Abstract

The lives of organisms in shallow marine environments continue to be threatened by the natural (seasonality) and anthropogenic (e.g., coastal developments and changes in land-use practices) drivers that compromise water quality. In three Kenyan coral reef ecosystems—the Tana Delta, Watamu, and Shimoni Mupunguti Reef—water and sediment samples from healthy, living Porites spp. colonies were used in a case study to evaluate the effects of these drivers on nutrient over-enrichments. For (N-(NO3-+ NO2-)) and (P-PO43-), the assessed nutrient over-enrichment levels were higher than the universal reference background concentrations of 0.01 and 0.003 mg/L, respectively