coral reef tagged posts

For decades, most of the news about coral reefs has been pretty gloomy. Now the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is launching a new mission to bring back a few of those reefs. Reefs along the Keys once commonly had coral cover of 30 to 40 percent of its surfaces. Those healthy reefs protected the Keys from storms, nurtured fish and lobsters and helped create a thriving tourism industry that relies heavily on diving, snorkeling and fishing.

Now the coral cover is more like 2 percent on a lot of the reefs that still draw tourists.

“Frankly, we cannot afford to let these declines continue. We cannot afford not to act,” Sarah Fangman, the sanctuary superintendent. “These systems are in a state that without our active help, they cannot recover fast enough.”

The National Oceanic and Atmos...

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN), coral reefs house the world’s most biodiverse ecosystem and directly support more than 500 million people, the majority of whom are in developing countries. Naturally formed out of thin layers of calcium carbonate (limestone), coral reefs have sustained great damage over the past decades due to the effects of climate change—such as warming waters, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest living thing on Earth, which has lost half of its colorful ecosystem and the life it once sustained to heat stress.

And since they are crucial to life on Earth, the destruction of coral reefs wouldn’t only wreak havoc on marine life and the ecosystems that depend on it, it wou...

Scientists say bolder actions to protect coral reefs from the effects of global warming will benefit all ecosystems, including those on land. In an article published in Nature today two researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU) say the world’s reefs will disappear by 2070 if climate change continues on its current path. Even well-protected World Heritage-listed coral reefs have been increasingly damaged by regional and global bleaching since 1980.

When you want to go diving to see those majestic coral reefs, Italy is probably not the first country you’d consider going to. In fact, it might not be one of the countries that’s in your short list. Nobody knew of the coral reef hiding in the great coast of Italy until now.

The reef, identified in a new study published in Scientific Reports, wasn’t found sitting just below the surface of some shallow lagoon where it’s easily noticeable. Instead, it sits below the ocean waves, hidden from the very little light that beams from above.

The coral reefs that have won the hearts of many all over the world are usually from the Caribbean, Australia and everywhere else where this majestic oasis of sea life gets a very good source of sunlight...

The first coral reef in Italy has been identified, according to researchers. The underwater ecosystem extends for at least two and a half kilometres on the Adriatic coast near Monopoli, in Puglia. It is the first mesophotic coral reef – a term applied to ecosystems with low levels of light – to be found in the Mediterranean.

These types of reef “are found at depths ranging from 30–40 metres … up to 200 metres”, the researchers write in the study published in Nature.

For this reason, the colours of the coral reef in Puglia are more subtle than the better-known varieties in the Pacific.

“The famous Australian or Maldivian coral reefs rise almost to the surface of the water, making the most of the sunlight that is the real fuel of these ecosystems,” said Prof Giuseppe ...

INTENSE HEAT WAVES are bad for human health. They can lead to sometimes deadly conditions like dehydration and stroke. And just like extreme temperatures on land, marine heat waves can drastically alter life under the sea.

A new study published today in Nature Climate Change found that the occurrences of marine heat waves have substantially grown in the past three decades, and it’s becoming clearer how deadly warmer temperatures are for biodiversity.

Marine heat waves are periods when the average water temperature of a given region is exceptionally high. In the past 30 years marine heat wave days have increased by just over 54 percent, a trend the study’s authors found consistent with declines in oceans life.

High-profile marine heat waves like “the blob,” a huge mass of wa...

Scientists have found that dramatic changes in ocean salinity trigger the same stress response in corals as extreme heat. For example, when severe freshwater flooding greatly reduces the salinity of the seawater, corals can experience potentially fatal “freshwater bleaching.”

The researchers used the sequenced genome of the common reef-building coral Acropora millepora to detect changes in the coral’s biology when exposed to a sudden drop in seawater salinity. The experts observed a biochemical response which was similar to that from marine heatwaves, but potentially more damaging.

“Using the sophisticated labs at the National Sea Simulator, we put both young and adult corals under a salinity stress test to see how they respond to differing salinity concentrations,” said stu...

A team of researchers from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum conducted a study of coral resiliency that showed some corals are better able to tolerate heat than similar corals tested in the 1970s. But scientists say it will not be fast enough to fight off rising sea temperatures.

The scientists replicated the identical experimental system, methodology, coral species, collection site, and even brought in one of the original researchers, Steve Coles, adjunct faculty at the UH Mānoa Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB)...

We usually imagine coral reefs as underwater tropical wonderlands, bursting with life and living on a fragile balance. 

While climate change and other human impacts are indeed threatening coral reefs on a global scale, not all corals are the same. 

In fact, here in Brazil our reefs have very low diversity of coral species, but some of these species are only found here and they are pretty special. 

Is Brazilian coral more resistant to climate change?

While many reefs have suffered from especially warm ocean temperatures in recent years, coral species in Brazil have been particularly sturdy. In fact, we haven’t seen any mass mortality events related to bleaching so far.

So, could Brazilian corals hold the key to more resilient reefs?

The natural conditions found in coral...