coral tagged posts

The world is experiencing its third mass coral bleaching event. Due to elevated temperatures at tropical locations over the whole planet, large populations of corals are starting to turn white. This is bad, as bleaching can lead to large-scale decreases in coral health and ultimately their death. Coral reefs provide shorelines with protection from storms, are foundational to tropical tourism and provide critical habitat to thousands of species. Large-scale coral death following mass bleaching leads to reef erosion, loss of shoreline protection, loss of tourism income and the livelihoods that depend on them, and loss of critical habitat.

Following the last mass bleaching event in 1997-98, 16% of the world’s corals died...

Jacksonville University researchers have embarked on a study of critical importance to scientists rearing and out-planting coral on the Florida Keys reef.

Mote Marine Laboratory, the Coral Restoration Foundation, The Nature Conservancy and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have spent millions of dollars rearing and out-planting coral on the Keys reef for nearly a decade.

Jacksonville University marine science professor Dan McCarthy and two of his graduate students are examining whether coral reefs flourish when more parrotfish are around to eat the algae that battle for space on the reef with coral or whether certain species of parrotfish feeding on the live coral itself might also damage them, McCarthy said.

McCarthy will be working with Mote, which gave the professor ...

Some coral populations already have genetic variants necessary to tolerate warm ocean waters, and humans can help to spread these genes, a team of scientists from The University of Texas at Austin, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and Oregon State University has found.

The discovery has implications for many reefs now threatened by global warming and shows for the first time that mixing and matching corals from different latitudes may boost reef survival. The findings are published this week in the journal Science.

The researchers crossed corals from naturally warmer areas of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia with corals from a cooler latitude nearly 300 miles to the south...

When it comes to abundance of species, nowhere else comes close to the waters between the Pacific and Indian oceans. Nestled between the Pacific and Indian oceans is a marine region deemed to be the richest biologically, in the world. Home to three-quarters of the world’s coral species and over a third of its coral reef fish species, it is the underwater equivalent of the Amazon jungle.

It is half the size of the United States and bordered by six countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and East Timor – to form a triangular shape that gives it the name, Coral Triangle.

A new book, The Coral Triangle, by Ken Kassem and Eric Madeja, captures the rich life found above and beneath the water...

Scientists warn extreme sea temperatures could cause a “historic” coral reef die-off around the world over the coming months, following a massive coral bleaching already underway in the North Pacific. Experts said the coral die-off could be the worst in nearly two decades. Reports of severe bleaching have been accumulating in the inbox of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch programme since July. A huge swathe of the Pacific has already been affected, including the Northern Marianas Islands, Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Hawaii, Kiribati and Florida. Some areas have recorded serious bleaching for the first time.

“On a global scale it’s a major bleaching event...

Life is tough if you’re a blundering, buck toothed, bumphead.

You’re far, far bigger than all the rest of the parrotfish in the Pacific. And weighing up to 45kg, you’re very popular at local birthdays and weddings. As the main course. So you console yourself with another chunk of crunchy coral reef! Tasty!

Ramming speed

These hapless hermaphrodites highlight a critical question in conservation. What do you do when an endangered species does things that are bad for the environment?

“They feed directly on these corals,” said Dr Douglas McCauley from the University of California in Santa Barbara who has studied and written about bumpheads extensively.

“They are big enough to ram into them, break off a piece and process this living rock...

Local and international marine experts are joining forces in the ocean around Little Cayman on an important conservation project to try and understand and then save endangered local coral species. The plight of the now critically endangered staghorn coral, which was once one of the most abundant corals on Caribbean reefs, is at the top of the agenda. A mysterious die-off starting in the 1980s resulted in a loss of almost 90% of the population.

As a result both staghorn and elkhorn coral, in the genus Acropora, are listed as criticalely Endangered on the IUCN Red List of threatened species...

Climate change is impacting the world’s coral reefs, threatening the stability of both the oceanic eco-systems where they are found as well as nearby coasts. Now, a recent discovery by Israeli researchers may help pinpoint a way to help protect the massive underwater structures as waters grow warmer and more acidic in the years to come.

“We know the value of reefs, the massive calcium carbonate constructions that act as wave breakers, and protect against floods, erosion, hurricanes, and typhoons,” Yehuda Benayahu, the Israel Cohen Chair in Environmental Zoology at Tel Aviv University, said. “While alive, they provide habitats for thousands of living organisms, from sea urchins to clams, algae to fish. Reefs are also economically important in regions like Eilat or the Caribbean.”

Indonesia is preparing a regulation in an effort to improve sustainable coral reef management given the upcoming World Coral Reef Conference (WCRC) in Manado, North Sulawesi, between May 14-17, 2014, a minister said.

“For the substance of the conference, Indonesia as the host country is preparing a regulation for sustainable global coral reef management,” Marine and Fisheries Minister Sharif Cicip Sutardjo said here on Saturday.

The minister noted that the regulation is being prepared because of concern about the condition of the increasingly degraded world coral reefs.

According to him, coral reefs in Indonesia are the best in the world and, therefore, they should be protected with a regulation.

“The sustainability of coral reefs in Indonesia should be protected with an unequivoca...

The ocean’s biggest challenge is a quiet menace. It is, like many other forms of pollution, caused by human activities. Its prevention is another challenge that will require major restructuring in lifestyle as well as governmental management. The problem: creating favor for one species over another. The cause: human waste.

“What are those red beards on the coral?” A diver asked when he got back aboard “Starfish Enterprise.” Captain Craig Smart dropped us on one of America’s most beautiful coral reefs situated a mile offshore of Delray Beach, Florida. It is a reef structure that runs parallel to the coast from about Miami to Jupiter. The reef is broken in places, more prolific in others and less defined the further north you go. The red beard is algae...