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The coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching. Scientists conduct underwater monitoring amid ocean heat at Mackay Reef on February 24, 2024. This handout photo was obtained by Reuters on April 12, 2024.Photo credit: Australian Institute of Marine Science/Grace Frank/Handout via Reuters
Coral reefs around the world are experiencing their fourth global bleaching event, leading coral reef scientists announced on Monday. This is the result of rising ocean temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change.
Coral reef bleaching has been observed in at least 53 countries, regions and local economies since February 2023, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Coral Reef Initiative. This happens when stressed corals expel algae, which is their food source and gives them their color. If bleaching is severe and lasts for a long time, corals can die.
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Coral reefs are important ecosystems that sustain underwater life, protect biodiversity, and slow erosion. It also supports the local economy through tourism.
Bleaching has been occurring in various regions for some time. In Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, 90% of corals assessed in 2022 were affected by bleaching. Florida’s third-largest coral reef experienced significant bleaching last year.
However, for bleaching to be declared globally, significant bleaching had to be recorded in each of the major ocean basins, including the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Monday’s news marks the second global bleaching event in the past decade. The last phenomenon ended in May 2017. The event, caused by a powerful El Niño phenomenon that heated the world’s oceans, lasted three years and turned out to be worse than the previous two bleaching events in 2010 and 1998.
This year’s bleaching follows the declaration that 2023 was the hottest year on record.
read more: Race to save coral from intense ocean heatwave
“As the world’s oceans continue to warm, coral bleaching events are becoming more frequent and severe,” NOAA Coral Reef Monitoring Coordinator Derek Manzello said in a statement.
Selina Stead, marine biologist and chief executive of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said climate change was “the biggest threat to coral reefs around the world”. She said scientists are working to learn more about how corals respond to heat and identify corals that are naturally heat-tolerant, but that “the world’s carbon emissions will continue to grow. It is important to work towards reductions.”
One reef that fared better than others last year was Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, which is given some protection because of its location in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 miles off the coast of Texas. I did. Refuge officials did not immediately respond to messages Monday seeking updates on the health of the sanctuary’s corals.
left:
The coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching. Scientists conduct underwater monitoring amid ocean heat at Mackay Reef on February 24, 2024. This handout photo was obtained by Reuters on April 12, 2024.Photo credit: Australian Institute of Marine Science/Grace Frank/Handout via Reuters
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