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SYDNEY, Australia – A large section of the Great Barrier Reef has been hit by a sixth mass bleaching event, a worrying milestone for the coral wonder that points to the continuing threat of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, the marine park’s official said on Friday. . .
Government scientists, who used helicopters and small airplanes to survey 750 individual reefs for hundreds of miles last week, found severe bleaching in 60 percent of corals.
bleaching events By 2022, it has occurred in four of the last seven years and offers a mass bleaching in a year of La Niña, where more rain and cooler temperatures are expected to provide a respite for sensitive corals to recover.
Coral biologist Dr. “We’re seeing coral reefs fail to cope with the current rate of warming and the frequency of climate change,” said Neal Cantin. “We need to slow this rate of warming as fast as possible.”
Coral bleaching is often referred to as a climate change warning system, a canary in the coal mine of a struggling world. Indicates that corals are under intense stress from the waters around them. increasingly hot. Last year, scientists recorded the hottest year ever recorded for the world’s oceans — for the sixth year in a row.
First, stress appears in bright, almost neon colors on coral reefs, as coral, an animal, expels the algae that lives within it and provides the coral with nutrients. Corals continue to turn white as bone, but can still recover if temperatures cool long enough.
However, scientists report that has become increasingly rare. Between 2009 and 2019, a comprehensive study Compared to last year, 14 percent of the world’s coal reefs were lost.
A stunning ecosystem visible from space, the Great Barrier Reef still has large, healthy sections of coral for 1,500 miles with sharks, turtles, stingrays, and crayon-colored fish.
But throughout the entire natural wonder, there are also signs of damage. Brittle, gray areas of dead coral covered with ugly tufts of algae, and blocks of underwater burial grounds are growing with each mass bleaching since the first bleaching in 1998.
In Australia, this decline has become increasingly politicized. The government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, which has done little to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels or its exports, has repeatedly forced the United Nations to challenge its borders. scientific advice and prevent the reef from being listed as endangered world heritage sites.
Instead of aggressively pursuing emissions cuts, Australia has thrown away hundreds of millions of dollars. long term projects aimed at helping the reef by clearing agricultural runoff, killing invasive species, or finding and cultivating the most heat-tolerant coral species.
Climate protests are also intensifying across the country, some are run by kidsothers by activists trying to block trains and traffic.
UN scientists are now checking the condition of the reef in Australia. Dr. Cantin said he met with them Friday afternoon and explained what the surveys had found.
The image of the reef (and Australia’s management) will be severely damaged if the United Nations asserts that the reefs are slowly heading towards extinction. But the damage to the world’s reefs goes far beyond threats to tourism or a country’s reputation.
According to a recent report from the International Coral Reef Initiative, coral reefs cover a small portion of the ocean floor, collectively supporting approximately US$2.7 trillion per year in goods and services worldwide. Their fish provide food for hundreds of millions of people around the world – and provide shelter from severe storms in Australia and elsewhere that are becoming more common with climate change.
Dr. Cantin said he was particularly disappointed with the spatial footprint of this year’s bleaching damage. Near-shore reefs experienced the most extreme bleaching, but bleaching covered a wider area than back-to-back outbreaks in 2016 and 2017, he said.
He said it was a product of an early summer.
“We were already warmer in December than the historic February summer maximums,” he said. He added that there was a period of cooling in February, but the last two weeks of this month saw little rain and the heat remained.
“With the frequency of major stressful summers, we were on bouts of bleaching almost every year,” he said. “We are in terrible times.”
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