 |  | _________ |  Megatourism, intensive fishing, and sewage, sewage, sewage
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 To help save the reefs of the U.S. Virgin Islands (U.S.), get active with these groups: St. Croix Aquarium and Marine Education Center
| | _________ |  Mangroves in this U.S. territory have been depleted, and oil-related pollution is a significant threat, but the most visible threats to coral reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands are rampant tourism and outbreaks of poorly understood coral diseases. Boats anchoring in Virgin Islands National Park on the island of St. John put huge stress on reefs there, according to a 1987 study which found that a single boat with 25 feet of anchor chain could damage 2,000 square feet of bottom at a single site. Cruising World reported in January 1996 that the number of boats anchoring in the park—30,000 in 1987—has only increased in the decade since. In 1995, USVI fined Holland America Cruise Lines $300,000 for allowing a cruise ship to prematurely drop its one-ton anchor in 1988, ripping open a patch of reef. The fines were to fund restoration of the reef, but only 2 percent of it had grown back by 1995, seven years later. Rapid wasting disease has recently attacked corals on St. John, and some USVI reefs have suffered coral bleaching to an extent that John Ogden, a marine biologist at the Florida Institute of Oceanography, called "absolutely mind-boggling. The whole reef was blindingly white," he told Audubon magazine in 1996. "In the marine environment, white is the color of death."
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