More Than 80% of the World's Reefs Hit By Bleaching After Worst Global Event On Record

The world's coral reefs have been pushed into "uncharted territory" by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet's reefs, scientists have warned. From a report: Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government's Coral Reef Watch shows.

Coral reefs are known as the rainforests of the sea because of their high concentration of biodiversity that supports about a third of all marine species and a billion people. But record high ocean temperatures have spread like an underwater wildfire over corals across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, damaging and killing countless corals.

Guys

[backslashdot]

Quit going to the beach and emptying bottles of Clorox into the sea.

Re:Quit emptying Clorox bottles into sea

[Tablizer]

But we have protect the sharks from Covid, batteries, and Hannibal Lecter!

Re:Guys

[OrangeTide]

Seltzer and club soda is great for gently removing stains, or for bleaching coral. The main ingredients are simple, water and carbon dioxide.

Re:

[RoccamOccam]

Club soda fixes everything! [coub.com]

Re:

[dbialac]

I'm partly serious about this and partly sarcastic: did coral reefs not exist in the previous times when the climate was hotter? Don't get me wrong, maintaining a healthy climate is important as is not creating too abrupt of a change as well.

Re:20% seems like an odd number?

[Zocalo]

Coral only grows in shallower waters and, although there have recently been a few reefs found a bit deeper than expected, you can still pretty much rule out any areas of open ocean beyond the litoral waters of the continental shelves. There are occassional finds of new reefs on sea mounts and in mostly uninhabitted archipelagoes, but that's awfully rare now, so it's pretty likely we're within a rounding error of knowing where every last one is.

Re:

[thegarbz]

We objectively do. Back in 2016 there was a major project to map and categorise all the coral reefs on the planet. They analysed millions of satellite images to map them out. There's virtually none we don't know of. Reefs are shallow, you can see them quite easily from space.

Re:

[Samare]

That project was about coral reefs in depths of up to 15 meters. https://coral.org/en/blog/the-... [coral.org]
And:
"Reef-building corals prefer clear and shallow water, where lots of sunlight filters through to their symbiotic algae. It is possible to find coral reefs at depths exceeding 91 m, but reef-building corals generally grow best at depths shallower than 70 m."
"Mesophotic coral ecosystems are typically found at depths ranging from 30-40 m and extending to over 150 m in tropical and subtropical regions."
"Deep-sea

Time for desperate methods yet?

[Pinky's Brain]

There are more heat tolerant symbiotic pairs for corals ... you could seed them. You can accelerate the evolution by bypassing ocean currents and random chance.

Re:

[Tablizer]

If Kevin Costner can evolve gills, then fish can wear skimpy bikinis!

Re:

[jjmcwill]

That actually sounds like a reasonable idea.

We sure as hell aren't going to reverse global warming, especially here in the USA where our Admin is intent on accelerating it with the dramatic change in energy policy.

Re:

[MacMann]

We sure as hell aren't going to reverse global warming, especially here in the USA where our Admin is intent on accelerating it with the dramatic change in energy policy.

Have you read the platform documents from both the Republican and Democratic Parties? I have. Compare and contrast the plank both parties published for energy production. I did that and found very little to separate them.

Of course each party will talk shit about the other in their plans for producing energy but in the end both parties will talk about more nuclear power, incentives for increased energy efficiency, and increasing domestic fossil fuel production. The Democrats will try to hide how they are

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Is it really a dramatic change? America's policy has been "pollution is bad but we're going to pollute anyway" forever. Democrats talk a good game, but then wind up approving oil leases anyway.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Maybe this could be a crowd source effort if it was viable; the reef aquarium-keeping community is pretty hardcore by the nature of raising corals can be tricky, they would probably be more than down to contribute to a program to help raise these corals for eventual planting.

Re:

[MacMann]

Desperate measures like building nuclear power plants to lower our CO2 emissions?

I saw this video a few days ago and I thought I'd share: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

In the video are a bunch of dudes that lift weights, talk mostly about guns and anime, with tattoos on their arms and White Claws in their hands, sitting around a table talking about how we need nuclear power plants, how renewable energy is largely bullshit, and making fun of people they believe to be university educated morons. I found t

Too much causing too little

[kackle]

At least we'll have our ever-on screens with their AI to keep us company when we die.

How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic?

[blue trane]

Is it possible they have seen global warming before, and remember how to survive?

Re:How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic?

[Gilgaron]

https://www.coralsoftheworld.o... [coralsoftheworld.org] Looks like the cretaceous extinction got 70% of genera at the time so its hard to say. Generally with this sort of human impact it is the speed of the change to the environment that is the issue, rather than that it happens at all. E.g. a forest can deal with the local climate changing if the population moves north or south over time, but an abrupt change and the local population just dies outright.

Re: How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic?

[blue trane]

When you look at geological strata, how are you sure climate change took place more slowly in the past?

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

We have a handy graph with cited data. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wi... [explainxkcd.com]

What do you want us to do about it.

[JoshZK]

I'm not going to be one of those people who say humans didn't play a role, but seriously. Good luck fixing this. How much energy is needed to raise the world's ocean temperatures by 0.1F TLDR# It would take 3.00e+23 joules to raise the temperature by 0.1F, or 3.42 trillion "Fat Man" Nukes. Or 239 Billion of our new Modern Minuteman III nukes. Calcs to raise ocean temps 0.1F mass_oceans = 1.35e21 # in kg specific_heat_water = 4000 # in J/(kgC) temperature_change = 0.0556 # in C (0.1F to C) # Energy calcu

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I'm not going to be one of those people who say humans didn't play a role, but seriously. Good luck fixing this. How much energy is needed to raise the world's ocean temperatures by 0.1F

Someone should probably tell you lizard people that the goal is to decrease those temperatures.

Re:

[ZombieCatInABox]

I'm not going to be one of those people who say humans didn't play a role, but seriously. Good luck fixing this. How much energy is needed to raise the world's ocean temperatures by 0.1F [math diarrhea]

Jesus F.....g Christ... If you don't care, just say you don't care. Yes, people will say mean things about you. People always have opinions about other people. That's life. Suck it up.

But please dispense with the pathetic and completely irrelevant piss-poor attempt at rationalization. Nukes aren't what's heating up the oceans. That big thermonuclear reactor in the sky is. And the more co2 in the atmosphere, the more the earth retains that heat.

It's not rocket science.