coral reef tagged posts

Australia’s coral reefs, including the lesser-known subtropical systems, are hit hard as the world faces its fourth, and most intense, global coral bleaching event on record, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) said on Monday.

Even typically resilient reefs, like those surrounding Lord Howe Island off Australia’s east coast, the world’s southernmost coral reef, are suffering, despite initially escaping mass bleaching seen elsewhere across Australia this year, said a UNSW press release.

More than 83 percent of the world’s reefs have experienced extreme heat stress since January 2023, which is the fourth global coral bleaching event, according to the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Warm waters of South Pacific nestle a coral colony, unmatched in size, off the grimly far away island of Malaulalo. The coral, a Pavona clavus, measures 34 meters across, 32 meters long, and 5.5 meters tall, making it 12 meters larger than America’s previous record holder from American Samoa.

An underwater cathedral, this giant carcass of coral was captured in vivid shots during a National Geographic Pristine Seas expedition. Leading a team of videographer Manu San Félix, the group accidentally came across the coral while probing an area that was classified as a shipwreck.

“It is impressive to see something so big and so old-around 300 years old-bouncing back through such significant changes in the environment,” according to San Félix...

Coral larvae reduce their metabolism and increase nitrogen uptake to resist bleaching in high temperatures, according to a study published November 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Ariana S. Huffmyer of the University of Washington, US, and colleagues. High ocean temperatures cause coral bleaching, which results from the disruption of the relationship between corals and their symbiotic algae, an increasing concern as global temperatures rise. 

However, relatively little research has examined the effects of high temperatures during early life stages of corals.

In this study, Huffmyer and colleagues exposed coral larvae to high temperatures at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology. 

For three days during their first week of development, the larvae and their algal ...

A human rights-based approach to coral reef protection could ensure governments are held to account for safeguarding marine ecosystems and empower local and Indigenous communities to demand sustainable solutions and climate justice, a new study suggests. An estimated one billion people rely on healthy coral reefs globally for food security, coastal protection and income from tourism and other services. If reefs and their ecosystems are lost, the impact on human health and economic wellbeing would be catastrophic.

Lead author, Dr Emma Camp from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), said the window of opportunity to conserve coral reefs is rapidly closing and despite numerous protective measures, coral reefs around the world continue to degrade.

“2024 marks the fourth global cora...

Soft-body submersibles designed to resemble and move like manta rays have been developed by a team at the School of Navigation of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province in central China, for monitoring coral reefs.  The R&D team began developing submersibles for coral reef monitoring in 2006, by studying the swimming patterns of marine organisms for their prototypes.

More recently, they have monitored outbreaks of species such as the crown-of-thorns starfish, which pose a threat to coral reefs by feeding on them in the South China Sea.

The team’s smaller submersibles are utilized for marine education and coral reef monitoring, while their larger models can dive deeper and for longer periods to collect more data.

Many people are curious wh...

The world is not doing enough to protect coral reefs, the United Nations’ special envoy for the ocean said last week, in defence of the marine ecosystems that protect biodiversity, sustain underwater life, and produce some of the oxygen we breathe. In an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of an international ocean conference in Greece, Peter Thomson suggested that all significant coral reefs should be included in marine protected areas under what is known as the “30×30” initiative, a plan to designate 30% of the world’s land and ocean areas as protected areas by 2030.

Top reef scientists announced last week that coral reefs are experiencing global bleaching for the fourth time—and the second time in just 10 years—as a result of warming oceans amid human-...

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest collection of coral reefs, a natural wonder stretching over 1,400 miles off Australia’s Queensland coast, hosting 400 types of coral and thousands of fish species. Since 1981, it has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and most of its ecosystem is protected.

But you might not know that it is also the stage for daily underwater concerts. Take a dive or listen to marine biologist Steven Simpson’s recordings and you hear grunt fish grunt, shrimps snap, damselfish chirp, clownfish grumble, sperm whales click and humpback whales sing their soprano mating songs that are audible over tens of miles.

“When I tell them fish have ears, people look at me like I’m mad,” says University of Bristol professor Steve Simpson...

A recent study sheds light on the promising prospects of coral reef restoration efforts, indicating a swift turnaround in the health of damaged reefs within just four years. Spearheaded by Ines Lange from the University of Exeter, the research offers a glimmer of hope amidst concerns over the plight of coral reefs globally.

Lange and her team focused their investigation on reefs in Indonesia, a region heavily impacted by human activities like blast fishing, which severely degrade these delicate ecosystems. Employing a combination of coral transplantation and the introduction of sand-coated steel structures known as ‘Reef Stars’ to stabilise the damaged substrate, researchers witnessed a remarkable resurgence in coral cover and carbonate production.

Published in Current Biology, ...

“It’s a really special part of the world,” says marine biologist Taryn Foster from the Abrolhos Islands, 40 miles from the coast of Western Australia. “There are no palm trees or luscious vegetation. But once you get in the water, you see all these tropical species of coral and fish.” Corals are animals called polyps, found mostly in tropical waters. The soft-bodied polyp forms a hard outer shell by extracting calcium carbonate from the sea. Over time those hard shells build up to form the foundations of the reefs we see today. Coral reefs may only cover 0.2% of the seafloor, but they provide a habitat to more than a quarter of marine species.

However, the creatures are sensitive to heat and acidification so in recent years, as the oceans have warmed and become more acidic, corals ha...

How do we go from protecting eight per cent of marine areas to 30 per cent in less than 10 years? This question is at the heart of a global forum in Canada aiming to save marine ecosystems under threat from overfishing, pollution and climate change.

On the heels of the historic biodiversity agreement signed at COP15 in Montreal late last year, about 3,000 officials, scientists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Indigenous groups are meeting in Vancouver for the fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5), which opened on Friday (Feb 4) and runs until February 9.

Scientists have said the meeting is crucial for setting up a framework to reach the agreed target at COP15 of protecting 30 per cent of the planet’s lands and oceans by 2030.

It is an immense st...