World's Coral Reefs Hit By a Fourth Mass Bleaching Event, NOAA Says (nbcnews.com) 57
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday declared that Earth is in the midst of a "4th global coral bleaching event" that's been documented over the last 14 months in every major ocean basin, including off Florida in the United States, in Australia's Great Barrier Reef and in the South Pacific. "As the world's oceans continue to warm, coral bleaching is becoming more frequent and severe," said Derek Manzello, a coral reef ecologist who coordinates NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program, in a news release. "When these events are sufficiently severe or prolonged, they can cause coral mortality, which hurts the people who depend on the coral reefs for their livelihoods." NBC News reports: Corals are critical ecosystems that support a vast array of fish and aquatic species, which help feed coastal communities and attract tourists. The economic value of reefs is estimated at $2.7 trillion per year, according to a 2020 report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. "They protect our coastline. They offer protection from storms and hurricanes. They have a great value for our economy and safety," [Ana Palacio, an assistant scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, a research institute that is based at the University of Miami in partnership with NOAA] said.
In Florida, as sea surface temperatures spiked, bleaching started early in the season, experts said. "Normally, bleaching will be observed in the Northern Hemisphere around August and September. We started to observe bleaching in July last year," said Phanor Montoya-Maya, a marine biologist with the Coral Restoration Foundation, an organization that collects, restores and repopulates corals. Palacio said the region saw widespread mortality of elkhorn and staghorn corals, two species that have been the focus of restoration efforts. "In some locations, about 20% of those populations survived," Palacio said of restored corals. "We're concentrating our hope on why those corals survived and what they can tell us about resistance and how corals can be more resilient."
The last global coral bleaching event happened in 2014 and lasted until 2017. More than 56% of global reef areas saw temperatures that could cause bleaching during that time period. In an email on Monday, Manzello said that 54% of the world's coral reef areas had experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the past year and that the event was poised to become the worst bleaching event in history. "The percentage of reef areas experiencing bleaching-level heat stress has been increasing by roughly 1% per week," Manzello said. "It is likely that this event will surpass the previous peak."
Montoya-Maya said a bleaching alert is already in effect in Florida, even earlier than last year. He said the Coral Restoration Foundation was preparing for a busy summer responding to another bleaching event. The natural pattern of El Nino has begun to dissipate and NOAA's Climate Prediction Center estimates there is a 60% chance La Niaa develops this summer, which could help cool Atlantic waters and allow some corals to recover, at least temporarily.
In Florida, as sea surface temperatures spiked, bleaching started early in the season, experts said. "Normally, bleaching will be observed in the Northern Hemisphere around August and September. We started to observe bleaching in July last year," said Phanor Montoya-Maya, a marine biologist with the Coral Restoration Foundation, an organization that collects, restores and repopulates corals. Palacio said the region saw widespread mortality of elkhorn and staghorn corals, two species that have been the focus of restoration efforts. "In some locations, about 20% of those populations survived," Palacio said of restored corals. "We're concentrating our hope on why those corals survived and what they can tell us about resistance and how corals can be more resilient."
The last global coral bleaching event happened in 2014 and lasted until 2017. More than 56% of global reef areas saw temperatures that could cause bleaching during that time period. In an email on Monday, Manzello said that 54% of the world's coral reef areas had experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the past year and that the event was poised to become the worst bleaching event in history. "The percentage of reef areas experiencing bleaching-level heat stress has been increasing by roughly 1% per week," Manzello said. "It is likely that this event will surpass the previous peak."
Montoya-Maya said a bleaching alert is already in effect in Florida, even earlier than last year. He said the Coral Restoration Foundation was preparing for a busy summer responding to another bleaching event. The natural pattern of El Nino has begun to dissipate and NOAA's Climate Prediction Center estimates there is a 60% chance La Niaa develops this summer, which could help cool Atlantic waters and allow some corals to recover, at least temporarily.
Re:really - the whole world's ? (Score:5, Informative)
From what I read about bleaching the Australian reef went on and off with it and is doing quite well apparently.
You didn't understand what you were reading. When we talk about a bleaching event, its something that puts coral under stress and at high risk of death. If corals remain bleached for several months they may die. Coral doesn't undie. When a reef "recovers" from bleaching it just means that the bleaching has subsided and the remaining coral is not at risk of death. For bleaching to subside takes many months. Corals are incredibly slow growing and recovering a dead chunk of reef takes many decades.
