Human activities are fundamentally altering the chemical makeup of local coral reefs, according to a study led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and published in Nature Communications. Human activities are fundamentally altering the chemical makeup of local coral reefs, according to a study led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and published in Nature Communications. Additionally, in areas impacted by human activities, the energy and nutrient availability within the coral’s tissue decreases, making them significantly less resilient to environmental stressors such as warmer or acidic waters. They found that human activities both within the adjacent watershed and in the marine ecosystem altered the composition of the corals’ metabolomes. In areas with more ecosystem disturbance, there was increased accumulation of contaminants and a decrease of nutrient and energy reserves in the coral tissues.