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Earth

Great Barrier Reef Hit By Its Most Widespread Coral Bleaching, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 12

More than 40% of individual corals monitored around a Great Barrier Reef island were killed last year in the most widespread coral bleaching outbreak to hit the reef system, a study has found. The Guardian: Scientists tracked 462 colonies of corals at One Tree Island in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef after heat stress began to turn the corals white in early 2024. Researchers said they encountered "catastrophic" scenes at the reef.

Only 92 coral colonies escaped bleaching entirely and by July, when the analysis for the study ended, 193 were dead and a further 113 were still showing signs of bleaching. Prof Maria Byrne, a marine biologist at the University of Sydney and lead author of the study, has been researching and visiting the island for 35 years.

Great Barrier Reef Hit By Its Most Widespread Coral Bleaching, Study Finds

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  • The game is over (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    With the single worst polluter withdrawing from the climate agreements, it is now free for all.

    I hope you old American farts realize it is your shiny white grandchildren that will suffer from it.

  • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @12:39PM (#65106391)
    Anyone following this should not be surprised. Perhaps some are inclined to believe that this is just the latest devastating loss to a diminished reef, but it has actually been making a comeback over the last decade [australian...hic.com.au] and will likely recover from this in time as well.
    • by Dinjay ( 571355 )

      The last few sentences from the article you quoted:
      ----------
      "What we should take from this is the reef – the world’s largest living structure – is currently still able to recover from repeated shocks. But these shocks are getting worse and arriving more often, and future recovery is not guaranteed.

      This is the rollercoaster ride the reef faces at just 1.1C of warming. The pattern of disturbance and recovery is shifting – and not in the Reef’s favour."
      ----------

      Even the Paris Ag

  • "The corals are supposed to be white, everyone knows it! The commie DEI spewers rigged them to be colorful, but Jesus intended them to be honkies, just like Jesus was, not some brown Middle-Easterner with a dark beard that wokesters keep drawing to be quote historically accurate. Pope Donaldi in the twelf century declared Jesus white! Make corals and 'Murica white again!

    Oh, and we need to eat all the ocean's fish before Jiiihna does! Let's win the Fish Wars instead of surrender like Dem wimps! Proud fish wa

  • We've just had an El Nino after 3 consecutive years of La Nina (not unusual as it happens). This means a plume of warm water tumbles down the east coast and kills the cold water coral animals. Warm water coral animals then take over which takes about a year. The GBR is on the cold water limit for coral, hence is very susceptible to changes in water temperature.

    All of this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with climate change.

    • Frequent massive coral die offs are perfectly normal. Losing biomass more quickly than it is gaining it on average.
      Since climate change isn't possible, we can conclude that coral has been extinct for 500,000 years.

  • Aussies and people buying fish from Oz beware of ciguatera poisoning:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    No detection kit. Can't be cooked out. No smell. Can kill. Common in bleached areas.

Every cloud has a silver lining; you should have sold it, and bought titanium.

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