Bleached coral can take on luminously beautiful pink and purple hues - but don’t be deceived, these corals are under stress.
Justin Marshall/coralwatch.org
The bleaching hitting the Great Barrier Reef not only harms corals. As these close-up photos show, it also deprives many other species of a home and livelihood.
Recent aerial surveys found huge amounts of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.
Terry Hughes/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Bleaching has hit a huge swathe of the Great Barrier Reef, with many corals in the reef’s remote northern reaches now expected to die as a result of warm waters linked to this summer’s El Niño.
Spencer Gulf at sunset in South Australia.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology
Camille Mellin, Australian Institute of Marine Science; Aaron MacNeil, Australian Institute of Marine Science, and Julian Caley, Australian Institute of Marine Science
Banning fishing helps fish, but it also helps reef recover from cyclones, disease, and coral bleaching.
Outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish, which eat coral, have been linked to poor water quality.
Starfish image from www.shutterstock.com
Authorities have moved the Great Barrier Reef onto its highest alert level in response to widespread coral bleaching. Months of monitoring will now be needed to assess the ongoing damage.
The Great Barrier Reef might get all the attention, but what about our western coral reefs? Warmer waters and human impacts mean these reefs are in trouble.
Early signs of bleaching coral in Kaheohe Bay Hawaii, August 2015.
XL Catlin Seaview Survey / Underwater Earth
Many corals can’t make it through the bleaching events caused by warming ocean waters. But some can – and scientists are trying to learn more about the sources of their resilience.
Soon the oceans will be too warm to support thriving coral reefs.
USFWS - Pacific Region/Flickr
Coral reefs are the poster child for the damage people are doing to the world’s oceans. Overfishing, pollution and declining water quality have all taken their toll on reefs around the world. Perhaps the…
A great butterfly fish enjoys the reef view off Waialae, Hawaii.
Steve Palumbi
Reef historian Iain McCalman, in Sydney, and reef scientist Stephen Palumbi, in California, are monitoring reef degradation from opposite sides of the planet. They compared notes. Iain McCalman: A recent…
Australia’s coral reefs and mountain-top ecosystems are set to suffer from climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest summary of the research. The threats to these…
Bright colourful coral like this may soon disappear.
USFWS Pacific
Greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the oceans in regions such as the Baltic by as much as 1.3°C. It is now thought that 90% of the heat added to the climate system by humans has been absorbed in the…
The fire coral (Millepora boschmai) is one of the rarest species of coral in the world. It is known only from a small number of locations in the Pacific Ocean, Panama and Indonesia, and it appears this…