The great barrier reef is not "doing well", in fact it is currently going through a 5th mass bleaching event, and there's particular concern about 2024 bleaching events right now as well thanks to the concurrent La Nina putting additional stress on the reef meaning mortality is likely higher this year than in the past. https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
How did the reef survive the times when the earth was much warmer than now, I wonder? Must be aliens.
It didn't. It regrew over the course of thousands of years. That said the earth used to change temperature slower, and at a slower pace nature is able to adapt. Think of it this way. If the sea level rises you have plenty of time to find / build / buy a new house in the mountains, move your belongings and keep living your life. If a tornado rips through your city on the other hand you better hope your belongings are insured. Repeat after me: Speed matters.
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To be fair, there have been times where Earth's temperature changed relatively rapidly.
On the other hand... those times tended not to work out very well for life :
Our current experiment with mass greenhouse gas emissions affecting the climate, Earth itself has kinda done it before, at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary. The associated Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) left the world such an altered place that we refer to it as a different era (the Eocene). The oceans took the brunt of the hit. Except the
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No, it's not evolution *at work*. It's human intervention in the environment at work. Sure, evolution will *respond* to this intervention; if you want to see *that* at work, go into suspended animation for a hundred thousand years.
You could argue that *humans* are part of nature and therefore anything we do is natural. That's just quibbling. By that argument it would be just as natural for us to choose not to shit in our own beds.
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Does it really matter though? Humans will do little to nothing to change their behaviour until it is too late, but by then most life will fail and die.
The Planet does. not. care. And clearly, neither do humans. We say we do, but we do not.
So bleach away, kill off the environment, create a downward trend where all life is impacted and dies.
The Planet will continue its orbit around the sun and in a few hundred million years, if not sooner, some other form of life will develop.
We just won't be here to witness
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Sure, the planet does not care, but we're not asking what the *planet* should do, are we?
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Your not wrong and I think I should have refrained from responding. It's just that yes, losing coral due to bleaching is a bad thing but that in itself pales in comparison when you take a broader view of the environmental damage that is happening.
Left unchecked it can make the planet unlivable not just for the coral, but for all living things.
Even if you are somehow in a position to save the coral reefs, which I doubt, then bravo. Job well done! But it won't matter in the long run. Warming temperatures, err
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Well, no *one* of us in a position to save the coral reefs. Not even world leaders can do it. But we *all* are in a position to do a little bit, and collectively all those little bits add up to matter.
Sure if you're the only person trying to reduce is carbon footprint you will make no difference. But if enough people do it, then that captures the attention of industry and politicians and shifts the Overton window. Clearly we can't save everything, but there's still a lot on the table and marginal impr
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Taking a step back, isn't this just evolution at work? Survival of the fittest? Corals that can survive the warmer temperatures will evolve and spread?
In the long run it is, but the current warming is too fast for evolution to keep up. If species can't adapt fast enough, they just die. In the long run, other species will probably re-occupy the ecological niche, but this can sometimes take a long time. After the extinction of rugose corals at the Permian–Triassic extinction event, for example, there was a gap of tens of millions of years until unrelated species evolved to fill the ecological niche.
Yeah, we're definitely part of the cause of it, but an asteroid millions of years ago caused dramatic climatic change as well.
That did not work out well for the species living at
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Taking a step back, isn't this just evolution at work?
Evolution is 10s of generations getting taller and stronger to adapt to foes. It doesn't do anything against a random person coming in and killing people with machine guns.
Repeat after me: Speed matters. There's nothing natural about our current state of climate change.
Please (Score:3)
Whoever is out there pouring bleach over the poor corals --- stop doing it!
Re:Most of the civilized world doesn't have corals (Score:4)
I guess I'll just ask Chat GPT, because AIs are generally more useful than humans these days
If you're too lazy to do a simple search, you're too lazy to ask ChatGPT. But since your lazy asked, here you go [noaa.gov].
