4/7/2023 0 Comments Barrier reefWhile it remains a vibrant ecosystem of great natural resilience and beauty, warming oceans are causing more frequent and serious bleaching events, which can kill coral. Mark Eakin, a reef expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Silver Spring, Md.The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest living structure and one of the seven wonders of the world. “I don’t think the Great Barrier Reef will ever again be as great as it used to be - at least not in our lifetimes,” said C. Within a decade, certain kinds of branching and plate coral could be extinct, reef scientists say, along with a variety of small fish that rely on them for protection from predators. If they become routine, many of the world’s hard-hit coral reefs may never be able to re-establish themselves. ![]() If water temperatures stay moderate, the damaged sections of the Great Barrier Reef may be covered with corals again in as few as 10 or 15 years.īut the temperature of the ocean is now high enough that global mass bleaching events seem to be growing more frequent. If water temperatures drop soon enough, the corals can grow new algae and survive, but if not, they may succumb to starvation or disease.Įven when the corals die, some reefs eventually recover. The coral polyps form colonies and build a limestone scaffolding on which to live - a reef.īut when the water near a reef gets too hot, the algae begin producing toxins, and the corals expel them in self-defense, turning ghostly white. The corals themselves are tiny polyps that act like farmers, capturing colorful single-celled plants called algae that convert sunlight into food. And even if the corals do survive, that does not mean individual reefs will continue to thrive where they do now.Ĭoral reefs are sensitive systems, built by unusual animals. The corals may save themselves, as many other creatures are attempting to do, by moving toward the poles as the Earth warms, establishing new reefs in cooler water.īut the changes humans are causing are so rapid, by geological standards, that it is not entirely clear that coral species will be able to keep up. ![]() The global reef crisis does not necessarily mean extinction for coral species. Even in hard-hit areas, large patches of the Great Barrier Reef survived, and guides will most likely take tourists there, avoiding the dead zones. “The fact is, Australia is the largest coal exporter in the world, and the last thing we should be doing to our greatest national asset is making the situation worse,” said Imogen Zethoven, campaign director for the Australian Marine Conservation Society.Īustralia relies on the Great Barrier Reef for about 70,000 jobs and billions of dollars annually in tourism revenue, and it is not yet clear how that economy will be affected by the reef’s deterioration. Australia’s conservative government also continues to support fossil fuel development, including what many scientists and conservationists see as the reef’s most immediate threat - a proposed coal mine, expected to be among the world’s largest, to be built inland from the reef by the Adani Group, a conglomerate based in India. Trump as the American president, a recent global deal to tackle the problem, known as the Paris Agreement, seems to be in peril. You have to address climate change directly.” “That’s not good news in terms of what you can do locally to prevent bleaching - the answer to that is not very much at all. “The reefs in muddy water were just as fried as those in pristine water,” Professor Hughes said. “In the north, I saw hundreds of reefs - literally two-thirds of the reefs were dying and are now dead.” Hughes, director of a government-funded center for coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia and the lead author of a paper on the reef that is being published Thursday as the cover article of the journal Nature. “We didn’t expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years,” said Terry P. More southerly sections around the middle of the reef that barely escaped then are bleaching now, a potential precursor to another die-off that could rob some of the reef’s most visited areas of color and life. ![]() Huge sections of the Great Barrier Reef, stretching across hundreds of miles of its most pristine northern sector, were recently found to be dead, killed last year by overheated seawater. SYDNEY, Australia - The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has long been one of the world’s most magnificent natural wonders, so enormous it can be seen from space, so beautiful it can move visitors to tears.īut the reef, and the profusion of sea creatures living near it, are in profound trouble.
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