by The Great Barrier Reef – the world’s largest reef system that is “one of the richest and most complex natural ecosystems on earth” – is once again in full swing. mass coral bleaching event. Officials said the event, the fifth to occur in just under a decade, appears to be the result of heat stress after a record year for global temperatures.
Officials with Australia’s government-run Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said Friday their team had conducted aerial surveys of two-thirds of the nearly 133,000-square-mile area. Those surveys showed “widespread bleaching of shallow-water corals on most of the reefs surveyed,” the park said, adding that it is “consistent with patterns of heat stress that increased during the summer.”
“This coral bleaching incident follows similar reports from reefs around the world over the past 12 months,” the authority said in an update on its website. “These reefs in the Northern Hemisphere have suffered coral bleaching as a result of rising ocean temperatures under the influence of climate change, exacerbated by El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean.”
Coral bleaching it can occur due to stress due to various causes – temperature, light or nutrients. When the animals are stressed, the algae that live within their tissues leave as a main source of food. The algae also provide the coral with its normal vibrant color, which is why the animals turn white, or become bleached, when the algae leave.
Although the current event is widespread, its intensity and depth varies across the surveyed parts of the reef system. The extent of the bleaching event is unknown and will be assessed through in-water research.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch program’s bleaching warning system indicates that areas in and around the Great Barrier Reef are at risk of bleaching at all levels, ranked from 1 to 5, with 5 being “almost total mortality risk.”
Bleached corals are not dead, but they are much more fragile.
“If the water temperature is much higher than usual or if it continues for several weeks, bleached corals can die from stress or starvation,” says the authority. “…even a reef greatly affected able to recover over time as surviving corals grow and new coral larvae settle on the reef.”
The Great Barrier Reef is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which the group calls a “world-class significant entity”. The system, which is larger than the UK, Switzerland and the Netherlands combined – or about half the size of Texas – is “one of the richest and most complex natural ecosystems in the world.”
“There are over 1,500 species of fish, about 400 species of coral, 4,000 species of mollusk, and about 240 species of birds, as well as a great variety of sponges, anemones, marine worms, crustaceans, and other species. There is no other Heritage property A world of such biodiversity,” UNESCO says on its website. “This diversity, especially the endemic species, means that the GBR is of great scientific and intrinsic importance, and it also contains a significant number of threatened species.”
The Great Barrier Reef has been hit by major bleaching events several times over the past twenty years. According to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, this is the eighth event since 1998 and the fifth event in just nine years. The latest mass forecast for 2022 occurred during a La Niña summer, which the foundation said was of “particular concern” because that weather phenomenon, unlike El Niño, “brings cooler and wetter conditions Normally”.
As well as limiting fishing to help the reefs recover, authority officials said the best thing people can do is address their role in the root issue – climate change. As global temperatures rise, primarily from humans emitting planet-warming gases by burning fossil fuels, sea surface temperatures also rise.
“It is a combination of local and global action that will best enable the reef to survive and recover from events like this,” said Park Authority Chief Scientist Roger Beeden, “and overall we continue our work to ensure that we ensure the future of the Gaeltacht. Great Barrier Reef.”
In the Great Barrier Reef, the average sea surface temperature has increased by more than 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880, the authority says, with the warmest years occurring in the last two decades. Earlier this week, scientists announced that last month the Warmest February on recordwith the oceans as well as record highs.
“Climate change is the biggest risk not only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, but also to coral reefs around the world,” Australia’s Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said in a video, posting on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, “We must protect our special places and the plants and animals that call them home.”
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