Because of the diversity of life found in the habitats created by corals, reefs are often called the "rainforests of the sea." About 25% of the ocean's fish depend on healthy coral reefs. Fishes and other organisms shelter, find food, reproduce, and rear their young in the many nooks and crannies formed by corals. The Northwest Hawaiian Island coral reefs, which are part of the Papahnaumokukea National Marine Monument, provide an example of the diversity of life associated with shallow-water reef ecosystems. This area supports more than 7,000 species of fishes, invertebrates, plants, sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals. Deep water reefs or mounds are less well known, but also support a wide array of sea life in a comparatively barren world.
Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss
Great Barrier Reef - agricultural runoff (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Great Barrier Reef - agricultural runoff (Score:4, Interesting)
Cool story, but it's not the past 2-3 years. It's now, and the current bleaching event is greatly exacerbated by global warming. We don't decide to arbitrarily pour our agricultural waste into the ocean on a 2-3 year cycle causing mass bleaching events. Agricultural runoff is of course not helping, but it doesn't drive the mass bleaching.
Re:Great Barrier Reef - agricultural runoff (Score:5, Informative)
Going through mass bleaching events every 2-3 years is not the "whew, let's relax" event you seem to think it is when corals don't hit reproductive age for ~3-10 years, depending on species, with initial reproduction rates being slow and taking time to accelerate (the longest-lived animals on Earth are coral colonies, with certain individuals documented having lived for thousands of years; most live for decades, or in some species hundreds of years). Let alone the knock-on for all the species that depend on healthy coral for their their habitat, which lead to balance in the ecosystem, which is critical to e.g. preventing explosions of coral predators.
It's like taking an old growth forest in an ecosystem not adapted to regular fires, and burning it down every couple years. There will still be "something" living there, but it's just not going to be the same ecosystem it was.
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(To be clear on terminology: colony != reef. A coral colony is a cluster of polyps that bud or divide off from each other, all genetically identical and interconnected by the coenosarc to share resources, with each polyp living for a few years. For a plant analogy, the colony would be a a tree, and the polyps, individual leaves of that tree)
Re:Great Barrier Reef - agricultural runoff (Score:4, Informative)
Also, it's actually 1-3 years. The Great Barrier reef underwent mass bleaching events in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, and now in 2024.
Re:20% survival is pretty good (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't just assume the temperature tolerance gene(s) can emerge suddenly. For all we know it requires multiple simultaneous and specific mutations, if the climate change is too fast there may not be time to evolve and we could be talking about an extinction of many species. I know this because bioengineering heat tolerance of a few degrees to even one enzyme take many rounds of directed evolution. Reference: https://spj.science.org/doi/10... [science.org] There's a reason the American Crocodile can't really live north of Brevard county, FL but the American Alligator can live all the way up to North Carolina. Evolution isn't always easy and sometimes has to cling to its niche.
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"You can't just assume the temperature tolerance gene(s) can emerge suddenly"
Well for a start its probably more than one gene or could even be epigeneticy. But that fact tat 20% survived means they obviously have some kind of natural tolerance and will pass it on to the next generation. Thats all that matters ultimately.
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Or they were just healthier to begin with, or more favourably situated. It doesn't mean that they have an inherent genetic advantage.
Corals are not fast growing. They grow about a centimeter per year, give or take half an order of magnitude. The fastest-reproducing corals still take several years to hit reproductive age, while others take as much as a decade. These aren't like bacteria that can quickly get new genes into the mix, test them, and quickly spread them through the population.
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"Or they were just healthier to begin with, or more favourably situated"
Maybe healthier - which can also be down to genetics - but I doubt location matters much when talking about the warming of the entire ocean.
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Light exposure, depth, degree of exposure, isolated from others or clustered... many factors can affect survivability.
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Of course this isn't science, it's just wishful thinking and hand waving about things you don't actually know much about. It's probably worth noting that actual reef scientists aren't so cheerful about the prospects for coral reefs as you are.
It's not even that what you *think* you know is necessarily wrong. You're talking about about something reef scientists aren't particulary worried about: the extinction of coral *species*. In other words it's a straw man. What scientists are worried about is something
Re: 20% survival is pretty good (Score:2)
Wow, how many straw mans can someone fit in a single post.
I suggest you find someone who matches those made up views you ascribed go me and argue it out with them.
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Well, you bringing *evolution* into the argument shows that your views are so far off base theyr'e not even wrong.
