Category News

Coral reefs are being hit by climate change in just about every way possible. Wildfire, drought and other land-based climate disasters have captured global headlines, but coral reefs have been bleaching at record levels, and as such their future is uncertain. The science of climate change’s impact on coral reefs is simple. As humans pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the ocean acts as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide (CO₂) and dissolving it into acid. 

As a result, ocean acidity has increased by about 25 percent since the early 19th century, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That acidity is incredibly harmful to coral reefs...

The images of sea life captured by photographer and cinematographer Shawn Heinrichs have a dual message: we should revere these majestic, yet fragile creatures, but we should also fear the prospect of their extinction.

Heinrichs, 50, grew up by the South African coast: “As a kid I spent every weekend around the oceans — it has more abundance than you could ever imagine,” he recalled. His protective instinct for life beneath the waves inspired a career investigating its mistreatment by humans and campaigning for change. By locating elusive whale sharks in Mexico’s Isla Mujeres, he heavily influenced local fishermen’s career transition to ecotourism.

Heinrichs then documented the widespread hunting of manta rays for their gills, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine, and h...

Abnormally warm waters are stressing Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, causing large parts of the usually colorful reef to turn a ghostly white. Aerial surveys detected catastrophic coral bleaching on around 60 percent of the reef’s corals, reports Darryl Fears for the Washington Post.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world, stretching for 1,429 miles over an area of approximately 133,000 square miles. The sprawling ecosystem is made up of individual reefs formed over thousands of years, which have been repeatedly stressed by recent marine heatwaves. Now, the Great Barrier Reef appears to be suffering its fourth mass bleaching in the last seven years. 

Despite their plant-like appearance, corals are animals made up of hundreds to thousands of tin...

Fish communities on Australia’s famed Great Barrier Reef may become less colorful as oceans warm and corals bleach, according to a new Australian study that looked at changes in reef health, coral types, and resident fish over three decades.   

“Future reefs may not be the colorful ecosystems we recognize today,” write marine ecologist Chris Hemingson and his James Cook University colleagues in their paper, published in Global Change Biology.

“Our findings suggest that reefs may be at a critical transition point and might be poised to become much less colorful in the coming years.”

The study, which comes weeks after the Great Barrier Reef was struck by another widespread bleaching event fueled by rising carbon emissions, focused on reefs surrounding Orpheus Island, which is ...

The UN Secretary General says the rush to use fossil fuels because of the war in Ukraine is “madness” and threatens global climate targets. The invasion of Ukraine has seen rapid rises in the prices of coal, oil and gas as countries scramble to replace Russian sources. But Antonio Guterres warns that these short-term measures might “close the window” on the Paris climate goals. 

He also calls on countries, including China, to fully phase out coal by 2040.

In his first major speech on climate and energy since COP26, Mr Guterres makes no bones about the fact that the limited progress achieved in Glasgow is insufficient to ward off dangerous climate change.

Scientists believe that keeping the rise in global temperatures under 1...

The government is under pressure to safeguard Britain’s marine conservation areas after analysis showed the Dogger Bank protected site has seen a threefold increase in destructive bottom trawling since Brexit. A year ago, conservationists welcomed government proposals to ban trawling and dredging fishing practices, which involve dragging weighted nets over the seabed, in 14,030 sq km (5,400 sq miles) of English waters, an area equivalent to the size of Northern Ireland. The area includes Dogger Bank and three other marine protected areas (MPAs).

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) analysed fishing data tracked by Global Fishing Watch and found bottom trawling and dredging had increased at the site from about 1,700 hours a year between 2015 and 2018, to 5,500 hours a year between...

Dead corals are being recorded in aerial surveys across the Great Barrier Reef in what the marine park’s chief scientist says is a widespread and serious bleaching event on the world heritage icon. Aerial surveys have covered half of the 2,300km reef, with the worst bleaching observed in the park’s central region off Townsville, where corals on some reefs are dead and dying. The unfolding bleaching comes ahead of a 10-day UN monitoring mission to the reef due to start on Monday.

Leading reef scientist Prof Terry Hughes said this week a sixth mass bleaching event was now unfolding on the reef, adding to events in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020.

Dr David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, told Guardian Australia: “There is certainly a risk we ar...

A rainbow-coloured fish that lives on “twilight zone” reefs off the Maldives has finally been recognised as a new species, more than two decades after its discovery. The rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) was formally described last week in the journal ZooKeys, after years of research. The wrasse, which can grow up to 7 centimetres long, lives on reefs found 50 to 150 metres beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.

It was first collected in the 1990s but was initially thought to be an adult version of Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis, a fish from the Chagos Archipelago island chain, 1,000 kilometres further south.

As part of an initiative called Hope for Reefs, scientists from the California Academy of Sciences, University of Sydney, Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMR...

A leading Ukrainian scientist says war is “closing the window of opportunity” for the world to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. Dr Svitlana Krakovska, who is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), spoke to me on Zoom from her apartment in Kyiv.

“It’s amazing how the people of Ukraine united against one enemy,” she said. 

“If we all unite against climate change, we can survive as a civilisation.”

Dr Krakovska was taking part in the final stages of approving the IPPC’s latest major assessment on the impacts of climate change when the invasion made it impossible for her to continue her work. 

“Everything stopped,” she said. “I can’t think about climate change, because I can’t think about anything other than to try to survive.”

But, desc...

Among the countless disastrous consequences of climate change will be the degradation and loss of coral reefs, which will affect about 4.5 million people in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, said a report. As a result of environment stress, coral reefs in Asia are getting bleached and dying, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, released on February 28, said.

The rise in temperature of seawater is affecting the functioning of symbiotic algae of corals and its bacterial consortia, which is resulting in bleaching and mortality of corals.

Corals, under stress, expel the symbiotic algae from their tissues, which causes them to turn completely white. This is known as coral bleaching.