NOAA declares global event putting coral reefs in jeopardy

An underwater phenomenon known as El Niño that warms waters at a drastic rate is said to be the cause of recent coral bleaching seen around the globe. About 5 percent will have died forever. That’s according to a report released Thursday by an global coalition of ocean experts, reef mappers and monitoring teams documenting the worldwide coral bleaching crisis.

As record ocean temperatures cause widespread coral bleaching across Hawaii, NOAA scientists confirm the same stressful conditions are expanding to the Caribbean and may last into the new year, prompting the declaration of the third global coral bleaching event ever on record.

So far the 1998 bleaching was worse, but that was the second year of an El Nino and we’re in the first of two years now, Eakin said.

“The prior events were in 1998 and 2010, and those were pretty much one year events”.

“The development of conditions in the Pacific looks exactly like what happened in 1997”. Now scientists are warning that it’s not just Hawaii but the entire world that is in the midst of the worst coral die off in history. “Many of us think this will exceed the damage that was done in 1998”.

Since the early 1980s the world has lost roughly half of its coral reefs.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia, suggested that the best way to avert coral bleaching is to focus on the factors that cause corals to become stressed. “So unfortunately I got it right”, he said. However, it’s going to be one of the worsts, with areas such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef predicted to be hit the hardest.

It narrowly avoided being put on the United Nations World Heritage in-danger list this year, with Canberra now working on a plan to improve the reef’s health over successive decades.

“The coral bleaching and disease, brought on by climate change and coupled with events like the current El Niño, are the largest and most pervasive threats to coral reefs around the world”, Eakin explained. “It’s like a hospital patient”.

The difference between this bleaching event and others before it is not just the extremity of sea temperatures, but how long they have persisted for.

Severe or long-term bleaching is often lethal for corals. “It’s still a bit of a mystery”, Eakin said.

Photo: XL Catlin Seaview SurveyThis coral was photographed in American Samoa.

Coral reefs cover only 1/10th of 1 percent of the world’s ocean floor, but they help support approximately 25 percent of all marine species. “As a result, the livelihoods of 500 million people and income worth over $30 billion are at stake”. However, he said there was still hope, if governments acted immediately to relieve both global and local pressures on reefs.