Blog Archives

The massive bleaching of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral ecosystem in the world, is even worse than anticipated, according to research published in Nature earlier this month. “We didn’t expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years,” the lead author, Terry P. Hughes, told The New York Times. “In the north, I saw hundreds of reefs—literally two-thirds of the reefs were dying and are now dead.”

Bleaching primarily occurs when rising seawater temperatures lead the corals to expel the symbiotic algae living within them, draining the corals of their color and eliminating their principal food source...

Coral reefs, kelp forests and other marine ecosystems may be tougher than we give them credit for, a new study suggests. While countless scientific reports have documented the ravages of climate change on oceanic life, a survey of the researchers who wrote them provides a silver lining: An overwhelming majority noticed examples of sea life withstanding climate change.

“There are instances where sensitive ecosystems have shown remarkable resilience after climatic events. You can think of them as ‘bright spots’: They demonstrate that there are conditions under which ecosystems can persist even with major climate disturbances,” said Jennifer O’Leary, a marine conservation biologist with California Polytechnic State University and leader of the study.

The results of the survey were compil...

Diving and snorkeling contribute to coral reef damage according to research by the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB).

The study, conducted at Panggang Island in the Thousand Islands regency between April and June 2013, found that diving and snorkeling in the area had destroyed 7.57 percent and 8.2 percent of coral reefs per year, respectively due to divers or snorkelers who kicked, stepped on, touched or took the coral.

WWF Indonesia marine and fisheries campaign coordinator Dwi Aryo Tjiptohandono said that the main cause of damage to the reefs was the amateur divers’ inability to float and irresponsible divers who took coral for souvenirs.

According to a recent report by kompas.com, vandalized coral reefs were also found in Raja Ampat in West Papua...

Researchers in Norway were in for a shock when they discovered more than 30 plastic bags and other plastic waste inside the stomach of a whale. The whale, which had been put down by wardens off the coast of western Norway, had clearly consumed a huge amount of non-biodegradable waste.

Despite the grisly findings, researchers say that the plastics found in the whale are ‘not surprising’, as the amount of waste in the seas continues to grow. The whale was in poor condition, and had become stranded in shallow waters off the island of Sotra, leading to wardens putting the animal down.

Researchers from the University of Bergen analysed the whale’s stomach, and found huge amounts of plastic waste.

Dr Terje Lislevand, a zoologist who studied the whale, said: ‘The whale’s stomach was full of pla...

New climate model projections of the world’s coral reefs reveal which reefs will be hit first by annual coral bleaching, an event that poses the gravest threat to one of the Earth’s most important ecosystems.

These high-resolution projections, based on global climate models, predict when and where annual coral bleaching will occur. The projections show that reefs in Taiwan and around the Turks and Caicos archipelago will be among the world’s first to experience annual bleaching.

Other reefs, like those off the coast of Bahrain, in Chile and in French Polynesia, will be hit decades later, according to research recently published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

“These predictions are a treasure trove for those who are fighting to protect one of the world’s most magnificent and i...

Humans are going to have to do a lot more if we want to save the world’s coral reefs. Climate change is quickly killing coral through a process called coral bleaching. In 2016, coral reefs suffered the biggest die-off ever. Some regions of the Great Barrier Reef lost up to 35 percent.

Coral bleaching is probably exactly what you’re imagining: Colorful corals turn white and die. When major changes take place in the ecosystem, corals expel the algae that gives them their color. Since algae is the corals source of food, they begin to starve.

Scientists say if current climate trends continue, 99 percent of reefs will experience annual bleaching by the end of the century. Catastrophic events could begin as early as 2043.

And even the Paris climate agreement can’t save the reefs...

Seagrasses are disappearing at rates that rival those of coral reefs and tropical rainforests, losing as much as seven percent of their area each year. Replanting success rates have been unpredictable — but scientists are making new advances that could change that.

Seagrasses are disappearing at rates that rival those of coral reefs and tropical rainforests, losing as much as seven percent of their area each year, according to the IUCN. While only eelgrass grows along the muddy shorelines of San Francisco Bay, more than 70 species of seagrass worldwide cover a global area estimated at up to 600,000 kilometers squared (about 373,000 square miles) — an area roughly the size of Madagascar.

The flowering plants — not to be confused with seaweed — are considered “coastal canaries...

It is easy to be gloomy about the future of the planet – except, perhaps, for 1.55 million sq/km of water in the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic’s Ross Sea made fleeting headlines 10 days before the US presidential election when it became the world’s first marine “park” in international waters. Amid fears that president-elect Donald Tump intends to sabotage the Paris climate agreement, the 35-year pact to protect the Ross Sea is beyond his reach, according to one of its chief negotiators, Mike Walker of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance.

The deep bay, which teems with krill and toothfish and sustains whales and penguins, has several close links with Ireland...

It’s one of the most spectacular natural phenomena on Earth, and it only happens once a year – the annual mass spawning event at the Great Barrier Reef. Also known as the Great Barrier Reef’s ‘annual sex festival’, the event sees corals from all over the reef releasing their sperm and eggs into the water at the same time – and they appear to coordinate the whole event based on the full moon.

“The big days are after the full moon in November,” marine biologist Richard Fitzpatrick from James Cook University in Australia told The Huffington Post.

“On the third day after the full moon, you’ll get the staghorn corals spawning, but the really big night is usually five days after the moon. That’s when you get the big plate corals spawning and a lot of other corals.”

According to the BBC, at...

Coral reefs throughout the world are under threat. After studying the reefs in Malaysia, Zarinah Waheed concluded that there is room for improvement in coral reef conservation. One-third of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef are dead. This was the sombre conclusion drawn by Australian scientists six months ago. Pollution, shipping and climate change are destroying the world’s largest continuous reef, and other coral reefs seem to be facing the same fate.

Home country

PhD candidate Zarinah Waheed studied coral reefs in her home country Malaysia over recent years. She looked specifically at the coral diversity of these reefs and also at the connectivity between the reef locations. She found that the areas with the highest numbers of coral species are not necessarily protected.

94 species