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I said survival of the fittest. Thats intersects evolution but its not the same thing you fucking idiot. Perhaps go grow some brain cells before you post again and try learning to read english while you're at it.
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I won't return in coin by calling you an idiot, because I don't think you are one. What I think you are is too *ignorant* to realize you're talking about evolution. "Survival of the fittest" is a phrase coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864 to refer to natural selection, a concept that's in the actual *title* of Darwin's book.
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Survival of the fittest is limited to a single generation, evolution is over many generations. HTH.
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If I understand your argument properly, you're suggesting that things will be OK with the reefs because "survival of the fittest" will produce a population of corals better adapted to warmer conditions.
Let me first point out is that this isn't really an argument, it's a hypothesis. In fact this is the very question that actual *reef scientists* are raising -- the ability of reefs to survive as an ecosystem under survival pressure. There's no reason to believe reefs will surivive just because fitter organi
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Yeah 20% survived a slight increase in temperature, but if the temperature goes up some more in a short time due to the climate continuing to change they may not be able handle it.
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So why have I been modded troll? (Score:1)
Would some idiot mods have preferred it if 0% survived or something??
Coral bleaching is serious, but at least 20% survived in this case which means theres some hope or is hope a downvote too you p***ks?
I am sure the Dinosaurs thought the same thing. (Score:2)
Ugh. (Score:2)
Corals need to get off Tiktok and stop with these unhealthy style trends. You're beautiful the way you are, corals!
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Ah yes, the this is fine [google.com] coping mechanism.
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One of the oldest, most durable archaeolifeforms on this planet is threatened by it getting warmer by a couple of degrees?
Yes. Along with ocean acidification https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-lif... [si.edu] and dead zones https://education.nationalgeog... [nationalgeographic.org]
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Acidification: So you're saying that the Archaean ocean ph of 6.5-7.0 - you know, when life more or less evolved - is now awful?
https://www.science.org/doi/10... [science.org]
Dead Zones: https://www.sciencealert.com/d... [sciencealert.com]
"...In a new study, researchers discovered that dead zones have actually been a recurring feature of the Pacific Ocean for longer than anybody ever realized â" at least around 1.2 million years, in fact.
Analyzing a core of ancient sediment drilled from the Bering Sea seabed in the North Pacific, sci
Corals mostly didn't make it [Re:makes sense] (Score:2)
One of the oldest, most durable archaeolifeforms on this planet is threatened by it getting warmer by a couple of degrees?
Almost. One of the oldest, most durable archaeolifeforms on this planet is threatened by it getting warmer at a very rapid pace compared to geological climate change rates.
More likely, some opportunist corals which had highly specialized over the last 20k years or so are unable to adapt to an ever changing climate and are struggling. That's how life works. What will happen is they will be replaced by more heat tolerant variants
...in ten thousand thousand years or so. A few million at most.
...Corals as a species have survived numerous extinction events.
Nope. Corals species die in extinction events. Corals as an order (Scleractinia) have survived numerous, but not all, extinction events.
And it's not "speed of the change" as some events - like the Chicxulub impact - had a vastly larger effect than a few degrees and it happened in a geological instant, not centuries. And corals likely struggled but survived just fine.
It took two to five million years for corals to reappear in the geological record after the K-T extinction event. The coral that survived we
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Fair point on orders vs species, my sloppy use of language.
So yes, some coral species are going to fail; that's the nature of specialization.
As long as the ecosystem is stable, specialization is an evolutionary advantage meaning specialists can outcompete generalists. Once things get shaken up, specialists die off, generalists survive until the next stable span as specialists start to evolve into the new niches.
That's how it's worked for a *billion* years. Evolution requires death.
Assuming humans are some
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OK, that's fair. If we think in the really long run, yes, humans are a small perturbation.
In the shorter run, time scales of human civilization, or even industrial civilization, human activities are having a significant effect.
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Ah, the expected cadre of ecomarxists downvoting to hell. Love open debate with you guys.
Evolve or Go Extinct (Score:2)
Those are the two options. I don't make the rules.
meanwhile, Florida is doing their best (Score:1)
Because ignoring it will totally make it go away.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
oh that's right! these fucking morons think it's a Chinese hoax, so there's nothing to be done anyways.