Kim Cobb, a marine scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expected the coral to be damaged when she plunged into the deep blue waters off Kiritimati Island, a remote atoll near the center of the Pacific Ocean. Still, she was stunned by what she saw as she descended some 30 feet to the rim of a coral outcropping.
“The entire reef is covered with a red-brown fuzz,” Dr. Cobb said when she returned to the surface after her recent dive. “It is otherworldly. It is algae that has grown over dead coral. It was devastating.”
The damage off Kiritimati is part of a mass bleaching of coral reefs around the world, only the third on record and possibly the worst ever. Scientists believe that heat stress from multiple weather events including the latest severe El Niño, compounded by climate change, has threatened more than a third of Earth’s coral reefs. Many may not recover.
Coral reefs are the crucial incubators of the ocean’s ecosystem, providing food and shelter to a quarter of all marine species, and they support fish stocks that feed more than one billion people. They are made up of millions of tiny animals, called polyps, that form symbiotic relationships with algae, which in turn capture sunlight and carbon dioxide to make sugars that feed the polyps.
An estimated 30 million small-scale fishermen and women depend on reefs for their livelihoods, more than one million in the Philippines alone. In Indonesia, fish supported by the reefs provide the primary source of protein.
“This is a huge, looming planetary crisis, and we are sticking our heads in the sand about it,” said Justin Marshall, the director of CoralWatch at Australia’s University of Queensland.
Bleaching occurs when high heat and bright sunshine cause the metabolism of the algae — which give coral reefs their brilliant colors and energy — to speed out of control, and they start creating toxins. The polyps recoil. If temperatures drop, the corals can recover, but denuded ones remain vulnerable to disease. When heat stress continues, they starve to death.
Damaged or dying reefs have been found from Réunion, off the coast of Madagascar, to East Flores, Indonesia, and from Guam and Hawaii in the Pacific to the Florida Keys in the Atlantic.
The largest bleaching, at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, was confirmed last month. In a survey of 520 individual reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef’s northern section, scientists from Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Task Force found only four with no signs of bleaching. Some 620 miles of reef, much of it previously in pristine condition, had suffered significant bleaching.
In follow-up surveys, scientists diving on the reef said half the coral they had seen had died. Terry Hughes, the director of the Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland, who took part in the survey, warned that even more would succumb if the water did not cool soon.
Learn more: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists
The Latest on: Coral bleaching
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The Latest on: Coral bleaching
- A coral-bleaching event is devastating reefs globally − threatening tiny creatures whose beauty and biology have shaped human cultures for centurieson April 25, 2024 at 10:02 am
Coral’s biological uniqueness and central role in sustaining other forms of life, including humans, are reasons enough to preserve it. And scientists are making extraordinary efforts, such as ...
- Satellites watch as 4th global coral bleaching event unfolds (image)on April 22, 2024 at 10:00 am
On a bi-weekly basis, the Allen Coral Atlas processes Sentinel-2 data for regions that NOAA's Coral Reef Watch daily monitoring program independently flags as potential bleaching events. Then, based ...
- NOAA confirms fourth global coral bleaching eventon April 20, 2024 at 9:10 am
The world is currently experiencing a global coral bleaching event, according to NOAA scientists. This is the fourth global event on record and the second in the last 10 years.
- Coral reef misinformation bubbles up amid bleaching worldwideon April 19, 2024 at 12:08 pm
Australia's Great Barrier Reef experienced the most widespread bleaching on record in the summer of 2023 to 2024, with skeptics dismissing the role of human-induced climate change in putting coral ...
- New Photos Show Just How Bad Mass Coral Bleaching Is On The Great Barrier Reefon April 18, 2024 at 2:28 am
Scientists declared the latest event in March and noted that the slate of back-to-back events is not normal. There is no evidence of any widespread bleaching along the Great Barrier in the last 500 ...
- Global coral bleaching a warning, "not a death sentence"on April 16, 2024 at 3:42 am
The bottom line: A global coral bleaching event designation does not mean certain death for all corals, far from it. "People need to be aware that all is not lost," Manzello said. He noted that in ...
- 4th global coral reef bleaching event underway as oceans continue to warm: NOAAon April 15, 2024 at 3:54 pm
As the world's oceans experience unprecedented rising temperatures, significant coral bleaching has been reported across the globe, according to experts. On Monday, the National Oceanic and ...
- Scientists warned about warm oceans devastating coral. It's happening at a massive scale.on April 15, 2024 at 2:53 pm
Massive coral bleaching across the world's oceans during the past year's extremely warm water temperatures was labeled a “global coral bleaching event” by federal officials on Monday.
- Most coral reef areas experienced bleaching in past year: Researchon April 15, 2024 at 12:34 pm
Coral reefs around the globe experienced a mass bleaching event in the past year as the ocean continues to heat, according to new research. Mass bleaching has been reported in coral reefs in at ...
- NOAA says fourth global coral bleaching event underwayon April 15, 2024 at 11:48 am
The world's oceans are now undergoing the fourth global coral bleaching event on record and the second in the last 10 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday.
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