great barrier reef tagged posts

All coral reefs could suffer bleaching, erosion in few decades.

Bleached coral on Australia's Great Barrier Reef near Port Douglas on Feb. 20, 2017.

The world’s coral reefs could face mass bleaching and erosion within the next few decades, according to an international team of scientists including those from Australia. Their findings, published this week in the scientific journal PNAS, have particular significance for Australia, which oversees the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem and an enormously important drawcard for the nation’s tourism industry.

The scientists, including marine plant ecologist Guillermo Diaz-Pulido from the Griffith University in the Australian state of Queensland, noted in a related article in the Conversation that the GBR contributes about 6.4 billion Australian dollars (about 5 billion U.S. dollars) to the national economy.

Their study, based on the findings from 183 ree...

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Intervention ‘could buy 20 years’ for declining Great Barrier Reef

Using experimental “cloud brightening” technology and introducing heat-tolerant corals could help slow the Great Barrier Reef’s climate change-fuelled decline by up to 20 years, Australian scientists said Thursday. The reef faces “precipitous declines” in coral cover over the next five decades due to “intense pressure” from climate change, a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Royal Society Open Science said.

Climate change is causing marine heatwaves, more intense cyclones and flooding—all of which are damaging the health of the reef.

“Coral reefs are some of the most climate-vulnerable ecosystems on Earth,” lead author Scott Condie told AFP.

“The model projections suggest that coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef could fall below 10 percent within 20 years.”

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Great Barrier Reef has deteriorated to ‘critical’ level due to climate change

A coral reef impacted by a severe bleaching event

The conservation status for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has declined from “significant concern” to “critical” due to increasing impacts associated with climate change, a new report has found.

The damage to the reef is a result of ocean warming, acidification and extreme weather, which has resulted in coral bleaching, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) 2020 World Heritage Outlook report, which tracks whether the conservation of the world’s 252 natural World Heritage sites is sufficient to protect them in the long term. The process of coral bleaching occurs when water is too warm and the algae the corals expel from their tissues cause them to turn completely white.

The decline of the coral has also resulted in decreasing populations of cert...

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Coral reef taller than the Empire State building found in Australia

Our environment has taken a serious beating over the past few decades, with climate change accelerating at an unprecedented pace. However, in some good news coming from the natural world, scientists have just discovered a massive chunk of coral reef off the Australian coast.

On Oct.20, a vast, detached coral reef was found in the Great Barrier Reef, the first in more than 120 years. 

At more than 1,640 feet (500m) — higher than the Empire State Building — the reef was found by a team on a year-long exploration of the waters surrounding Australia. 

The reef was discovered by Australian research scientists on board the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor while mapping the seafloor of the northern Great Barrier Reef. 

The base of the blade-like reef is 1...

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Rowley Shoals: The bleached Australian reef and a Covid challenge

Coral bleaching was detected in a usually healthy reef off Australia’s north-western coast earlier this year.

But due to Covid lockdown rules, the discovery presented scientists with a challenge.

How could they survey the reef without being able to travel there?

Video by Isabelle Rodd

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Can Yoghurt Save the Great Barrier Reef

Science Times reported on April that the Great Barrier Reef underwent its third major bleaching event in the last five years. The reef experienced back-to-back coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017 that killed almost half the reef’s corals. But bleaching does not necessarily mean that it is already dead, according to Terry Hughes director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. This only means that the coral needs help for it to recover.

Now, the scientists believe that probiotics similar to those found in yoghurt can boost the health of the corals to help it withstand the heat stress.

An international team made the breakthrough of using probiotics to help the Great Barrier Reef soon after it weathered on its third major bleaching in five years.

Probio...

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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffers most extensive coral bleaching

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered its most extensive coral bleaching event in March, with scientists fearing the coral recovers less each time after the third bleaching in five years. February 2020 was the hottest month on record since records began in 1900, Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, told Reuters.

“We saw record-breaking temperatures all along the length of the Great Barrier Reef, there wasn’t a cool portion in the north, or a cool portion in the south this time around,” Hughes said.

“The whole Barrier Reef was hot so the bleaching we have seen this year is the most extensive so far.”

Hughes added that he is now almost certain that the Reef is not going to recover to what it looked like even f...

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Healthy coral reefs need fish mix to survive

A coral reef in the Similan Islands

A new study from The University of Western Australia has revealed clear evidence highlighting the importance of fish biodiversity to the health of tropical coral reef ecosystems. This is the case for reefs that are pristine and also those that have been affected by stresses, such as bleaching events caused by warming oceans.

However, the study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, showed that even though strong relationships between diversity and a healthy ecosystem persist, human-driven pressures of warming oceans and invasive species still diminish ecosystems in various ways.

A team of researchers from UWA and Lancaster University in the United Kingdom conducted surveys on coral reefs around 10 islands in the remote Chagos Archipelago – the largest uninhabited and unfished coral re...

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More than half of remote reefs in Coral Sea marine park suffered extreme bleaching

Coral bleaching caused by climate change

More than half of the spectacular and remote coral reefs beyond the boundaries of the Great Barrier Reef suffered severe bleaching this summer, an underwater scientific expedition has found. Several reefs in the vast Coral Sea marine park known among divers for their arrays of corals, large fish and precipitous drop offs into the deep ocean suffered extreme bleaching. Scientists from James Cook University’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies recorded the bleaching on the reefs that are more than 200km offshore during dives in February and March.

Some reefs had 90% of their shallow water corals bleached – an extreme level likely to lead to deaths of many corals, said Prof Andrew Hoey, a co-ordinator of the expedition.

Hoey said: “It’s becoming too familiar to jump in to t...

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Great Barrier Reef hit by third major bleaching event in five years

Bleached coral on Australia's Great Barrier Reef near Port Douglas on Feb. 20, 2017.

The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its most widespread coral bleaching event, according to scientists who say record warm temperatures and warming oceans are threatening its fragile corals. The entire Great Barrier Reef and some of its surrounding areas are facing an unprecedented period of heat stress in what is the third major bleaching event in only the past five years. Heat-induced bleaching can occur periodically, but scientists say climate change is causing the destructive events to happen more frequently, which is particularly troubling because corals don’t have enough time to recover and grow back.

The reef’s last major bleaching event occurred in 2017, and scientists weren’t expecting another one so soon, said Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad...

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