On the tiny island of Bonaire, scuba divers tend to an underwater nursery, slowly plucking off the algae that smothers young coral dangling from fibreglass trees. The island?s entire coastline is a protected marine park and a major draw for tourists, but like elsewhere in the Caribbean Sea, coral cover has declined since the 1970s due to warming sea temperatures, disease outbreaks, coastal development and pollution. A team of scientists and volunteer divers are working tirelessly to restore the dying reef in the hope that it will serve as a model for the rest of the Caribbean.

Above water, Bonaire has a semi-desert landscape dotted with giant cacti and low shrubs, which trap sediment and help prevent soil erosion. There is one problem, though: feral goats and donkeys, descendants of those once brought in by Spanish settlers, love to gobble up the scant vegetation. The loss of plant life, combined with powerful winds and hurricanes, increasingly pushes sediment and waste into the ocean, where it chokes the clear water.

As Bonaire is located outside of the hurricane belt, it provides a safe haven for boat owners to moor their vessels, but this can also have a negative impact on the coral. “We now have increasing number of boats mooring in the town area, very close to shore. They just release their waste water into the ocean, right here, on top of the reef,” says Francesca Virdis, a marine biologist and project co-ordinator at Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire (RRFB). Waste water introduces bacteria, viruses and disease to the shallow reef, as well as nitrogen and phosphorus that can fuel the growth of algae. As algae and corals both require sunlight to survive, they compete for space on the seabed.

(Adapted from: Wired, 2020)

In the text, the words “shrubs”, “viruses” and “vessels” are in the plural form. Mark the sequence in which the use of the plural form is correct.