below the ground.
The grass is cut. The clippings are put aside where they decompose, releasing the phosphorus and nitrogen in their tissues, which then moves into the phreatic zone and from there to the sea.
In this way, all the fertilizer added to the golf course ends up in the sea.
In the sea this plant food feeds aquatic plants – algae.
Algae smother the reef - the bedrock of the tourism economy of the Riviera Maya.
Information courtesy of Centro Ecológico Akumal
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